December 16, 2016 - 16:44
Dear Anne,
When I was on the plane during the trip back home, I opened the window shade beside me accidentally over arctic region when I heard the sound of plane vibrating suddenly turned a little bit stronger. It was not a strong turbulence but sounds like the plane was getting through ice cloud. “Are we now flying over the arctic region?” Still driven by curiosity at the third year of flying back and forth from US to China, I opened the window shade and looked down. With help of lights on the wing, I saw different shades of glaciers floating on the sea, and far away, there was gradual change of color from red to violate and then to black on the horizon. But the horizon was divided in half when I was looking at it, one section was bright with the gradual change of color, and the other section was dark like black ink. “We are in the polar night.” I assured myself, but at the same time, I started to think whether I could see aurora on the plane. Seconds after I looked out of window from different angles, I realized a truly bad issue- I did not think about aurora before the moment when I saw the dark inky sky.
I felt panicked at that moment. I felt I had lost a very essential ability to think about different possibilities before one thing happened. The first time I realized that I embraced the ability was in math class in fourth grade. I shook my head when one of my classmates was called up to answer a question on board and started with a wrong approach to solve it. My math teacher saw me and afterwards asked me if I could predict which made me really confused about why nobody felt the same way as I did at that time. Actually what I did was simple. I would think what would happen afterwards and how the result might be. This ability helped me a lot when I was solving academic questions and dealing with different people because I could tell how the process would go under certain conditions. Thinking about different possibilities under different conditions was simple for me like math questions. But I felt, in heart, that I had lost a part of it.
However, this was not the first time I felt “blind” along a path. Three years ago, when I came US to study, the environment was dramatically different from where I was lived before. Getting used to the new environment tired my mind and loosened my vigilance to many possible upcoming events. The change in economical expense and the structure of cities and counties got more attention from me. Sometimes I cannot even position myself. I did not know who I was, where I was, or where I was going to.
The first semester in college helped me a lot on this. I do not actually know what I am going to do in the future, but on the other side, I am confident about the direction and different branches from that direction. Emily Balch Seminar helped the most. During the first two years in US, I found there were huge differences in the way of thinking and the already existed range of knowledge between me and US students, sometimes even international students from same country with me. People around me have more practical knowledge about economics and politics, but I was interested in referring some current events to history and made comparisons. I did not know a lot about economics and politics, while most of my friends made in US, were not interested in the past. After several times of being seen as weird (I assumed it mostly according to other people’s behavior), I gradually started to hide my voice. Although I knew I was not wrong most of the time, I started to escape and slow my thinking process. I could calculate the price after deals in my mind while hanging out with my friends during the first year in US. A month ago, a Chinese high school friend laughed at me that a former math genius girl was using calculator to sum up four-digit numbers when I took a screenshot of calculator on my phone to tell him how much game currency I should save.
Seminar class gave a hand to me. I used to think practical issues, such as economics and environment issues were only about adults. Adults’ issues are like dense stones, no longer easy to get into like kids’ issues. The class gave approaches to different academic area through reading assignment, which leave no space for me to escape. After reading those materials and class discussions, “dense stones” were opened with little holes and I felt more confident to get into.
Not only confident in gaining knowledge, but I also received encouragement from my classmates, professor, and friends among the campus. The accepting environment builds up my confidence again.
I was panicked when I realized the issue on the plane, but I was also glad that I realized it so I can make it up rather than letting the issue keep going. Bryn Mawr College and Emily Balch Seminar help me to pick my former advantages up, and encourage me to explore more in the future.
Thank you for your teaching methodology and full preparation for class.
Love,
Irene