“What class are you going to?” asked one of my friends, a fellow political science major.
“I’m going to my fine arts class,” I casually replied.
“Why do you take an arts class? Are you taking it for fun?”
“Well, yes and no. I have to take it to graduate, but I also enjoy it,” I said truthfully.
“Why would you have to take an arts class? You study political science,” he said.
“Yeah, and it’s part of my general education requirements.”
“That seems errr, stupid.”
You know, as education systems go, I’ve come to the knowledge that I like and prefer mine. Though I’m sure that many, many people back home would argue this point with me, the fact that the vast majority of university students in the United States receive liberal arts educations is a competitive advantage as critical thought goes as well as important to that development of critical thought.
Now, as I can foresee, there are two points of contention that can arise from this: first that most all higher education in the United States can be called liberal arts and second that it is actually something positive and advantageous in the long run.
Let me first define liberal arts as I see fit. I understand full well that in the United States, liberal arts on the layperson’s level almost always refers to the liberal arts colleges (not universities, because they don’t confer graduate degrees), wherein professors teach small classes and instead of researching, professors just teach. As such, liberal arts colleges tend to be small themselves. They pride themselves on learning for the sake of knowledge and having knowledge for the sake of knowledge, which I can and do fully believe in.
That’s where I’m going to break it off. Though a liberal arts college teaches liberal arts, not all institutions that teach liberal arts are liberal arts colleges—in fact, the whole higher education set up of the United States is based on the liberal arts education and continues to become more and more so—and I like it.
So what exactly is a liberal arts education? In my understanding, the result is that you get a well-rounded knowledge base upon which to draw from, but what is most important is that you come up with well-rounded (profound and thoughtful) opinions and decisions, based on the fact that nothing in the world it of itself with nothing else. Philosophically speaking, the liberal arts education gives students a real-world education with the ability to analyze relations better than say someone who went to a vocational school, which trains you only for your job.
And that’s the alternative, or one of the alternatives. Vocational school in the United States refers to professions that require more technical skill over critical thought. Don’t get me wrong, because I believe that people who go to vocational school and people who hold jobs of any sort make the world go round, but vocational school is for the nitty gritty professions, like those of mechanics and plumbers.
So where do the rest of us fit in? Well, we get well-rounded educations. This means that we have general education requirements and often areas of specialization (on top of majors). In addition, general education requirements are often done in the first two years, which means that the breadth of disciplines that a student is exposed to can help him or her decide what to major in. And before you say, well, doesn’t everybody have general education requirements?, that’s a no.
As I understand, here at HKU, there are hardly any general education requirements as we would understand in the United States. They have one broad set of classes labeled “GE: General Education” but notices that the word “requirements” is left off. GEs are not required it appears. In that sense, the university curriculum (in addition to the primary and secondary school curriculums) are based heavily on the English.
In this sense, you are forced into specialization soon after you enter university, which I find bizarre. To start, their major curriculums are three years, whereas in the United States the typical time to graduate with a bachelor’s degree is supposed to be four years.
And that’s not specialization in just major—it’s more like career. Take a look at professional degrees in the United States—most are graduate degrees that require an undergraduate degree to apply for. Architecture, as one of the few fields left whose professional degree is undergraduate, might become a graduate degree soon. I recently read an article that the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards was investigating making it so, much in the same way law was made a doctorate back in the day.
Lawyers are doctors too (at least in the United States). Since the late nineteenth century, you have to earn a Juris Doctor (JD) degree to be eligible to take the bar in any state and thereby become licensed to practice. This means that you have to first get an undergraduate degree, and then go to law school for six semesters.
In England, as I understand, as well as many historically English-ruled countries, law is firmly an undergraduate (albeit professional) degree. Straight out of high school, English students can (if so accepted) go straight into law. After for studying for three years in a classroom and a doing year of practical (the substitute for the American bar), you become a fully qualified lawyer. Similarly, medical students study for five years as undergraduates (four in the United States), and then do their practical for however many years. Because of this, both physicians and lawyers start out younger in England than in the United States.
Some would say “Yay! More money for retirement!” but I think that if you spent so many fewer years on education, you’re inherently less educated than someone whose spent more. It’s like child prodigies who end up graduating college at the age of 13. They may have the same practical knowledge as a 21-year-old of the same qualifications, but do they really have an equal amount of life experience that truly enhances your education? I think not.
On a related note, in the last lecture of my Hong Kong and the World class, we had the pro-vice-chancellor of the university at our disposal as a guest speaker, and the main topic of the discussion was the education reform currently underway in Hong Kong.
As a background note, secondary education is becoming one year shorter and university education is becoming one year longer (in a timed manner). This means that in fall 2012, the nine universities of Hong Kong will be taking in two classes (for two different curriculums), or a 40% increase in students over the previous term and the previous year. The universities are all expanding their campuses as able to accommodate this increase.
Current university students overall seem to be pretty apathetic, since it’s not immediately affecting them. But in any situation like this one, students who have opinions tend to harbor strong feelings.
I love my university, and I appreciate what is being done for me. I wish that more often more people would be appreciative just of the air around them. I love my university, but besides reasons of gratitude, I couldn’t tell you why. The university isn’t a person, but a group of people, so I suppose my love would be for the environment, for (the majority of) the people.
In our last Hong Kong and the World class, one local student expressed a very strong dislike (or at least severely neutral) opinion of the University of Hong Kong. Now, HKU isn’t my university per say (though I registered with the alumni office at their request), but I see no reason not to love it. Though it is structured differently than UCSD, I can firmly see that a university is a university. I’m not so sure she can quantify her lack of affection for HKU either, much in the same way that I cannot quantify my affection for UCSD.
There are plenty of UCSD students who hate UCSD, but they tend to back up their feelings or opinions based on the liberal arts classes that they are forced to take, Making of the Modern World that one day I hope they will appreciate having taken.
In all honesty, I can’t really fully appreciate that student’s lack of affection for the university. Though I never asked her personally, she said to the pro-vice-chancellor that she believes her workload is far to heavy. (Although I have been here for only one semester, I can say that my full course load is producing far less work that I’ve had back at UCSD.)
So there’s haters everywhere I suppose, and it doesn’t matter whose grass your on. I think though that the ultimate reason why I love my university is that I’m an appreciative, positive person who tries to see everything and tries to see everything with an open mind.
And let the statement never disappear that many UCSD professors notice the difference in writing and critical thought in papers from Eleanor Roosevelt College students.
In the development of the person, it would appear that time is more important than money.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Showing posts with label ERC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ERC. Show all posts
Friday, December 4, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Shopping for Classes, Part 2
The add/drop period for class registration ended September 14. For the Faculty of Social Sciences, September 15 was when we had to turn in a signed finalization of those classes. Though I met both deadlines, making sure that classes will be approved for meeting requirements for general education and my majors and minor has been a little more difficult.
With shopping for classes done and over with, I ended up with five six-unit classes and one three-unit class, Cantonese for Foreign Learners 1. That class may actually contain the majority of the fun I have on campus. Organized to give us conversational knowledge of Cantonese, the class is simple and entertaining. For the fifty minutes, twice a week that it’s worth, I can tell that the teacher is really enthusiastic about what she does. What makes it more fun is that, since I cannot apply this class to any graduation requirement back home, I’m going to take the class pass/no pass, I can enjoy myself and the content of the class without feeling to bothered about what grade I get.
The three five-unit classes that I plan to apply to requirements back at UCSD are Introduction to Arts of Asia: Past and Present, Traditional Chinese Society, Hong Kong and the World, Humanity in Globalization, and Phonetics.
To be rephrased as Introduction to Asian Art on my University of California transcript, this is the other class that I think I’ll take pass/no pass. This is to fulfill the non-western fine arts class for Eleanor Roosevelt College’s general education requirements. Being in Asia, I figured that this would be a good opportunity to do so.
The class is very interesting to say the least. As of yet we’ve been discussion Buddhist art and just last lecture we were discussing how Buddhism’s arrival to Japan reflected the native Shinto way of life and its reflection in art and architecture, particularly the design of temples. It was further related to the present day, in which reflecting the older works we went over selected contemporary works by such notables as Yoko Ono.
Traditional Chinese Society is an ethnographic, anthropologic class that deals more with contemporary Chinese society in light of traditional Chinese society. Right now, I’m trying to get it preapproved for my minor in the Study of Religion, with my case being that the class focuses on way of life, which is true religion in its essential form. Concretely, similar classes have been approved for the Study of Religion at UCSD, namely Chinese Society (a sociology class) and Traditional Chinese Society (an anthropology class). Here at HKU there is not an anthropology department, so this class is listed under Sociology. In crossing classes with UCSD, the description of my class here at HKU is in between the two UCSD classes, leaning more towards the anthropological one.
If the Study of Religion program refuses to see my logic, I plan to make my case to apply this as an anthropology class to the secondary focus of my International Studies-Political Science major. Unfortunately, UC transfers this course over as a sociology class by default, so I would have to prove its anthropological content through the syllabus and explaining the ethnographic methods used in analysis.
As of right now, we’ve been dealing with what it means to be Chinese (a topic which I have addressed and will address again personally in a later post). Last lecture we talked about creation stories as an aspect of Chinese culture and contrasted the shear view of culture to that of Christianity. Next week we focus on the body and the traditional Chinese view of it.
This class’s tutorial is also the only one I’ve been to so far. With such a small class, there is no teacher’s assistant and the tutorials, called sections at UCSD, are run by the professor himself. It was set up as an informal environment in which we could discuss the readings and the current class materials. In that tutorial, I had to make my case for why I call myself American, but more on that later.
Hong Kong and the World is another favorite class of mine. It is listed under politics and public administration, and rightly so. The professor doesn’t have a PhD but work experience, having a consulting firm with such clients as the William Clinton Foundation. I plan to apply this class to my International Studies-Political Science major.
In light of Hong Kong’s political situation as a highly autonomous part of the People’s Republic of China, we look at why Hong Kong as been such an economic success and evaluate its future competitiveness in light of rising Chinese cities and Hong Kong’s eventual return of full sovereignty back to China.
This particular professor organizes his classes with many guests. Our first is the current director of the InvestHK, and described his job as attracting and retaining foreign investment in Hong Kong. This was followed by an intense question-and-answer section which he handled like a seasoned politician.
Humanity in Globalization is another political science class taught by the same professor as Hong Kong and the World. This actually ended up being a substitute class for me, as I meant to take International Relations of East Asia, but was troubled by the lack of oratory skills of the professor. I opted for the more interesting, more grounded class (for IR talks about countries practically as sentient beings whereas Humanity in Globalization talks about individual people in relation to the world.
So far, we’ve talked about modern-day slavery (which most people don’t know about) with one source claiming that there are more slaves today than there have ever been before. (Though I wonder if you cast that data as a percent of the population whether the numbers would seem less dire.)
My last class is Phonetics, which at first I was really excited about, but now I’m questioning the content. With my second major being a specialization in linguistics, Phonetics is a core class for me, and deciding to take it here I thought would be a good experience.
At UCSD, Phonetics is taught in light of English, introducing anatomical features of producing speech, and focusing hardly at all at the International Phonetic Alphabet Chart. Regarding linguistics, I actually prefer phonetics and phonology over semantics and morphology because there is a quantifiable reality to the study. Semantics for me seemed a little soft because it seemed less logical than other linguistics sub-disciplines.
At HKU, Phonetics is taught much the same, with the exception that we go over sounds of Mandarin and Cantonese in addition to American English (I don’t know why we don’t go over British Received Pronunciation). It sounded good and all, but for the second lecture, we went over sounds of American English, and being that many local students (most all local students) don’t speak American English, he taught it more like a let’s-learn-how-to-speak-properly class.
This was problematic in my head because at UCSD a resounding message in my linguistics classes is that linguists (and social scientists) for that matter, being researchers, work to the effect of description and not prescription. That means that Linguists don’t dictate how we should speak, they just analyze how we do speak.
Being a native American English speaker, I had no problem, but as we have to go over that again in Mandarin and Cantonese, I hope he doesn’t continue in the same manner.
To make matters worse, the TA for the class makes all the announcements in Cantonese. I always end up raising my hand to request her to repeat what she said in English.
Though I hoped to write this post after I settled into a routine, I figured that I should get out my sentiments about my classes and reveal the results of my shopping before going any further.
With shopping for classes done and over with, I ended up with five six-unit classes and one three-unit class, Cantonese for Foreign Learners 1. That class may actually contain the majority of the fun I have on campus. Organized to give us conversational knowledge of Cantonese, the class is simple and entertaining. For the fifty minutes, twice a week that it’s worth, I can tell that the teacher is really enthusiastic about what she does. What makes it more fun is that, since I cannot apply this class to any graduation requirement back home, I’m going to take the class pass/no pass, I can enjoy myself and the content of the class without feeling to bothered about what grade I get.
The three five-unit classes that I plan to apply to requirements back at UCSD are Introduction to Arts of Asia: Past and Present, Traditional Chinese Society, Hong Kong and the World, Humanity in Globalization, and Phonetics.
To be rephrased as Introduction to Asian Art on my University of California transcript, this is the other class that I think I’ll take pass/no pass. This is to fulfill the non-western fine arts class for Eleanor Roosevelt College’s general education requirements. Being in Asia, I figured that this would be a good opportunity to do so.
The class is very interesting to say the least. As of yet we’ve been discussion Buddhist art and just last lecture we were discussing how Buddhism’s arrival to Japan reflected the native Shinto way of life and its reflection in art and architecture, particularly the design of temples. It was further related to the present day, in which reflecting the older works we went over selected contemporary works by such notables as Yoko Ono.
Traditional Chinese Society is an ethnographic, anthropologic class that deals more with contemporary Chinese society in light of traditional Chinese society. Right now, I’m trying to get it preapproved for my minor in the Study of Religion, with my case being that the class focuses on way of life, which is true religion in its essential form. Concretely, similar classes have been approved for the Study of Religion at UCSD, namely Chinese Society (a sociology class) and Traditional Chinese Society (an anthropology class). Here at HKU there is not an anthropology department, so this class is listed under Sociology. In crossing classes with UCSD, the description of my class here at HKU is in between the two UCSD classes, leaning more towards the anthropological one.
If the Study of Religion program refuses to see my logic, I plan to make my case to apply this as an anthropology class to the secondary focus of my International Studies-Political Science major. Unfortunately, UC transfers this course over as a sociology class by default, so I would have to prove its anthropological content through the syllabus and explaining the ethnographic methods used in analysis.
As of right now, we’ve been dealing with what it means to be Chinese (a topic which I have addressed and will address again personally in a later post). Last lecture we talked about creation stories as an aspect of Chinese culture and contrasted the shear view of culture to that of Christianity. Next week we focus on the body and the traditional Chinese view of it.
This class’s tutorial is also the only one I’ve been to so far. With such a small class, there is no teacher’s assistant and the tutorials, called sections at UCSD, are run by the professor himself. It was set up as an informal environment in which we could discuss the readings and the current class materials. In that tutorial, I had to make my case for why I call myself American, but more on that later.
Hong Kong and the World is another favorite class of mine. It is listed under politics and public administration, and rightly so. The professor doesn’t have a PhD but work experience, having a consulting firm with such clients as the William Clinton Foundation. I plan to apply this class to my International Studies-Political Science major.
In light of Hong Kong’s political situation as a highly autonomous part of the People’s Republic of China, we look at why Hong Kong as been such an economic success and evaluate its future competitiveness in light of rising Chinese cities and Hong Kong’s eventual return of full sovereignty back to China.
This particular professor organizes his classes with many guests. Our first is the current director of the InvestHK, and described his job as attracting and retaining foreign investment in Hong Kong. This was followed by an intense question-and-answer section which he handled like a seasoned politician.
Humanity in Globalization is another political science class taught by the same professor as Hong Kong and the World. This actually ended up being a substitute class for me, as I meant to take International Relations of East Asia, but was troubled by the lack of oratory skills of the professor. I opted for the more interesting, more grounded class (for IR talks about countries practically as sentient beings whereas Humanity in Globalization talks about individual people in relation to the world.
So far, we’ve talked about modern-day slavery (which most people don’t know about) with one source claiming that there are more slaves today than there have ever been before. (Though I wonder if you cast that data as a percent of the population whether the numbers would seem less dire.)
My last class is Phonetics, which at first I was really excited about, but now I’m questioning the content. With my second major being a specialization in linguistics, Phonetics is a core class for me, and deciding to take it here I thought would be a good experience.
At UCSD, Phonetics is taught in light of English, introducing anatomical features of producing speech, and focusing hardly at all at the International Phonetic Alphabet Chart. Regarding linguistics, I actually prefer phonetics and phonology over semantics and morphology because there is a quantifiable reality to the study. Semantics for me seemed a little soft because it seemed less logical than other linguistics sub-disciplines.
At HKU, Phonetics is taught much the same, with the exception that we go over sounds of Mandarin and Cantonese in addition to American English (I don’t know why we don’t go over British Received Pronunciation). It sounded good and all, but for the second lecture, we went over sounds of American English, and being that many local students (most all local students) don’t speak American English, he taught it more like a let’s-learn-how-to-speak-properly class.
This was problematic in my head because at UCSD a resounding message in my linguistics classes is that linguists (and social scientists) for that matter, being researchers, work to the effect of description and not prescription. That means that Linguists don’t dictate how we should speak, they just analyze how we do speak.
Being a native American English speaker, I had no problem, but as we have to go over that again in Mandarin and Cantonese, I hope he doesn’t continue in the same manner.
To make matters worse, the TA for the class makes all the announcements in Cantonese. I always end up raising my hand to request her to repeat what she said in English.
Though I hoped to write this post after I settled into a routine, I figured that I should get out my sentiments about my classes and reveal the results of my shopping before going any further.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Quality v. Quality
Somehow I wanted to insert this aspect of my college experience into this blog by making it relevant somehow. Here’s my shot. I have full confidence that I may express certain feelings without upsetting certain people, mostly because I am sure that most of those people are not reading my blog. Some will be glad to read this post and some might think I’m just being bitter. Please believe me when I say that I have no intention of either.
It goes back to when I was real, real little. I think it was my father who gave me an “I’m going to Harvard” rattle. Whether or not he was the giver is irrelevant. My father is one of those who “only wants the best” for me, he would say; and I do so believe in his intentions.
Entering middle school I was poised to get straight As, no doubt. In the big jump from sixth to seventh grade I guess I found myself at a crossroads. At the time it would have sounded silly to say this, and it sounds only a little less now that I’m 19, but I like (as in prefer) to think that that was the end of my formative years in a sense. From then, my opinions have changed; I grew a few feet (I think); I learned how to drive—but nothing unlike that in the course of one’s adult life. I was poised to get into Stanford and remained so until I was rejected in 2007, in December.
Was it stubborn optimism that turned (what I like to think was) misfortune into hope?
Needless to say, I didn’t get straight As in middle school, nor high school for that matter. On the bright side, I didn’t get any Cs (or lower), nor did my GPA ever dip below 3.6.
And here we get to the topic of today’s post. Yes, the two sides are both qualities. And I know I’m not alone in thinking that I have had to make some difficult decisions over the years between two (or more) perfectly and equally equitable situations. In my case, I was caught up by quantity due to my inability to make chose but a few of the many existing scenarios before me.
Was it a good decision on my part? My mother asserted to me, after it was all set and done, “You probably should have done less. I think you stretched yourself out too thin. You couldn’t concentrate on grades and now you aren’t going to be going to your top choice school.”
I replied, “I honestly wouldn’t have done anything different.” And true to my words, my mind didn’t and still doesn’t think anything different.
My seldom-existent inner romantic would say that the heart wants what the heart wants and the brain could not, at that time, overcome the wishes of the heart, for rationality was gone. The heart had become one with the brain and there was nothing to be done.
So in this post I plan to pose three major decisions of quality versus quality (with many minor ones) that I went through. You may disagree; you may agree. All I hope is that my logic shows in my actions, hopefully culminating in relevance to my upcoming study abroad experience.
My first was in middle school.
When I was approaching fifth grade, there was a decision of whether or not to go to middle school. State legislation had just promoted the sixth grade to middle school (junior high school) status. However, there was a large enough group of parents who wanted to keep their kids in elementary school for sixth grade that Westlake Hills Elementary School kept sixth grade.
Why not stay in elementary school for sixth grade? My parents, with my consent kept me at Westlake Hills for sixth grade.
A third of the way across the school district (and Thousand Oaks), a good friend of mine went to Meadows Elementary School. Their parents had voted to get rid of sixth grade entirely there. As such, my friend went to middle school one year before I did.
I got to middle school as a seventh grader in the fall of 2002. My good friend and I were still pretty chummy and I ate lunch with his group of friends for the first week or so. With good intentions (in middle-school sense) he told me that I was not to get all problems correct on a math test or homework, because that’s not cool. I was told to deliberately work every tenth problem or so wrong to this effect.
I decided not to follow this piece of advice. If I wanted a good circle of friends, they first would not fall for gimmicks that make me supposedly look cool. If they did, then they could be considered shallow, at least in part. Because of this decision, I worked hard throughout middle school. So much that I kept a full load of honors courses with a workload to match. In eighth grade, I found myself in honors science, a relatively hard class with a good teacher.
Back in the day we would get assigned seats, of course, and for one rotation I sat next to this kid who needed a bit of help. The bit turned into a lot of help, for which I was perfectly glad to assist, for we had become pretty good friends.
The next seating rotation, we did not sit next to each other any more. That was it for our friendship. I saw him outside of class one day and said hi to him, for which he ignored me in the presence of his cool friends and pretended not to know me.
Because I have chosen not to name this individual, I’ll finish out why I mentioned him. So seeing how he had befriended me for the help, I judged him as being dim-witted and in need of plenty of help. Two incidents thereafter solidified this opinion.
The first was at a dry Christmas party senior year of high school. All the party people, including myself, were seated outside in comical conversation circles. Within our own circles we were conversing with each other.
Now many of my good friends are female, so my conversation circle was pretty much girls plus me and this other guy. In an adjacent circle was a group of football and baseball jocks. With most all sports being segregated by sex, their conversation circle was comprised only of guys, if memory serves me right. In that group was the aforementioned science class “friend,” if you will. Now a star football player, he received a scholarship to (the) Cornell University in New York.
The group began poking fun at me behind my back. I don’t remember the exact dialogue, but it was nasty and I do not care to elaborate for sake of word choice, if you catch my drift. They persisted and then moved on to the other guy in my conversation circle, another friend of mine. He wasn’t so good at hiding that he was hearing the entire insult and controlled himself to stay seated in his chair.
What transpired between the aggressors and the aggressees is irrelevant, so I’ll let you speculate as to the outcome.
The second incident regarding this individual did not happen but half a year ago. By this time, he was in attendance at Cornell and knowing fully well that he was, as my dad likes to call people, an idiot, I was curious as to how he was faring.
It just so happens that I’m friends with his ex-girlfriend, who also attends UCSD. Knowing that they’d broken up because of his infidelity, I asked how he’s doing at Cornell. She said that he feels really stupid there, to which I was not surprised and suddenly finding trouble containing my running laughter.
My second was in high school.
Many of my old friends may sense what’s to come in this second major decision. They would always remark to me stuff like: “You’re so busy!” “I never see you outside of class,” or “Do you have any free time?”
At the end of eighth grade we were led through registration of classes for freshman year of high school—the upcoming year. I talked to a counselor there. She said that if I wanted to get into Stanford, I would have to work extra hard and find a passion that you revolve around. I did both, definitely, but what pushed my chances of getting over the edge to the other side of the curve was a little thing I like to call community service.
My parents used to tell me that I’m really spoiled. When they would utter it, I would hate it. Now, I would say that was somewhat true. While I did not receive everything I wanted, I received everything I needed plus more. I never received stuff like big screen TVs or video game consoles for free, as did many of my classmates, but I never had to fight for food or had to find shelter like so many 40 miles southeast of Thousand Oaks. I was not given a car when I turned 16 (or ever for that matter) but I was given near unlimited access of my parents’. Being a teenage male, my driver’s insurance rates were sky high, but my parents never asked me to get a job to help pay for it.
So I took a look at the world, so to speak. Knowing full well what many of the underprivileged do with their lives—starting on a low note and ending on a high—I should be expected to end on an even higher note, having started from a relatively high note to begin with.
From this basis, I changed in two ways. One is ongoing and the other has already pretty much happened.
The first is that I became addicted to community service. I figured that I should use my ability and good health to assist others and those less fortunate. This is still going on as I try hard to find time perform my passion for service. I donate blood whenever I can (and so should you!) though I won’t be able to donate again until January 2011 due to my recent trip to Europe and my upcoming trip to Hong Kong.
The other is liberal (in the American sense) views (much to the covert dismay of my Republican father). No one person is inherently better than another in the same way that no one country is inherently better than another. In no way should making money be the primary goal for anyone’s life. Why should one person live with $10,000 drapes on every window in every room when someone not halfway across the globe works tirelessly every day for basic necessities? How can the United States call itself a Christian nation and claim to be accepting people of all faiths at the same time? Or for that matter how can the United States claim to be accepting and fail to insure every individual the same civil rights as the next?
While I claim a dislike for the Republican Party, I do not claim a dislike for its individual members, nor conservatism as an ideology.
I included this because as I am a political science major, I intend to write heavily about politics, political economy, and globalization from Hong Kong.
So by the time I was finishing high school I had been involved with at least six organizations. I did community service throughout Boy Scouts of America, including a 440-man-hour, $2,500-budget project for Eagle Scout rank; American Red Cross (of Ventura County), where I was involved as Youth Services Chair on the Board of Directors and Westlake High School Club President; National Honor Society, which does service with a variety of local organizations; Ambassadors Club, for service to the school; Los Robles Hospital, where I assisted the friendly pharmacist with inventory and paperwork; and Thousand Oaks Youth Commission, which gave me an award.
Even though all this organizations dominated nearly every day after school, this alone did not cause me to not get the best of grades.
I had another addition—school. I know it sounds silly, but I had a thing for taking extra classes. Each and every year I took seven classes. Junior and senior years I took an additional class at Moorpark Community College. My final semester of senior I took two classes at Moorpark Community College for a grand total of 9 classes at during my final semester at Westlake High School.
At graduation I was not going to Stanford, I had a ton of community service hours (probably literally), I had a respectable GPA (though not respectable enough for the Ivys), and I was set to go to UCSD with a combined AP-community college transfer of 86 credits (4 shy of junior standing).
My third was in college.
I guess this last major decision was not so much of a decision as a justification. I had not gotten into Stanford or the Ivys. I came to Eleanor Roosevelt College at the University of California, San Diego, to make a name for myself with expectations and disappointments.
Now that I’ve spent my first year at UCSD people ask me how I like it. My response it always the same: my biggest problem with it is that too many people don’t think they belong there. Out of all the first-years I’ve talked to, I can only name a handful that say they want to and plan to graduate from UCSD. In fact, this past year I’ve had two roommates because my first transferred out after the first quarter.
The part that bothered me was that the reason they didn’t feel they belonged was because they felt they should have gotten into college elsewhere. I got plenty of Berekeleys and UCLAs as responses.
At first, I was poised to become one of the many who didn’t “belong.” But what good would that do? UCSD is a perfectly good school and actually turned out to offer a really good education in my interests.
As I’ve explained in previous posts my majors, I have been unable to find comparable programs at other universities; and at none have I been able to find a program as enriching as Making of the Modern World.
Which brings me to my next point. Students are lazy. Well, that’s not my point, but not only are students at UCSD feeling as if they don’t belong, my classmates feel like they’ve had an injustice done to them by being placed in Eleanor Roosevelt College.
Most of the hate for ERC (from those who hate) is directed at MMW. As I explained earlier, I really appreciate MMW. Most complain about its length. One spiteful Wikipedia author claimed that at six quarters, MMW is by far the longest core writing class of all of UCSD’s six colleges.
I dispute that claim. It is indeed the longest, but not by far. Revelle College has five quarters of Humanities (HUM), which appears to be a western cultures and literature course, and an additional quarter of American cultures, making their grand total six. Sixth College has three Culture, Art, and Technology (CAT) lower division classes plus a colloquium for a total of four. Marshall College has three quarters of Dimensions of Culture (DOC), which many Marshall students say is useless, and the administrators are considering adding a fourth. Warren College has two writing courses plus Ethics for a total of three. And Muir College has two writing courses plus American cultures for a total of three as well.
So where is this all going? Rarely in my actions and choices have I been overall lazy. The decision to study abroad was no exception. The mountain of paperwork, multiple applications, and the money, just to name a few things. So why do it? I guess ironically going away to another university for a while would enhance the quality of my education at UCSD.
It goes back to when I was real, real little. I think it was my father who gave me an “I’m going to Harvard” rattle. Whether or not he was the giver is irrelevant. My father is one of those who “only wants the best” for me, he would say; and I do so believe in his intentions.
Entering middle school I was poised to get straight As, no doubt. In the big jump from sixth to seventh grade I guess I found myself at a crossroads. At the time it would have sounded silly to say this, and it sounds only a little less now that I’m 19, but I like (as in prefer) to think that that was the end of my formative years in a sense. From then, my opinions have changed; I grew a few feet (I think); I learned how to drive—but nothing unlike that in the course of one’s adult life. I was poised to get into Stanford and remained so until I was rejected in 2007, in December.
Was it stubborn optimism that turned (what I like to think was) misfortune into hope?
Needless to say, I didn’t get straight As in middle school, nor high school for that matter. On the bright side, I didn’t get any Cs (or lower), nor did my GPA ever dip below 3.6.
And here we get to the topic of today’s post. Yes, the two sides are both qualities. And I know I’m not alone in thinking that I have had to make some difficult decisions over the years between two (or more) perfectly and equally equitable situations. In my case, I was caught up by quantity due to my inability to make chose but a few of the many existing scenarios before me.
Was it a good decision on my part? My mother asserted to me, after it was all set and done, “You probably should have done less. I think you stretched yourself out too thin. You couldn’t concentrate on grades and now you aren’t going to be going to your top choice school.”
I replied, “I honestly wouldn’t have done anything different.” And true to my words, my mind didn’t and still doesn’t think anything different.
My seldom-existent inner romantic would say that the heart wants what the heart wants and the brain could not, at that time, overcome the wishes of the heart, for rationality was gone. The heart had become one with the brain and there was nothing to be done.
So in this post I plan to pose three major decisions of quality versus quality (with many minor ones) that I went through. You may disagree; you may agree. All I hope is that my logic shows in my actions, hopefully culminating in relevance to my upcoming study abroad experience.
My first was in middle school.
When I was approaching fifth grade, there was a decision of whether or not to go to middle school. State legislation had just promoted the sixth grade to middle school (junior high school) status. However, there was a large enough group of parents who wanted to keep their kids in elementary school for sixth grade that Westlake Hills Elementary School kept sixth grade.
Why not stay in elementary school for sixth grade? My parents, with my consent kept me at Westlake Hills for sixth grade.
A third of the way across the school district (and Thousand Oaks), a good friend of mine went to Meadows Elementary School. Their parents had voted to get rid of sixth grade entirely there. As such, my friend went to middle school one year before I did.
I got to middle school as a seventh grader in the fall of 2002. My good friend and I were still pretty chummy and I ate lunch with his group of friends for the first week or so. With good intentions (in middle-school sense) he told me that I was not to get all problems correct on a math test or homework, because that’s not cool. I was told to deliberately work every tenth problem or so wrong to this effect.
I decided not to follow this piece of advice. If I wanted a good circle of friends, they first would not fall for gimmicks that make me supposedly look cool. If they did, then they could be considered shallow, at least in part. Because of this decision, I worked hard throughout middle school. So much that I kept a full load of honors courses with a workload to match. In eighth grade, I found myself in honors science, a relatively hard class with a good teacher.
Back in the day we would get assigned seats, of course, and for one rotation I sat next to this kid who needed a bit of help. The bit turned into a lot of help, for which I was perfectly glad to assist, for we had become pretty good friends.
The next seating rotation, we did not sit next to each other any more. That was it for our friendship. I saw him outside of class one day and said hi to him, for which he ignored me in the presence of his cool friends and pretended not to know me.
Because I have chosen not to name this individual, I’ll finish out why I mentioned him. So seeing how he had befriended me for the help, I judged him as being dim-witted and in need of plenty of help. Two incidents thereafter solidified this opinion.
The first was at a dry Christmas party senior year of high school. All the party people, including myself, were seated outside in comical conversation circles. Within our own circles we were conversing with each other.
Now many of my good friends are female, so my conversation circle was pretty much girls plus me and this other guy. In an adjacent circle was a group of football and baseball jocks. With most all sports being segregated by sex, their conversation circle was comprised only of guys, if memory serves me right. In that group was the aforementioned science class “friend,” if you will. Now a star football player, he received a scholarship to (the) Cornell University in New York.
The group began poking fun at me behind my back. I don’t remember the exact dialogue, but it was nasty and I do not care to elaborate for sake of word choice, if you catch my drift. They persisted and then moved on to the other guy in my conversation circle, another friend of mine. He wasn’t so good at hiding that he was hearing the entire insult and controlled himself to stay seated in his chair.
What transpired between the aggressors and the aggressees is irrelevant, so I’ll let you speculate as to the outcome.
The second incident regarding this individual did not happen but half a year ago. By this time, he was in attendance at Cornell and knowing fully well that he was, as my dad likes to call people, an idiot, I was curious as to how he was faring.
It just so happens that I’m friends with his ex-girlfriend, who also attends UCSD. Knowing that they’d broken up because of his infidelity, I asked how he’s doing at Cornell. She said that he feels really stupid there, to which I was not surprised and suddenly finding trouble containing my running laughter.
My second was in high school.
Many of my old friends may sense what’s to come in this second major decision. They would always remark to me stuff like: “You’re so busy!” “I never see you outside of class,” or “Do you have any free time?”
At the end of eighth grade we were led through registration of classes for freshman year of high school—the upcoming year. I talked to a counselor there. She said that if I wanted to get into Stanford, I would have to work extra hard and find a passion that you revolve around. I did both, definitely, but what pushed my chances of getting over the edge to the other side of the curve was a little thing I like to call community service.
My parents used to tell me that I’m really spoiled. When they would utter it, I would hate it. Now, I would say that was somewhat true. While I did not receive everything I wanted, I received everything I needed plus more. I never received stuff like big screen TVs or video game consoles for free, as did many of my classmates, but I never had to fight for food or had to find shelter like so many 40 miles southeast of Thousand Oaks. I was not given a car when I turned 16 (or ever for that matter) but I was given near unlimited access of my parents’. Being a teenage male, my driver’s insurance rates were sky high, but my parents never asked me to get a job to help pay for it.
So I took a look at the world, so to speak. Knowing full well what many of the underprivileged do with their lives—starting on a low note and ending on a high—I should be expected to end on an even higher note, having started from a relatively high note to begin with.
From this basis, I changed in two ways. One is ongoing and the other has already pretty much happened.
The first is that I became addicted to community service. I figured that I should use my ability and good health to assist others and those less fortunate. This is still going on as I try hard to find time perform my passion for service. I donate blood whenever I can (and so should you!) though I won’t be able to donate again until January 2011 due to my recent trip to Europe and my upcoming trip to Hong Kong.
The other is liberal (in the American sense) views (much to the covert dismay of my Republican father). No one person is inherently better than another in the same way that no one country is inherently better than another. In no way should making money be the primary goal for anyone’s life. Why should one person live with $10,000 drapes on every window in every room when someone not halfway across the globe works tirelessly every day for basic necessities? How can the United States call itself a Christian nation and claim to be accepting people of all faiths at the same time? Or for that matter how can the United States claim to be accepting and fail to insure every individual the same civil rights as the next?
While I claim a dislike for the Republican Party, I do not claim a dislike for its individual members, nor conservatism as an ideology.
I included this because as I am a political science major, I intend to write heavily about politics, political economy, and globalization from Hong Kong.
So by the time I was finishing high school I had been involved with at least six organizations. I did community service throughout Boy Scouts of America, including a 440-man-hour, $2,500-budget project for Eagle Scout rank; American Red Cross (of Ventura County), where I was involved as Youth Services Chair on the Board of Directors and Westlake High School Club President; National Honor Society, which does service with a variety of local organizations; Ambassadors Club, for service to the school; Los Robles Hospital, where I assisted the friendly pharmacist with inventory and paperwork; and Thousand Oaks Youth Commission, which gave me an award.
Even though all this organizations dominated nearly every day after school, this alone did not cause me to not get the best of grades.
I had another addition—school. I know it sounds silly, but I had a thing for taking extra classes. Each and every year I took seven classes. Junior and senior years I took an additional class at Moorpark Community College. My final semester of senior I took two classes at Moorpark Community College for a grand total of 9 classes at during my final semester at Westlake High School.
At graduation I was not going to Stanford, I had a ton of community service hours (probably literally), I had a respectable GPA (though not respectable enough for the Ivys), and I was set to go to UCSD with a combined AP-community college transfer of 86 credits (4 shy of junior standing).
My third was in college.
I guess this last major decision was not so much of a decision as a justification. I had not gotten into Stanford or the Ivys. I came to Eleanor Roosevelt College at the University of California, San Diego, to make a name for myself with expectations and disappointments.
Now that I’ve spent my first year at UCSD people ask me how I like it. My response it always the same: my biggest problem with it is that too many people don’t think they belong there. Out of all the first-years I’ve talked to, I can only name a handful that say they want to and plan to graduate from UCSD. In fact, this past year I’ve had two roommates because my first transferred out after the first quarter.
The part that bothered me was that the reason they didn’t feel they belonged was because they felt they should have gotten into college elsewhere. I got plenty of Berekeleys and UCLAs as responses.
At first, I was poised to become one of the many who didn’t “belong.” But what good would that do? UCSD is a perfectly good school and actually turned out to offer a really good education in my interests.
As I’ve explained in previous posts my majors, I have been unable to find comparable programs at other universities; and at none have I been able to find a program as enriching as Making of the Modern World.
Which brings me to my next point. Students are lazy. Well, that’s not my point, but not only are students at UCSD feeling as if they don’t belong, my classmates feel like they’ve had an injustice done to them by being placed in Eleanor Roosevelt College.
Most of the hate for ERC (from those who hate) is directed at MMW. As I explained earlier, I really appreciate MMW. Most complain about its length. One spiteful Wikipedia author claimed that at six quarters, MMW is by far the longest core writing class of all of UCSD’s six colleges.
I dispute that claim. It is indeed the longest, but not by far. Revelle College has five quarters of Humanities (HUM), which appears to be a western cultures and literature course, and an additional quarter of American cultures, making their grand total six. Sixth College has three Culture, Art, and Technology (CAT) lower division classes plus a colloquium for a total of four. Marshall College has three quarters of Dimensions of Culture (DOC), which many Marshall students say is useless, and the administrators are considering adding a fourth. Warren College has two writing courses plus Ethics for a total of three. And Muir College has two writing courses plus American cultures for a total of three as well.
So where is this all going? Rarely in my actions and choices have I been overall lazy. The decision to study abroad was no exception. The mountain of paperwork, multiple applications, and the money, just to name a few things. So why do it? I guess ironically going away to another university for a while would enhance the quality of my education at UCSD.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Applying to Go Abroad
Now is when I get into the nitty gritties of my application. I’ve already told my reasons for going abroad and my reasons for choosing Hong Kong of all places. So now I will explain the Education Abroad Program (EAP) through which I am going and why I chose it.
There was a lot of lead-time involved in the application process. I had to submit my application on January 5, almost a full eight months before the start of the program. Programs to Hong Kong had one of the earliest application due dates I believe, but the latest one that I knew of was the program to Vietnam, to which a friend (and fellow International Studies major) of mine is going. For technical reasons, I could not turn in my application any earlier than January 5, which was risky since the my EAP website was down nearly all of winter break, with January 5 being the first day of classes for winter quarter. One copy of the application had to be submitted electronically through the website and one had to be submitted in person to the Programs Abroad Office, here on campus.
Before then, I had to meet up with country advisors. Mine was Tonia and she oversaw most of the East Asia programs. She looked over the basics with me, informed me of the dates, and laid out the scholarships (of which I was qualified for two). She said until further notice, I would not need letters of recommendation.
There, I decided to apply through EAP for a couple of reasons. First, I would pay tuition to the Regents of the University of California, so I would not have to deal more than I had to in HKU’s unfamiliar system. (It’s still unfamiliar). I would pay in United States Dollars and the EAP office would coordinate finances with my host university. If I had gone through a third party, I would still pay in USD, but to an organization that has no affiliation to UCSD. This way, I hope any problems that arise can be dealt with easier, as they would be with one bureaucracy than multiple ones.
And being affiliated with the University of California, I get direct UC credit for classes I take abroad. There are pros and cons to this set up, but I went with the pros. Advantages are that the classes count towards my GPA, so they have to potential to reflect my work abroad, and that credit is directly transferred without having to send transcripts to the UCSD Office of Admissions (and Relations with Schools). Recalling that I had to send transcripts from my high school, my community college, and the College Board (AP tests) there, the experience was not good. They had few people working, and they could not tell me if my transcripts arrived, even if they had not inputted the grades. Because of this, I sent multiple transcripts from each institution at different times to ensure that they did not lose my transcripts, nor could they say I did not meet deadlines.
Cons are that since the grades I earn abroad would be counted towards my UC GPA, if I do poorly, my GPA will reflect it. In addition, UCSD and HKU would not have a relationship in my interest, as I would have to go through a third party. In the end, I recommend, as I did, that if there is an EAP program going where you want to go, opt for that one rather than a third party.
From there, I had to go to a half-hour “First Steps” session, where we discussed the logistics of the application process. There we were given access to my EAP and reminded of due dates.
In mid-December I finished the bulk of my application. It consisted of a few essays, including questions asking, “Why did you choose this country and this school?” “What motivates you to do well abroad?” and “Why are you choosing to study abroad?” I had to also include my academic history and a list of classes that I was planning to take before I left.
Perhaps the most important part at the time was the pre-approval form. It had me list classes that I planned to take abroad based off of a database that EAP compiled of classes previously transferred. I chose classes such as “Hong Kong Politics” and “China and the World” for my first major (International Studies-Political Science) and Bilingualism for my second major (Linguistics). At the time of application, I had not yet taken on my minor in the Study of Religion, so I am not planning on taking any classes abroad to apply to it. I am also planning to take my non-western Fine Arts requirement class there. To this effect, I had to get department approval from my two (at the time) departments plus my college.
Unfortunately, my classes chosen were based on the database and not the listing of classes actually available (which is still not completely online). So I would later find out that I had to revise my class list and after that find out that I had only been accepted for two of those. Because of this, I am going to have to register for the rest of my classes when I arrive (during the first two weeks of class). But I’ll write more about that later.
So I turned in my application the morning of Monday, January 5. It was then that I was told that I needed a letter of recommendation. I had not been told earlier. It was not unreasonable, for there were 30+ applicants to the program at HKU for which there were eight available spots. However, as I had only been told then, Tonia gave me extra time to get those.
Scrambling through my coursework I decided on asking two TAs in hopes that one would give me one. They were both for classes that I had received my A+s in fall quarter. For MMW 1, I asked an anthropology graduate student, to which he graciously agreed, though the only writing samples of mine that he had were short answers and short essays on three exams. On the other hand, I asked my TA from INTL 101 Languages in Competition, a communication graduate student to write my second letter of recommendation, to which he also agreed. I figured he would know more about me and attest to my qualifications because I wrote a 4,700-word term paper on Hong Kong’s bilingual-trilingual society for that class, on which I earned an A.
As they were both kind enough to write letters, I walked into the Programs Abroad Office on Friday morning with two letters of recommendation, thereby completing my application.
Two or three weeks later (before many of my study abroad friends even had to submit their applications) I received my acceptance. To my shame, I let out a brief, high-pitched scream, but I was elated. I feel that I was accepted because I was to have senior standing by the time of the program, I submitted a 3.925 GPA (which was later adjusted to 4.0), and most of all because I submitted a letter of recommendation attesting to my knowledge and interest in Hong Kong itself.
To that effect, I owe much thanks to these two graduate students who so graciously aided my admission on such short notice. I also thank my departments and my college who support and encourage study abroad. My host country’s advisor, Tonia, was also extremely helpful and knowledgeable throughout the whole process. Of course the student workers, one of which my first roommate’s sister, at the Programs Abroad Office deserve mentioning for their work ensures the productivity and success of the entire operation. In fact, if one of them didn’t go over my application with me before I turned it in, I would have forgotten to sign a certain very important line.
Lastly I thank my family for their support in my endeavors. I know I spend a lot of their money (though with discretion), so I’ll be sure to do my best in this program in appreciation of their love of and faith in me. As it has now come to my attention that my mother is afraid of what I’ll do next, I’ll have to keep my future plans a secret from them (and most of you, the readers) for the next seven months (when my program ends) before unveiling the next chapter in my life.
What happens after I got accepted? That’ll be in a later post. Thanks for reading!
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
There was a lot of lead-time involved in the application process. I had to submit my application on January 5, almost a full eight months before the start of the program. Programs to Hong Kong had one of the earliest application due dates I believe, but the latest one that I knew of was the program to Vietnam, to which a friend (and fellow International Studies major) of mine is going. For technical reasons, I could not turn in my application any earlier than January 5, which was risky since the my EAP website was down nearly all of winter break, with January 5 being the first day of classes for winter quarter. One copy of the application had to be submitted electronically through the website and one had to be submitted in person to the Programs Abroad Office, here on campus.
Before then, I had to meet up with country advisors. Mine was Tonia and she oversaw most of the East Asia programs. She looked over the basics with me, informed me of the dates, and laid out the scholarships (of which I was qualified for two). She said until further notice, I would not need letters of recommendation.
There, I decided to apply through EAP for a couple of reasons. First, I would pay tuition to the Regents of the University of California, so I would not have to deal more than I had to in HKU’s unfamiliar system. (It’s still unfamiliar). I would pay in United States Dollars and the EAP office would coordinate finances with my host university. If I had gone through a third party, I would still pay in USD, but to an organization that has no affiliation to UCSD. This way, I hope any problems that arise can be dealt with easier, as they would be with one bureaucracy than multiple ones.
And being affiliated with the University of California, I get direct UC credit for classes I take abroad. There are pros and cons to this set up, but I went with the pros. Advantages are that the classes count towards my GPA, so they have to potential to reflect my work abroad, and that credit is directly transferred without having to send transcripts to the UCSD Office of Admissions (and Relations with Schools). Recalling that I had to send transcripts from my high school, my community college, and the College Board (AP tests) there, the experience was not good. They had few people working, and they could not tell me if my transcripts arrived, even if they had not inputted the grades. Because of this, I sent multiple transcripts from each institution at different times to ensure that they did not lose my transcripts, nor could they say I did not meet deadlines.
Cons are that since the grades I earn abroad would be counted towards my UC GPA, if I do poorly, my GPA will reflect it. In addition, UCSD and HKU would not have a relationship in my interest, as I would have to go through a third party. In the end, I recommend, as I did, that if there is an EAP program going where you want to go, opt for that one rather than a third party.
From there, I had to go to a half-hour “First Steps” session, where we discussed the logistics of the application process. There we were given access to my EAP and reminded of due dates.
In mid-December I finished the bulk of my application. It consisted of a few essays, including questions asking, “Why did you choose this country and this school?” “What motivates you to do well abroad?” and “Why are you choosing to study abroad?” I had to also include my academic history and a list of classes that I was planning to take before I left.
Perhaps the most important part at the time was the pre-approval form. It had me list classes that I planned to take abroad based off of a database that EAP compiled of classes previously transferred. I chose classes such as “Hong Kong Politics” and “China and the World” for my first major (International Studies-Political Science) and Bilingualism for my second major (Linguistics). At the time of application, I had not yet taken on my minor in the Study of Religion, so I am not planning on taking any classes abroad to apply to it. I am also planning to take my non-western Fine Arts requirement class there. To this effect, I had to get department approval from my two (at the time) departments plus my college.
Unfortunately, my classes chosen were based on the database and not the listing of classes actually available (which is still not completely online). So I would later find out that I had to revise my class list and after that find out that I had only been accepted for two of those. Because of this, I am going to have to register for the rest of my classes when I arrive (during the first two weeks of class). But I’ll write more about that later.
So I turned in my application the morning of Monday, January 5. It was then that I was told that I needed a letter of recommendation. I had not been told earlier. It was not unreasonable, for there were 30+ applicants to the program at HKU for which there were eight available spots. However, as I had only been told then, Tonia gave me extra time to get those.
Scrambling through my coursework I decided on asking two TAs in hopes that one would give me one. They were both for classes that I had received my A+s in fall quarter. For MMW 1, I asked an anthropology graduate student, to which he graciously agreed, though the only writing samples of mine that he had were short answers and short essays on three exams. On the other hand, I asked my TA from INTL 101 Languages in Competition, a communication graduate student to write my second letter of recommendation, to which he also agreed. I figured he would know more about me and attest to my qualifications because I wrote a 4,700-word term paper on Hong Kong’s bilingual-trilingual society for that class, on which I earned an A.
As they were both kind enough to write letters, I walked into the Programs Abroad Office on Friday morning with two letters of recommendation, thereby completing my application.
Two or three weeks later (before many of my study abroad friends even had to submit their applications) I received my acceptance. To my shame, I let out a brief, high-pitched scream, but I was elated. I feel that I was accepted because I was to have senior standing by the time of the program, I submitted a 3.925 GPA (which was later adjusted to 4.0), and most of all because I submitted a letter of recommendation attesting to my knowledge and interest in Hong Kong itself.
To that effect, I owe much thanks to these two graduate students who so graciously aided my admission on such short notice. I also thank my departments and my college who support and encourage study abroad. My host country’s advisor, Tonia, was also extremely helpful and knowledgeable throughout the whole process. Of course the student workers, one of which my first roommate’s sister, at the Programs Abroad Office deserve mentioning for their work ensures the productivity and success of the entire operation. In fact, if one of them didn’t go over my application with me before I turned it in, I would have forgotten to sign a certain very important line.
Lastly I thank my family for their support in my endeavors. I know I spend a lot of their money (though with discretion), so I’ll be sure to do my best in this program in appreciation of their love of and faith in me. As it has now come to my attention that my mother is afraid of what I’ll do next, I’ll have to keep my future plans a secret from them (and most of you, the readers) for the next seven months (when my program ends) before unveiling the next chapter in my life.
What happens after I got accepted? That’ll be in a later post. Thanks for reading!
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Career Plans
“What do you call 5,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”
Most know the answer to this joke is “A good start.” It is commonly perceived that in the professional world, lawyers are sly and conniving, always looking for a reason to sue, exploiting people for their hard earned money. This is the stereotype played off of in television, movies, and other media; it is also what I had in mind up until I started college. I never wanted to be a lawyer, involved in corporate politics, drowning in the multiplicity of personalities. It wasn’t appealing.
There are lawyers who exist like this, of course. But most lawyers supposedly have never been on the inside of a courtroom and are low-profile men and women who are hardworking and live middle-class lifestyles. So less lawyers are as exploitative as is commonly thought.
On the other hand, physicians are thought of as lifesavers. And I suppose it is true for the most part. After all, they do receive much more education that lawyers. A mistake by a doctor could cost a life but a mistake by a lawyer could lose some money. Alternatively, a skilled doctor can maintain life where wanted whereas a skilled lawyer can get settlements or the accused exonerated. However, I have reason to believe that proportionally speaking there are just as many bad doctors as bad lawyers.
So when people tell me this joke like it’s new news I chuckle a little. But when I decided that I wanted to be an international law attorney (hopefully humanitarian or human rights) it took awhile because of the stigma surrounding it. When I was younger, I absolutely hated politics. It looked like backstabbing and corruption to me. However, I now realize that politics, while seemingly superficial on the surface, is the main way for the government to make changes for the people. For the last couple years, I have been really interested in international affairs, and for that reason I have my first major International Studies-Political Science.
Because of my interest in learning languages and the mechanics involved in language acquisition and language itself, I found myself with my second major in Linguistics, To tailor it to my other major so that I could use skills more easily from both in the same context, I chose the Language and Society specialization, which is basically a mix of sociolinguistics and the sociology of language. Hence, my second major in Linguistics (Specialization in Language and Society).
Because of my love of humanities and Making of the Modern World, Eleanor Roosevelt College’s core course sequence, I’ve take up the Study of Religion as my minor.
If I get accepted into departmental honors programs and succeed, I will graduate with the following degree:
Bachelor of Arts in International Studies-Political Science with highest distinction, Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics (Specialization in Language and Society) with highest distinction, with a minor in the Study of Religion.
Now is when most people would ask me what I plan on doing with my degree. Well, as said before, I would like to be an attorney in international law, hopefully humanitarian and or human rights. How I get there is a different story.
So currently I attend University of California, San Diego, and plan on graduating in winter or spring as part of the Eleanor Roosevelt College Class of ’11. During which time, I will study abroad for half a year in Hong Kong at the University of Hong Kong and hopefully find some governmental and or legal internships. (I’m currently eyeing the Department of State or the San Diego County or Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office).
When I graduate, I originally planned graduate school. This is the part where is gets confusing for some people. I personally appreciate specialization, so I hope to go to a top-ten law school whose parent school also offers a Ph.D. in Political Science. Many schools, such as Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia, offer joint programs to overlap courses and reduce time to achieve both degrees significantly. Northwestern in particular offers a combined six-year program as follows:
Year 1: Graduate School
Summer: graduate research
Year 2: Graduate School
Summer: graduate research
Year 3: Law School (L1) and advancement to C.Phil. status
Summer: graduate and law research
Year 2: Law School (L2)
Summer: submission of prospectus
Year 5: Research and Teaching Fellowship
Summer: dissertation research
Year 6: Completion of Dissertation
By this original plan, I would have my bachelor’s degree at age 20 and my J.D. and Ph.D. at 26—noticeably young and without much real-world experience, unfortunately. The positive side is that the program is fully funded for those six years, so I wouldn’t need to find employment (if I were to have time for outside work).
So after that, I would like to teach as a law or political science professor while practicing law on the side. I know it sounds corny but I hope I can do something good for the world in the future.
The reason I say "original" plan is because I have something in mind that would set graduate school back about two or three years. I have told just a few people what this is, but I'll be sure to go through this experience first before I affirm any other plans.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Most know the answer to this joke is “A good start.” It is commonly perceived that in the professional world, lawyers are sly and conniving, always looking for a reason to sue, exploiting people for their hard earned money. This is the stereotype played off of in television, movies, and other media; it is also what I had in mind up until I started college. I never wanted to be a lawyer, involved in corporate politics, drowning in the multiplicity of personalities. It wasn’t appealing.
There are lawyers who exist like this, of course. But most lawyers supposedly have never been on the inside of a courtroom and are low-profile men and women who are hardworking and live middle-class lifestyles. So less lawyers are as exploitative as is commonly thought.
On the other hand, physicians are thought of as lifesavers. And I suppose it is true for the most part. After all, they do receive much more education that lawyers. A mistake by a doctor could cost a life but a mistake by a lawyer could lose some money. Alternatively, a skilled doctor can maintain life where wanted whereas a skilled lawyer can get settlements or the accused exonerated. However, I have reason to believe that proportionally speaking there are just as many bad doctors as bad lawyers.
So when people tell me this joke like it’s new news I chuckle a little. But when I decided that I wanted to be an international law attorney (hopefully humanitarian or human rights) it took awhile because of the stigma surrounding it. When I was younger, I absolutely hated politics. It looked like backstabbing and corruption to me. However, I now realize that politics, while seemingly superficial on the surface, is the main way for the government to make changes for the people. For the last couple years, I have been really interested in international affairs, and for that reason I have my first major International Studies-Political Science.
Because of my interest in learning languages and the mechanics involved in language acquisition and language itself, I found myself with my second major in Linguistics, To tailor it to my other major so that I could use skills more easily from both in the same context, I chose the Language and Society specialization, which is basically a mix of sociolinguistics and the sociology of language. Hence, my second major in Linguistics (Specialization in Language and Society).
Because of my love of humanities and Making of the Modern World, Eleanor Roosevelt College’s core course sequence, I’ve take up the Study of Religion as my minor.
If I get accepted into departmental honors programs and succeed, I will graduate with the following degree:
Bachelor of Arts in International Studies-Political Science with highest distinction, Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics (Specialization in Language and Society) with highest distinction, with a minor in the Study of Religion.
Now is when most people would ask me what I plan on doing with my degree. Well, as said before, I would like to be an attorney in international law, hopefully humanitarian and or human rights. How I get there is a different story.
So currently I attend University of California, San Diego, and plan on graduating in winter or spring as part of the Eleanor Roosevelt College Class of ’11. During which time, I will study abroad for half a year in Hong Kong at the University of Hong Kong and hopefully find some governmental and or legal internships. (I’m currently eyeing the Department of State or the San Diego County or Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office).
When I graduate, I originally planned graduate school. This is the part where is gets confusing for some people. I personally appreciate specialization, so I hope to go to a top-ten law school whose parent school also offers a Ph.D. in Political Science. Many schools, such as Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia, offer joint programs to overlap courses and reduce time to achieve both degrees significantly. Northwestern in particular offers a combined six-year program as follows:
Year 1: Graduate School
Summer: graduate research
Year 2: Graduate School
Summer: graduate research
Year 3: Law School (L1) and advancement to C.Phil. status
Summer: graduate and law research
Year 2: Law School (L2)
Summer: submission of prospectus
Year 5: Research and Teaching Fellowship
Summer: dissertation research
Year 6: Completion of Dissertation
By this original plan, I would have my bachelor’s degree at age 20 and my J.D. and Ph.D. at 26—noticeably young and without much real-world experience, unfortunately. The positive side is that the program is fully funded for those six years, so I wouldn’t need to find employment (if I were to have time for outside work).
So after that, I would like to teach as a law or political science professor while practicing law on the side. I know it sounds corny but I hope I can do something good for the world in the future.
The reason I say "original" plan is because I have something in mind that would set graduate school back about two or three years. I have told just a few people what this is, but I'll be sure to go through this experience first before I affirm any other plans.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
"The Ugly American," Part 2
Sun God Festival is UCSD’s flagship event of the year. Though essentially a big concert, it was set up like a carnival and lasted from noon to midnight on Friday, May 15, on RIMAC (standing for something about recreation) Field, located on the north side of campus. There was the large “Main Stage” with an accompanying giant screen where the headlining bands played. On the opposite side of the field there was the “Dance Tent” where DJs did their thing club style. Center field there was “Midway,” a circular tent where many comedic and lower-key performances took place. Towards the west side there were the Student Organization Booths and the portapotties. Conveniently across the field from the portapotties was the food-court area, which serve pizza, teriyaki chicken, and funnel cakes.
Some of the musical performances on the main stage included Augustana, Sara Bareilles, and N.E.R.D. In Midway there was Cirque Berzerk (complete with flamethrowers and funny mime people-things) and Kaba Modern (of MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew fame). That’s all fine and dandy—the default fun part.
The fun part was fun, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about. Sun God is seen as the one day when the UCSD campus comes alive. Normally seen as socially dead, UCSD becomes the party school that many wish it were. Students from other schools come down for the event to take part in the festivities. I myself saw many of my high school friends there. Fortunately, I saw them before they left to get drunk.
This brings me back to the “ugly American” stereotype again. Admittedly, I had only planned to write one post on this matter, but seeing the events surrounding my authorship, it would do well to reflect some more.
The Eleanor Roosevelt College campus is off in the northern area of campus, where few people go. I like it up here because of that fact. Although it takes me longer to walk to class than I would like, its placement off the beaten path makes it quiet. RIMAC Field, where Sun God took place, lies adjacent to ERC and as such, Friday night saw more people up there than usual.
Alcohol was not allowed into Sun God. To this effect, we had to empty all bottles so that no liquids were allowed in, in effect. So to get drunk many students would drink as much as they could before hand and then stumble in through the liquid checkpoints. According to my international drug policy professor, this is more dangerous than at parties, where drinking is more gradual and has time to process.
That night, the ERC campus (as well as Sun God) was bustling with tipsy people. I’d never seen it so crowded. My suite hosted three separate parties at the same time somehow. It reeked of alcohol and bad judgment. One of my suitemates drank what I believe to be vodka from a yellow bottle, sitting against the wall in a corner looking like a crying child. Another one of my suitemates looked more predatory than usual. All in all, their ‘good time’ looked like a group of people full of fake happiness and despair at the same time.
The next morning I woke up to find a mess in our common room. Our segmented couch was disjoined and those infamous red party cups were thrown all over the place. I saw what I thought to be vomit strewn all over the walls; and only later was I informed that it was just salsa. (Consolation?)
All I can say is I’m glad this doesn’t happen every week. I promise the next post will be more of an upper.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Some of the musical performances on the main stage included Augustana, Sara Bareilles, and N.E.R.D. In Midway there was Cirque Berzerk (complete with flamethrowers and funny mime people-things) and Kaba Modern (of MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew fame). That’s all fine and dandy—the default fun part.
The fun part was fun, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about. Sun God is seen as the one day when the UCSD campus comes alive. Normally seen as socially dead, UCSD becomes the party school that many wish it were. Students from other schools come down for the event to take part in the festivities. I myself saw many of my high school friends there. Fortunately, I saw them before they left to get drunk.
This brings me back to the “ugly American” stereotype again. Admittedly, I had only planned to write one post on this matter, but seeing the events surrounding my authorship, it would do well to reflect some more.
The Eleanor Roosevelt College campus is off in the northern area of campus, where few people go. I like it up here because of that fact. Although it takes me longer to walk to class than I would like, its placement off the beaten path makes it quiet. RIMAC Field, where Sun God took place, lies adjacent to ERC and as such, Friday night saw more people up there than usual.
Alcohol was not allowed into Sun God. To this effect, we had to empty all bottles so that no liquids were allowed in, in effect. So to get drunk many students would drink as much as they could before hand and then stumble in through the liquid checkpoints. According to my international drug policy professor, this is more dangerous than at parties, where drinking is more gradual and has time to process.
That night, the ERC campus (as well as Sun God) was bustling with tipsy people. I’d never seen it so crowded. My suite hosted three separate parties at the same time somehow. It reeked of alcohol and bad judgment. One of my suitemates drank what I believe to be vodka from a yellow bottle, sitting against the wall in a corner looking like a crying child. Another one of my suitemates looked more predatory than usual. All in all, their ‘good time’ looked like a group of people full of fake happiness and despair at the same time.
The next morning I woke up to find a mess in our common room. Our segmented couch was disjoined and those infamous red party cups were thrown all over the place. I saw what I thought to be vomit strewn all over the walls; and only later was I informed that it was just salsa. (Consolation?)
All I can say is I’m glad this doesn’t happen every week. I promise the next post will be more of an upper.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
First Post, Background
So this is my first post to this blog. I've never blogged before, so my style may seem odd to those of you seasoned bloggers. Yes, I know, it's not August quite yet, but I figured I wanted to record all of my thoughts before, during, and possibly after my experience.
Though a minority of undergraduates study abroad, doing so seems to be something of a common college experience, soon to be my own. I am told that out of the University of California campuses, San Diego (UCSD) leads in students studying abroad in any manner, and out of the six colleges at UCSD, Eleanor Roosevelt College (ERC) has by far the most students studying abroad. I happen to belong to both, so in short, I am in good company.
Currently, I am a first-year student, which will me a second-year when I study abroad next fall. It is my understanding that many students study abroad junior year, but I have decided to do it this fall because I plan to graduate early—three to five quarters to be exact, making me part of the Class of 2010 or the Class of 2011, though more likely the latter. This means that right now I have junior standing and will have senior standing after the end of this school year. Yeah, I took a lot of Advance Placement tests and plenty of community college classes in and during high school to get to where I am, and now there’s little doubt that it shows in my current standing.
Unlike many of my classmates, only a handful of whom I know fully intend on staying till graduation, I quite openly like UCSD, and I love ERC because of its international focus. ERC was my first college of choice when I applied to UCSD, and now I am honored to be studying here as part of its 20th entering class. Unlike many of my fellow students, I take great interest in the Making of the Modern World program (MMW), and am confident that the vast majority of ERC students do come out of the six-quarter sequence more knowledgeable about the world. When they graduate, I’m sure they will feel that the experience contributed to their education in a way that other general education requirements, even those at the other colleges at UCSD, do not. I originally entered college with the plan to complete a double major in Linguistics (Spec. in Language in Society) and International Studies-Political Science, but because of my interest in MMW (especially in quarters 2 and 3) I have recently found the desire to pick up a minor in the Study of Religion.
In studying abroad, I chose Hong Kong with my International Studies major in mind. The International Studies curriculum is interdisciplinary, with students having to choose a primary track (for me Political Science) and a secondary track (Anthropology). With my main focus being in Political Science, I was hoping to learn more about the "one country, two governments" system in place since the British handover in 1997. As I need an area of regional specialization for ERC as well as for my International Studies major, I have chosen (East) Asia to reflect this. For one of my classes, I wrote a four thousand, five hundred-word paper on the bilingual/trilingual language situation in public and private life in Hong Kong. In addition, Hong Kong forms a complicated and unique part of my heritage. While my father is a natural-born American from Detroit, Michigan, my mother is originally from Hong Kong, and immigrated to the United States when she was 11. The history of my mother's side of the family is directly influenced by Chinese politics and history, because her parents were both from well-off families in Hangzhou, near Shanghai. They fled south when the communists came to power, first going to nationalist-controlled Taiwan, then to what was then the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. My father’s parents are from rural Guangdong Province (what was long called Canton) yet he himself has never set foot outside North America. This, in combination with the fact that my mother immigrated at such a young age means that my exposure to any variety of Chinese has been minimal at very best. I am truly a third-generation American.
So to make myself clear, I do not speak Chinese.
Well, I speak broken conversational Mandarin and, to a lesser extent, Cantonese, but the fact of the matter is that my household was English-only and I learned my first Mandarin word around the age of 4 and never realized that other languages don’t necessarily follow English grammar until I was probably around 10. Still I can barely read and less can I hold a mildly sophisticated conversation. My second and third languages are Spanish and French, which I speak with relative fluency. This fact, while astonishing to some, should constantly be considered in my posts here on out. I will need time to adjust to Chinese customs and more time to gain moderate fluency in Cantonese and or Mandarin. Because of this disconnect, I comfortably refer to myself as first and foremost American.
I chose the University of Hong Kong (HKU) because it has a rich history and prestigious rankings. It is above the University of California schools worldwide and is known as being one of the top five universities in Greater Asia. Founded by the British in 1911, it has a traditional coat of arms, and like most universities in Hong Kong, teaches nearly all its classes in English (I'm assuming for now the British Received Pronunciation standard). In this sense, I do not need to worry too much about language barriers, at least within the university. The two other universities that UC sends students to are the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (of which my uncle was founding president and at which my cousin currently teaches and researches). HKU is the hardest to get into of the three, both in general and on exchange, with just eight spots for the twenty-five-plus UCSD that applied for this coming fall. I am fortunate to be going there.
In the coming weeks before my departure, I plan to write more about my application process and the current thoughts going around my head because I have a lot to say. If you've read this far into my initial post, I congratulate you and thank you, and hope that you’ll keep reading. In attempting to find an appropriate end to this initial post, what comes to mind now is a phrase used for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing:
北京欢迎您。(Beijing welcomes you.)
Or in my case,
香港欢迎我，(Hong Kong welcomes me,)
hopefully.
*
Though a minority of undergraduates study abroad, doing so seems to be something of a common college experience, soon to be my own. I am told that out of the University of California campuses, San Diego (UCSD) leads in students studying abroad in any manner, and out of the six colleges at UCSD, Eleanor Roosevelt College (ERC) has by far the most students studying abroad. I happen to belong to both, so in short, I am in good company.
Currently, I am a first-year student, which will me a second-year when I study abroad next fall. It is my understanding that many students study abroad junior year, but I have decided to do it this fall because I plan to graduate early—three to five quarters to be exact, making me part of the Class of 2010 or the Class of 2011, though more likely the latter. This means that right now I have junior standing and will have senior standing after the end of this school year. Yeah, I took a lot of Advance Placement tests and plenty of community college classes in and during high school to get to where I am, and now there’s little doubt that it shows in my current standing.
Unlike many of my classmates, only a handful of whom I know fully intend on staying till graduation, I quite openly like UCSD, and I love ERC because of its international focus. ERC was my first college of choice when I applied to UCSD, and now I am honored to be studying here as part of its 20th entering class. Unlike many of my fellow students, I take great interest in the Making of the Modern World program (MMW), and am confident that the vast majority of ERC students do come out of the six-quarter sequence more knowledgeable about the world. When they graduate, I’m sure they will feel that the experience contributed to their education in a way that other general education requirements, even those at the other colleges at UCSD, do not. I originally entered college with the plan to complete a double major in Linguistics (Spec. in Language in Society) and International Studies-Political Science, but because of my interest in MMW (especially in quarters 2 and 3) I have recently found the desire to pick up a minor in the Study of Religion.
In studying abroad, I chose Hong Kong with my International Studies major in mind. The International Studies curriculum is interdisciplinary, with students having to choose a primary track (for me Political Science) and a secondary track (Anthropology). With my main focus being in Political Science, I was hoping to learn more about the "one country, two governments" system in place since the British handover in 1997. As I need an area of regional specialization for ERC as well as for my International Studies major, I have chosen (East) Asia to reflect this. For one of my classes, I wrote a four thousand, five hundred-word paper on the bilingual/trilingual language situation in public and private life in Hong Kong. In addition, Hong Kong forms a complicated and unique part of my heritage. While my father is a natural-born American from Detroit, Michigan, my mother is originally from Hong Kong, and immigrated to the United States when she was 11. The history of my mother's side of the family is directly influenced by Chinese politics and history, because her parents were both from well-off families in Hangzhou, near Shanghai. They fled south when the communists came to power, first going to nationalist-controlled Taiwan, then to what was then the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. My father’s parents are from rural Guangdong Province (what was long called Canton) yet he himself has never set foot outside North America. This, in combination with the fact that my mother immigrated at such a young age means that my exposure to any variety of Chinese has been minimal at very best. I am truly a third-generation American.
So to make myself clear, I do not speak Chinese.
Well, I speak broken conversational Mandarin and, to a lesser extent, Cantonese, but the fact of the matter is that my household was English-only and I learned my first Mandarin word around the age of 4 and never realized that other languages don’t necessarily follow English grammar until I was probably around 10. Still I can barely read and less can I hold a mildly sophisticated conversation. My second and third languages are Spanish and French, which I speak with relative fluency. This fact, while astonishing to some, should constantly be considered in my posts here on out. I will need time to adjust to Chinese customs and more time to gain moderate fluency in Cantonese and or Mandarin. Because of this disconnect, I comfortably refer to myself as first and foremost American.
I chose the University of Hong Kong (HKU) because it has a rich history and prestigious rankings. It is above the University of California schools worldwide and is known as being one of the top five universities in Greater Asia. Founded by the British in 1911, it has a traditional coat of arms, and like most universities in Hong Kong, teaches nearly all its classes in English (I'm assuming for now the British Received Pronunciation standard). In this sense, I do not need to worry too much about language barriers, at least within the university. The two other universities that UC sends students to are the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (of which my uncle was founding president and at which my cousin currently teaches and researches). HKU is the hardest to get into of the three, both in general and on exchange, with just eight spots for the twenty-five-plus UCSD that applied for this coming fall. I am fortunate to be going there.
In the coming weeks before my departure, I plan to write more about my application process and the current thoughts going around my head because I have a lot to say. If you've read this far into my initial post, I congratulate you and thank you, and hope that you’ll keep reading. In attempting to find an appropriate end to this initial post, what comes to mind now is a phrase used for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing:
北京欢迎您。(Beijing welcomes you.)
Or in my case,
香港欢迎我，(Hong Kong welcomes me,)
hopefully.
*
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