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Welcome to Rain Symphony (formerly known as Forgotten Hope), phoenix's weblog/personal site. Here you will find my thoughts about my life, as well as whatever other random things I decide to put on here. Enjoy your stay.
Sigh...
Inadvertently spent some time today shedding tears over the grade I received for my history essay. Well, whatever. My history class seems to be a lost cause at this point (partly because this was one of two essays that will basically determine my whole semester grade).
I'm actually being deterred from a history major at this point, but I think I will try one more class and an English class and other things to figure out for sure. I only just realized that I like writing English essays much more than writing history essays. But I still haven't lost my interest in history (courtesy of Hetalia), so...what to do, what to do...
Posted by phoenix on 2009-10-21 ~
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Urgh...
I've had a headache the entire day, and now I'm feeling unable to do homework, writing, or art.
Posted by phoenix on 2009-10-17 ~
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Identity, Culture, the World, Where I Want to Go
Long time no see. I apologize for not updating more frequently; I think I've mentioned it before, but lately my Livejournal has been seeing a lot more action, if only because I feel the need to ramble about trivial things every day.
Nevertheless, I've decided that I should spread my entries more evenly between LJ and RS, so here, today I'll talk about something that has been bothering me for a while. Or several related things, actually.
When I came to college, I hardly anticipated that this place would soon become a battleground for me in terms of my racial identity. I'm an ethnic Chinese who has grown up entirely in Western culture (in North America, to be precise). Thus far, it hadn't caused any major issues for me, except that I hated Chinese school. At regular school, everyone spoke English (because, well, we're living in the U.S.), no matter what background you were from, and the diversity or our student population unified by a single language made things even on all sides.
I've had a pretty strange relationship with Chinese culture throughout the years, partly due to the fact that I've run into many downright nasty Chinese people both in China and the U.S. It's not fair to generalize, of course, but the negative impressions became deeply ingrained into my mind and memory to the point where I lost most of my interest in the culture. There's also the fact that my parents, who are pretty enlightened (in my opinion), are also very critical of Chinese culture and often tell me and my sister that the U.S. is the best place in the world to live.
Well, none of this had caused any particular stress for me...until I came to college.
When I started filling out my housing questionnaire, I considered putting down that I would not want to be with a Chinese roommate. Then I told myself that was being too narrow-minded, and I thought that the people who arranged housing tried to put roommates of different backgrounds together anyways. So I didn't write anything down about the matter. I received my housing information, and, what do you know, I ended up with a Chinese roommate.
Okay, I thought. I assumed that she was another one of those children of Chinese immigrants, and I had nothing against that (a bunch of my friends before college were like that).
As it turned out, she had grown up in China and came to the U.S. only four years ago. Again, I wouldn't have had a problem with that, or with the many other Chinese-speaking students who ended up in my dorm.
But they often speak Chinese together, even in front of people who either can't speak Chinese or (like me) don't speak Chinese in an English-speaking setting. They talk about the good ol' times in China, American public education sucks, China China China...
At first I felt insecure because my Chinese skills are rather dubious (though I understand and can participate in casual conversations), but then after a while the familiar rebellious feeling came back and I started to get annoyed. This was one of the reasons why I originally wanted to avoid having a Chinese roommate.
I am not against people speaking Chinese (my parents do at home), but I just think that if you do so beyond just private conversation it's a way of isolating a particular group and excluding other people. These people are perfectly capable of talking in English. A rejection of the language seems, to me, on some level a rejection of the culture.
I may sound like a stereotypical American citizen who thinks that "America is the best, everyone else sucks." (Actually, I just got my citizenship at the end of August, but that's a tad irrelevant.) But let me explain myself a little: when I was younger, I, too, went through a phase in which I was in love with everything Chinese. I even planned to write a novel based off of China at some point. I didn't hate English, but I definitely thought it was boring; that other languages were much "cooler"; and that my future lay outside the U.S. I was very critical about the U.S. government and foreign policy under Bush. When I took a course on American history, I became even more conflicted, thinking, "God, America has done so many terrible things in the past, and they still think they are the best? What kind of BS is this?"
Some time has passed; I've grown older, somewhat more knowledgeable, and hopefully a little more mature. I now think that, yes, America was pretty horrible at times in the past, and yet it also has many good qualities. English was boring to me because it was my native language, but I've grown to appreciate its expressiveness and the depth of the language. So, I think I have considered Chinese culture from several points of view, and I still can't seem to muster the interest in it that other people have. That's yet another source of trouble for me, because I feel like I should be invested in my heritage...and yet I'm not.
Now I'm going off on a tangent, but I'd like to return to the point I made about how I sort of wanted to live outside of the U.S. I went to Europe over the summer, and afterwards I came to realize...I don't think I want to live in Europe. I loved London, and that may be the closest place (thought the pound is expensive!), but France? Paris? Eh...
I feel really bad for thinking this way, because Paris is regarded as one of the most sophisticated, cultured cities in the world, but I just can't see myself living there. My dad used to say to me that Europe was "xenophobic," to which I laughed and thought he was wrong, but it's true in a way. Perhaps "xenophobic" is too strong, but I definitely noticed we were stared at a lot in Paris (and a little in Italy), and I felt rather unwelcome. And it definitely felt that some people (not all, but some) didn't like English-speakers. And my sudden disinterest in Paris resulted in a disinterest in learning French, even though I've always believed that the mark of an educated person was multilingualism, and I'd spent so much time learning the language. There's another source of discord that I'll have to deal with at some point or another.
So, although I've grown to love traveling, I think that unless I become fluent in another language and get a job as a teacher or translator or something, I'll stay in the U.S. for the rest of my life. It's not a bad thing. After all, the U.S. merits travel itself, as parts of it can be so different and it has its fair share of natural beauty...
Posted by phoenix on 2009-10-04 ~
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Tentative Class Schedule for the Fall
(Crossposted from my Livejournal and my deviantART. Blame it on my two hours' worth of free time right now.)
First-year seminar: Romanticism & Enlightenment
Introduction to Japanese
Early Modern Europe
Introduction to Chemistry
...I know, right? CHEMISTRY??! WTFF??!
I am (hopefully) not totally crazy, and I do have some reasons:
- Parents would still like me to go to medical school (despite my current history/English interests), and Chem is one of the required courses for premed, should I ever decide to take that path.
- Freshmen are recommended to have balanced schedules.
- I don't know what I'm going to major in, and even if I did, that would probably change, so it's best to keep my options open and explore a little.
- I might be able to help my sister with her upcoming killer Honors Chem class (which I was a victim of...).
- I was planning on taking Biology instead, which, although also not exactly my forte, I enjoyed more and performed better in during high school. BUT, there's no Intro to Biology during the fall. Curse my luck.
- ...I wanted to, sort of, confront my fears.
Well, at least I "padded" my schedule (so to speak) with classes I like/think I will enjoy (History, Japanese, reading/writing), so hopefully those will serve as enough of a buffer. Besides, I can always change my classes around during the Add/Drop period, a.k.a. "shopping period."
I was considering taking math, since apparently I've been recommended for Multivariable Calculus due to my score on the AP Calc BC test, but...no math first semester of freshman year. Seriously. On top of all the stress of moving in/adjusting/everything else, I don't need a math class. (But I'm hoping I won't be wishing I took Multivariable Calc instead of Chem...I'm also wondering if I'll regret dropping French in the future...)
So, my weekly schedule is rather...odd. I have all four courses on Monday and Wednesday (in a row, to boot), three courses on Friday (also in a row), but my Tuesdays and Thursdays are completely free. (Well, except for a Chem lab period on Tuesday late in the afternoon.) Weird.
Looking ahead: I'm hoping second semester to take an English class (preferably a Shakespeare class), Biology, a Psychology class, and continuing Japanese. Sophomore year, hmm, maybe math? More history classes? Econ? Something I've never had any experience with before, like Geology, Astronomy, Environmental Studies, Anthropology, Philosophy?? Geez, there are way too many choices...AND I'll have to declare a major second semester of sophomore year. Pressure pressure pressure..
Posted by phoenix on 2009-08-31 ~
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Back from Vacation, Off to College
Sorry about not writing earlier. (To be honest, since I've gotten a LJ, I haven't been as motivated to update RS.) My vacation was amazing: 7 cities (London, Paris, Milan, Venice, Verona, Florence, and Rome) across 3 countries in 31 days and 1655 pictures taken! I have to say, my favorite was London--it's just so busy and diverse and really feels alive. I'd love to go back some day, but now I'm thinking there are so many other places in Europe I'd want to go to. Heh, maybe in a few years.
Also, I finally became a U.S. citizen. (I was born in Canada and somehow never got around to getting my U.S. citizenship until recently, despite the fact that I've lived here for pretty much my entire life.) Yay for dual citizenship.
Finally, tomorrow I'm going off to college. At last!...and yet I feel anxious. About the course load, about opening up, about my sanity, about making friends and pretty much everything. Moving out of the comfort of familiarity and into the unknown...I'll wait and see how things go.
Posted by phoenix on 2009-08-29 ~
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