Blog Resurrection!

After ten months of silence, this blog is (hopefully) coming back to life - thanks to the continuing generosity of the Light Fellowship, I am back for China, Round 2! Last summer, I attended the Princeton in Beijing program for an intense eight weeks. (See prior posts.) This time, I will be returning to Beijing for the entire year to attend the Inter-University Program, a Chinese language program run by UC Berkeley, on the campus of Tsinghua University. Though by now, I’m somewhat familiar with the city of Beijing, and Chinese universities in general, living in a foreign country away from home and school for such an extended time period will be a completely new experience.

It’s difficult to express fully my feelings about the upcoming year. When I think forward to the end of August when I’ll be shipping off to the mainland, I feel a jumble of thrill and terror. I’m thrilled to have this chance to just soak in Chinese language and culture for an entire year. I’m excited for the opportunity to better develop my understanding of a country and language that have already heavily influenced my life. I can’t wait for my brain to switch back into “Chinese mode” and to speak Chinese like a freshly-minted PiB graduate again. And I can’t help but fantasize a little about the many of the incredible experiences that await me in the year ahead.

At the same time, enrolling in IUP is not the same as having a greater ability in Chinese language, meaningful cultural experiences, engaging activities, and a social life served up and placed before me on a lazy susan. Certainly IUP will be one of many gateways to these ends, but, by and large, I believe I’ll be finding my own path next year. That I will place a great deal of effort into IUP is, in my mind, a given. But I’m sure there can be so much more to this experience than Chinese classes. Next year is, in many ways, independent of my time at Yale. I will be pursuing different activities, meeting different people, and none of the course work will appear on my transcript. When I return to Yale, I will still be a rising junior. Apart from not flunking out of IUP, I am essentially free to do what I want with the year. And there’s almost no limit to what that may entail. To misuse a term from The Tao of Pooh, next year is somewhat like the “uncarved block.” The fact that I not only have total freedom to carve that block in whatever way I desire, but also feel compelled to do so in a meaningful and satisfying way, is perhaps the greatest source of my excitement and anxiety about the upcoming year. Reading the blog posts and final reports of previous or current Light Fellows at IUP who have all found unique and interesting ways of “carving their blocks,” whether through musical collaboration, speech competitions, social activism, or something else, has inspired me to think seriously about how I would like to spend my time in China.

Admittedly, one other nontrivial source of anxiety is the prospect of leaving home, family, friends, and school. I’ve never had problems with homesickness, but I’ve never been away for so long, so far away. Part of me wishes I could freeze time back at home while I’m away, keeping the rest of the world from moving on without me. I’d like, at the end of an exhilarating year, to return to find the people, places, and things in my life exactly as I’d left them. But alas, this is not A Wrinkle in Time. A year for me is a year for everyone else, and I can only hope things will pick up as they left off. While I am loath to face the fact that the best of my friends will be graduating in 2012, and I in 2013, I think returning to Yale with a fresh perspective and motivation to branch out will, in the long run, only be positive. The conventional wisdom seems to be that, in the end, no one regrets taking a year off for this sort of experience. Despite my apprehensions, I am hopeful my experience will be no exception.

After writing the bulk of this post, I realize there’s a very important question I have neglected to address: “Why?” That is, why am I going to China? Why am I, for almost ten months, leaving a life in which I am generally comfortable and happy, for a life in which the only certainty is smoggy skies and 100-plus characters a night? I wish there were a simple answer to this. I wish I could say “because I need to learn Chinese to do X,” where X is some specific, concrete goal. Unfortunately, I can’t state my reasons for this decision in such simple terms. For me, it is an amalgam of factors – a passion for Chinese language and culture, a thirst for new experiences, an unwillingness to pass up this rare opportunity (thank you Light!), and a general sense of optimism that I will eventually discover what “X” is for me.

I’m sorry if it seems this post is boringly unspecific and filled with empty platitudes concerning my thoughts about going abroad next year. Future posts, if they exist (see following paragraph), should focus more on my experiences in China as they happen, which, hopefully, will be more interesting and specific.

One final note about me and blogging. I am miserable at it. I feel compelled to admit I have always had a low batting average with journals, diaries, blogs, etc. That said, I do very much wish to keep up with this blog this year. I don’t view blogging as only a way to preserve and share my experiences with others, worthy as these things are on their own. I think the very act of writing and reflecting on my personal experiences or feelings will help me become more aware of them, which will be helpful in making the most out of my time in China. I want to keep up with this blog, even if means relatively short posts. I think frequent short posts would be more beneficial than longer more infrequent posts, and certainly better than none at all. I invite all readers to badger me for new posts if this blog goes silent for a period.

Thanks for reading!

Yours truly,
Rachel
share on: facebook