I grew up going to school and living in different cities, but before I knew it, the United States had become the place where I spent the longest years of my life.
The United States has brought me too many life experiences, some are happy, happy, excited, and of course, there are also painful, confused, and tangled.
I am fortunate that my family gave me the opportunity to come to the United States to study and grow up, because my life has become resilient because I came here.
One of the things I often say is that in ancient times, the highest evaluation of a woman was to be in the hall and in the kitchen, but if you come to the United States to study, as a woman, you can proudly evaluate yourself: you can go up to the hall, go down to the kitchen, and repair the big bed.
Yes, I would like to say that studying in the U.S. is a process that makes growing up natural but more effective with half the effort, and it is also a process that allows people to move from immaturity to maturity in a more natural way, so as to become a strong and responsible person.
When I was in high school, I was enrolled in AP Advanced Placement courses, and at that time, I had no idea what major I would study or what direction of work or research I would pursue in the future.
But studying in the AP program has given me a very good language and cultural foundation for studying abroad.
Although I am still confused about the future direction, eight years of precipitation have made me confident that any confusion at any time is a manifestation of the lack of knowledge accumulationSo if I continue to accumulate, the thick accumulation will definitely usher in thin hair.
I studied in undergradSociology major at Boston University.
Although I couldn't say exactly why I chose to major in sociology at the beginning, my love for traditional Chinese culture made me realize that I always had some unique insights in the understanding and analysis of social issues, so I chose to study sociologyAt the same time, because of my love for literature, I also minored in East Asian Cultural Studies.
If I had to sum up my undergraduate life, I would say that this is an accelerated and compressed document.
Why acceleration and compression? It only took me three years to graduate from my undergraduate degreeOf course, the main reason is to save money.
As a private school, Boston University is located in Boston, where every inch of land is expensive, and the tuition and living expenses are really expensive.
The cost of saving a year is that I need to speed up my time at the same timeThe results cannot be compromised.
In addition to the fact that I had to use summer school every summer to take credits early, I remember that my busiest time was my sophomore year, and those two semesters wereHe took five courses and served as a grader and tutor in mathematics.
At that time, the longest and most frequent place I spent with my roommate was the library, and because of this location, I got to know a lot of library alumni.
It turns outBubble library is really a good mechanism for self-restraintThis method has been used by me to this day, and it was not until the outbreak of the epidemic in the United States this year that I stopped the habit of visiting the library.
In the first semester of my junior year, when I had finished all the required social studies courses and was almost ready for graduate school, I realized that it was time to slow down the pace of my life.
My college life is coming to an end, and it's time to give myself a little time to enjoy the carefree time that belongs to college.
So I applied for the second semester of my junior year, which was my last semester of university, to go to the National University of Singapore for an exchange study.
In fact, the reason for choosing the National University of Singapore is very simple, the first is that I should go to a warm place in Boston during the worst weather; The second is that studying in Singapore has a holiday during the Chinese New Year.
I believe that almost every international student has fantasized that if time and course allow, I must return to my home in China for the next Chinese New Year and accompany my relatives to read the Chinese New Year's Eve.
So, driven by these two reasons,I chose the National University of Singapore for a semester exchange.
In the coldest month of December in Boston, my last semester, I came to the National University of Singapore (NUS) as an exchange student.
Living in Singapore for half a year has made me fall in love with the country and further strengthen my determination to study Chinese culture.
During this semester of Singapore exchange, I experienced the rigorous academic style of the National University of Singapore, one of the highest universities in Asia, but at the same time, I also felt that the United States cannot be surpassed by any other country in liberal arts and social science education: the boundless thinking ability of students stimulated by the relatively free cultural tolerance and open framework, and the innovation of this boundless thinking is the source of my inspiration and thinking as a liberal arts student.
So I went back to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the United States as a graduate student, and luckily, like the National University of Singapore, has relatively mild seasons and a pleasant climate.
As I mentioned above, when I came to UCLA, the first place I visited was the UCLA library, and I became a resident librarian assistant in the name of work.
I worked as a part-time library assistant for the full two years of my graduate studies.
Here I have made a group of like-minded library friends, so that I can conduct academic research happily and efficiently. At the same time, my job allows me to help others in a place that I love.
It is no exaggeration to say that my most enjoyable moment was to clock in to the front desk of the East Asia Library in the morning, and then clock out close to noon and move to the library study area to continue my private study time in the afternoon.
Two years of East Asian cultural studies at UCLAI have met a lot of scholars who are very insightful in this direction, and at the same time, because of my love for film, I have also met many film researchersWhether it's attending a film festival or a filmmakers' gathering, I'm always in the process of learning new information.
I have to admit that the city of Los Angeles is a city full of desire and ** under the staggered lights, this city can make every young person bold, and I have also been fortunate to open up many first-time experiences in my life, such as making movies, participating in fashion design catwalk activities, etc.
What's more worth mentioning is that the city of Los Angeles is really delicious and fun, which can fully satisfy any young person who has any illusions about college life.
Every time a friend comes to Los Angeles, just take them around Koreatown or Chinatown to make sure your friends grow fat in a few days.
I think if BU's life is a compressed file under the file,UCLA is a short film, full of colors but still short-lived.
Yes, the two years at UCLA were so fleeting that I didn't even think about what I was going to do after I graduated.
So I chose to study at UCLA Extension's film program for a yearAs my gap year, I can think about what I want to do in the future.
During this year, I learned all kinds of knowledge about the production, promotion and shooting of Hollywood films, and also gave me a deeper understanding of film culture from the perspective of practical application.
Sometimes, confusion is not entirely negative, because confusion means that you will try more possibilities, and each attempt will be recorded in the book of life, and I firmly believe that every stroke in the book of life will become a crucial stroke in the painting at some point in the future.
Over the course of the year, I've tried a lot of other things, like translating.
In fact, I should start my career as a translator in the last semester of graduate school.
At first, I translated the subtitles of a documentary on Chinese Buddhist culture, and then gradually evolved into translating some Buddhist classics on a daily basis.
Admittedly, translation is a very painful but rewarding job, because in the process of translating, you may scratch your ears and cheeks because of the choice of a certain word, but you may also be complacent because of the wonderful translation of a certain sentence.
After a year at UCLA Extension, I chose to come to UCLA's Library and Information Studies Program for my second graduate study.
Many people will ask me, do I still need to study for library work?
Isn't it just putting books on the table every day, looking for information and something like that? But no, in today's information age, when the definition of knowledge has become blurred, and at the same time information is commoditized, information transmission institutions such as libraries or museums have become extremely important.
Although I have just finished my first semester of study, I believe that my future studies will give me a deeper understanding of information itself, information selection, information transfer, and information processing.
At the same time, this semester, I also started the first formal TA experience in my life.
As a TA, I teach twice a week while setting aside at least one hour of office hours per week.
I have to say that the first semester of my second graduate school was a non-stop state of work, and every day I had to complete my studies and fulfill the responsibilities required of being a TA.
Luckily, it only took me a week to go from being overwhelmed to being able to get started, and the remaining nine weeks were spent immersed in the academic learning of my new major and teaching to my lovely students.
Working from home during the epidemic has made me deeply feel that although an epidemic has made all the hustle and bustle begin to lock down, how to find one's own value in the context of disasters is defined by oneself.
Although I have not yet entered the workplace and carried out a thorough role transformation, I believe that when we have enthusiasm, we will bury our heads in doing it, and do not worry about gains, and when we have the ability to raise our heads at some point in the future, we will definitely find that we have already gained a lot.