From a very young age, I was aware of the existence of a greater global society. My younger sister was adopted from South Korea when I was three years old and my little brother from Ethiopia when I was ten. While I mostly see them as my sister and brother—detached from the global context through which they came to be so—their presence in my life has been a consistent reminder that the society I inhabit is part of a much larger whole. However, while I may have been aware of this larger whole at a young age, I didn’t start understanding what the world outside of the United States truly looked like until after high school.

 

The summer after I graduated from high school, I received a scholarship to participate in an intensive Chinese language program called STARTALK. I’d applied for the scholarship on a whim at the suggestion of one of my high school teachers, and hadn’t thought of it much until I was notified of my acceptance. Entirely unaware of how my life was about to change, I figured accepting the scholarship was better than finding a summer job and decided to give learning Chinese a try. For the next month, I attended class for six hours a day, five days a week—working with five teachers and nineteen other students to embrace Chinese language and culture. Looking back now, I can confidently say that month constitutes one of the most impactful experiences of my life. I was exposed to a world I knew almost nothing about, one that bonked me on the head and reinvigorated my passion for learning. For the first time in my life, the great whole I’d known about since a child slowly began to come into focus. Starting at St. Olaf, I knew I wanted to continue exploring Chinese language and Asian cultures.

 

My first year at St. Olaf saw me taking Chinese 231 and 232 alongside the Asian Conversation Program, meaning that roughly half of my academic schedule consisted of Chinese and Asian studies courses. This increased level of exposure drew me in further and solidified my desire to pursue Chinese and Asia Studies at as high a level as I could. This focused schedule also meant my classes shared many of the same students and I quickly began to establish friendships and find a place for myself at St. Olaf. I look back fondly on my time in Asian Con and Chinese 231 and 232, and don’t believe I could have started college in a better way. While I greatly enjoyed my first year at St. Olaf as a whole, the highlight of the year was most certainly my Interim abroad through Asian Con in China and Japan.

 

While our time abroad was short, being in China and Japan allowed me to place the language and cultures I’d spent the last several months vigorously studying about within their respective contexts. Learning about Asia followed by actually being in Asia helped fill in the missing dots. As Americentric as my perceptions were, it helped me to recognize the world as existing outside of an American sphere of influence—I experienced a whole society entirely different from the Euroamerican world I had grown up knowing. Simple actions such as ordering food, finding a trach can, and asking for directions all of a sudden became challenging tasks. Yet, as I continued to overcome these obstacles, I could feel myself learning and growing, both as a student and as a global citizen. I became aware of what it meant to exist as a foreigner in a largely unfamiliar country—an understanding I was able to bring back with me to the United States and use to inform my understanding of foreigner experiences in the US. At the end of our Interim abroad, I saw a future for myself in Asia—one where I could serve as a bridge between the East and the West. Upon returning to St. Olaf, I made it my goal to see that dream come to fruition. 

 

While Chinese and Asian Studies continued to sit at the center of my studies, my next two years at Olaf saw me diversify my class schedule. I added Music and Race and Ethnic Studies as majors, on top of Chinese and Asian Studies, and also added Statistics and Data Science and Africa and the African Diaspora as concentrations. While my studies have since hailed from a wide range of disciplines, I continually find myself placing my classwork within an Asian Studies context, and have found such an interdisciplinary approach to be extremely rewarding and fruitful.  

 

With that being said, the onset of the pandemic during my sophomore year left the world as a whole in a state of confusion and fear. Time spent in quarantine was hard, but I was able to continue pursuing Chinese and Asian Studies through remote and hybrid learning environments. My Junior year was a blur of classes and trying to adjust to a new normal, but I found myself integrating Asian Studies perspectives and topics into my classes and classwork at an increased rate. Having something other than the pandemic to focus on gave me space to step back and look at the world from a broader perspective. While the pandemic has caused great division on a global scale, it has also reminded us of our own humanity and how small the world truly is. The distance between the East and the West is not as far as many think and as the gap becomes smaller the need for people who can walk between the two increases. 

 

 

Now in my final year of college, I am fortunate enough to be studying abroad once again. While I originally planned to spend my fall semester abroad in China, the program was canceled due to the pandemic so I am instead spending my last semester abroad in Taiwan. While I was disappointed at first that I wasn’t going to be able to study abroad in China again, I am now grateful that I was instead given the chance to study in Taiwan. Being in Taiwan has allowed me to expand my perspectives and understanding of Asia and the Chinese-speaking world in a way I would not have been privy to if I had not come to Taiwan. Looking back on all that I’ve learned over these past four years, I’m struck by much I’ve changed as a student, a person, and a global citizen. I’ve been in Taiwan for a little over two months now, the longest amount of time I’ve ever spent outside of the United States, and I see the dreams of my first-year self being realized. My Chinese has reached new heights and I’m forging relationships with people from all over the world. I’m slowly growing into the global citizen I’ve been striving to be since studying abroad in China and Japan over three years ago. Yet, three years of growth have also led to a revaluation of who and where I want to be in the future. With rich history and culture, delicious food, beautiful landscapes, and wonderful people, the allure of living in Asia is quite strong. However, spending these last two months in Taiwan has helped me to realize that I am not currently willing to let go of my relationships with friends and family back in the United States. While I still see myself spending a large amount of time in Asia, specifically China or Taiwan, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here. Rather, I see myself spending two to three years here sometime within the next decade with the goal of improving my Chinese and establishing lasting relationships that I can carry with me for the rest of my life. 

 

In my time at Olaf and abroad, I’ve come to realize that, as cliche as it may sound, with an increase in experiences and knowledge comes increased responsibility to think and act as a globally conscious citizen. As my understanding of Asia continues to develop, it would be reductive of me to claim I have any authority to truly appreciate or introduce Asia. Asia encompasses the world’s largest range of cultures, societies, histories, and people. Acting as if one word or one person could accurately represent such diversity would be ludicrous. Recognizing this, I can instead appreciate the vastness that is Asia and realize my own limitations in coming to understand what Asia truly entails. It is not and never will be possible for me to ever fully know Asia, but I can and will continue to strive to better understand my place within Asia and the rest of the world. Through doing so, I hope to act as an ambassador both when I am abroad and when I am home in the United States. While abroad, I will strive to represent my country to the best of my ability. When I am home, I will bring back bits of Asia with me, however small they may be, and try to help bridge the gap between the East and the West.