Academics at Reed: Freshling Edition

It hasn’t been a very good week (and it’s only Monday), so I think I’ll spend this evening blogging instead of reading The Republic.  I also think I’ll do myself a favor by writing about something that involves less introspection.  So here we go:

I’m a little hesitant about the title of this post, especially because I’ve previously stressed that no single account of college life is an accurate indicator of what life will be like once you reach that point.  But really, “Alan Edition” sounds so, so lame, so I’ll stick with the title I’ve got.

I feel like a reflection on Academics at Reed deserves an entire post because it represents so much of what defines this college and the people who go here.  But again, this is my experience, not anyone else’s, so kindly take it with a pixelated grain of salt.

At Reed, you will call your professors by their first name.  In fact, you will call basically everyone by their first names – I usually hear the President of the College referred to as “Colin”.  That reality, in itself, doesn’t say much, but it is representative of the way Reed does things.  I can’t speak for my peers and their previous academic experiences, but academics at Reed is a far cry from the grade-obsessed, prestige-worshiping culture of Hong Kong International School.  Reed does not pay mere lip service to the overused line that “you are responsible for your own learning.”  Ideally, you should always be, no matter where you are – but at Reed, if you’re not genuinely involved in your intellectual growth, you will fail.

At Reed, you will not receive your letter grades unless you specifically ask for them, provided none of your grades are below a C.  This seems a little strange, especially in the age of grade inflation, but the underlying premise here is this:  Grades are a woefully inaccurate way of gauging how well one has learned or digested something.  If my essay got an A, does that mean it requires no further improvement?  How much better is an “A” paper versus an “A-minus” paper?  It doesn’t matter, at all.  In fact, I’m glad I can’t see my grades, because I don’t get caught up in categorizing my performance.  Extensive verbal feedback, I’ve found, is a much better way of figuring out where you are, what you’re good at, and what needs improvement.

Then, there are the requirements.  Oh, requirements.  They’re a bitch, and we love to whine about them.  I certainly do my fair share.  Many top-tier schools such as Brown, Wesleyan, and Hamilton have few or none requirements, and lots of people like that.  At Reed, the requirements are quite extensive.  You are required to take Humanities 110 (all non-transfers take it their freshman year), which is a year-long introduction to Western Humanities covering the Greeks and Romans (although next year the syllabus is changing dramatically.  More on that later).  In addition, you must (and I’m paraphrasing) take two units (two semesters) in Literature/Philosophy/Religion/Arts, History/Social Sciences/Psychology, The Natural Sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Physics), and Math/Logic/Foreign Language/Linguistics.  Don’t follow me?  Doesn’t matter – the point is that there are a lot of requirements to fulfill here.  And there aren’t any gut classes you can take that knock off more than one requirement or fulfill the requirement without actually counting as a class in that discipline.  For example, to fulfill the science requirement, you have to take either Biology, Chemistry, or Physics.  That’s it.  No Astronomy, no “Environmental Political Policy” class, or anything of that nature.  Yeah, it’s a bitch.  I don’t like Chemistry much, to be honest.

I sensed that the above paragraph was degenerating into a rant of sorts (even if I’ve become more favorably disposed towards the principles behind academic requirements), so I X-ed it.  Moving on…

You will have lots of work.  I have a slightly lighter load because I’m taking fewer classes because I’m an impressionable freshman and I’m adjusting to college and dealing with personal issues and blah blah blah blah blah, but most Reedies have a shit ton of work that never stops coming.  It powers the stress culture here at Reed, I’m told.  You’ll have lots of work no matter where you go, but Reed is known for being one of the toughest academic schools in the country.  Our average GPA has floated around 2.9 to 3.1 over the last 25 years.  In that same span of time, nine people have graduated with a 4.0.  Wait, what?  That’s kind of awesome, if not incredibly frightening.

I can be overwhelmingly, if not irrationally, negative sometimes, but I don’t feel like this is such an outlandish statement when I say that one line has consistently run through my mind over the course of my first semester at Reed: How did I get into this school? On a shitty day, it’ll be I’m not smart enough to be here, I’m way out of my league, or some variation on that phrase.  I’ve been told this is a pretty common feeling among Reedies, even if it’s hard for me to imagine.  I’m a big believer in the idea that most people, if not everyone, possess some sort of intelligence – be it emotional, musical, interpersonal, etc.  Reedies, while obviously different in their own ways, are essentially united in their intelligence of the cerebral variety.  With few exceptions (I haven’t met any yet), people are well-read, independent-minded, fiercely intelligent, and, for lack of a better description, fucking brilliant.  It blows my mind every time, and it’s consistently humbling to think about.

I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I didn’t need to work very hard to do well in high school.  I stopped reading my AP European History textbook in January, and I got a B+ on my AP Mock exam and a 4 on my AP exam, and that was fine with me.  I did my AP English reading because I enjoyed it, but that was enough preparation for our in-class discussions.  In my three months here, I’ve learned, among other things, that the amount of work required to do well here is far beyond the amount of work I had ever put into anything in high school.  I’m not quite there yet – I’m still a little entrenched in my habits, and it’s been difficult to get over.  But I need to find a way to develop a consistent work ethic, or I won’t make it here.  It’s not just that there’s lots of work, it’s that it’s difficult work.  Today, my Humanities conference leader mentioned that The Republic was “hard”, and I laughed to myself (it must have looked weird to everyone else) because “hard”, for me, has pretty much become par for the course.

On my worst days, I feel like an idiot during my Humanities conference.  Sometimes the discussion moves too quickly for my mind to keep up with it, and sometimes the concepts are too difficult for me to figure out on my own.  On my worst days, I wonder how the hell I got into this college, and that somehow, my admission was either a fluke or a product of college’s version of affirmative action, because my background provides that DIVERSITY so many liberal arts colleges are desperate for (it’s actually kind of amusing – see this post for details).  I don’t know if what I’m saying makes sense, or if I’m even in the same intellectual class as the people around me.  But that’s me on my worst days, and while bad days have been a little more common recently, I know it’s not true, and wallowing in self-pity will not get me anywhere.  At the end of the day, I’m here, and I love it.  But more importantly, I believe in the system (which, if you know me, says a lot).  I believe in Reed College because it is genuinely dedicated to scholarship, study, intellectualism, and independent thought.  There is nothing about this college that is fake, and its devotion to academics is a true illustration of that.

On my best days, I can’t help but grin when someone makes a brilliant argument, or when someone displays both the confidence and the courtesy to respectfully disagree with someone’s point.  I can’t help but be inspired by this weird place, day in and day out.  In high school, I did way too much research on colleges, and I knew a lot about Reed (too much, perhaps) before I came here.  Yet it never ceases to amaze me when I walk out of my Humanities conference, feel the autumn wind kiss my face, and remind myself that I don’t just know about this school, I go here.  I go to Reed.  This is a truly unique and special place, and this is my school.

I know I’m supposed to be idealistic as a freshman and end up jaded once I become a senior, but I usually don’t feel or think things for the sake of playing the part.  I’ve always been an unwavering idealist, and that’s how I get through difficult times…oh, damn it, I told myself this wouldn’t be an introspective post.  Oh well.  It was bound to happen.  Anyway, back to Plato.

I’m Not From Here

I’ve been going to Mass almost every Sunday since I was born, so I think it’s fair to say that I know how things usually go.  But two days ago, there was a minor twist that would eventually inspire this blog post.  Before the priest began with the liturgy, he mentioned that Veterans Day was approaching, and called our attention to the American flag and began reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  If I were running for office, that particular moment would have effectively killed my chances of winning, because instead of placing my hand over my heart and solemnly whispering the words to myself, I shuffled my feet for a bit, kept my hands squarely at my sides, and nervously looked around for a few seconds while I kept silent and waited for everyone to finish.

I looked awkward at best, and unpatriotic at worst.  But the truth is, I can’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance, nor any other mantra swearing fealty to any given nation – not because I don’t know the words, but because I’m not from the United States.  I grew up in Hong Kong.  Then again, I’m not from Hong Kong, because my family comes from the Philippines.  But I’m not from the Philippines either, because I was born in the United States.

Damn it.  Not another one of those “cultural identity crisis” things again.  It’s kind of a bitch, actually.  I can’t answer where I’m from without either stammering, lying, or taking too long to properly explain it.  Here’s the thing, though – where I was born, where my family is from, and where I grew up are all different places, and I’m not from any of those places.

Although I was born in the United States and am currently studying in Portland, I’m not from here.  I’m not from here because I grew up somewhere else.  All of the significant historical events in America from 1996 to late 2009 happened when I was living an ocean away.  9/11?  It was 11:00 pm in Hong Kong when it happened, and I didn’t hear about it until the next day.  President Clinton’s impeachment?  I had heard nothing about that until after he left office.  And while exposure to these events doesn’t, in itself, make me any more “American”, the larger point to be made here is that I don’t have a deep attachment to any physical place in this country.  And say what you want about my inclination towards American politics or the fact that I talk like I never left Westchester County – I’m still not from here.

Although the Philippines is my country of heritage, I’m not from there.  I’m not from there because I’ve never lived there, I don’t speak the language, and much of what I know about the Philippines (which, to my credit, is quite a bit) can’t help but be taken from the view of an outsider looking in.  When I go to family reunions, I feel a little like the odd one out when I go to family reunions.  It doesn’t help that everyone knows I’m the token non-Filipino Filipino and goes out of their way to refrain from speaking Tagalog in my presence.  And when I walk the streets of Manila, I feel no less foreign than the Caucasian tourists snapping photos every which way, despite the fact that everyone looks like (or similar to) me.  It’s a feeling I can never fully explain and will never completely shake off – and because of that, I’m not from there.

That leaves me with Hong Kong – the crowded, fast-paced, glorious pearl of the orient in which I’ve lived since I was five years old.  I guess I’m from there, right?  I mean, after all, that’s what I tell people when they meet me, so I must be “from” there…

…except not really.  I wish it were that simple.  I grew up in Hong Kong, I miss it dearly, and love that city to death, but I’m not from there.  Part of it is because I have no ethnic roots or heritage in Hong Kong that I know of beyond my immediate family.  I know and understand the culture of Hong Kong, but I rarely identify with it on a personal level.  I effectively dodge people when the streets are crowded, and I know most of the city like the back of my hand (New Territories not included), but at the end of the day, I’m still a foreigner (or rather, a Gweilo).  There’s a big difference between feeling comfortable in a culture and being a part of it, and while thirteen years has made Hong Kong the environment in which I feel most comfortable (I still find it a little weird that everyone around me speaks English and not Cantonese), I’m not from there.

So, that leaves me with…nowhere, actually.  I’m from nowhere.  Too bad I can’t tell people that when they ask me where I’m from, because I have a feeling the response “nowhere” might yield a rather confused response or come off as overly dramatic.

I’m not sure whether I would prefer to have my (future) kids spend their lives in one particular place that they can later call home, or if I would rather that they lived in many different places or attended an international school where the definition of “home” is less cut and dried.  I am grateful for my upbringing, but there are certainly times when I wish I could say that I was from somewhere.

Does anyone out there on the interwebs understand where I’m coming from?  I hesitate to use the label “third culture kid”, simply because it’s so commonly used, but I guess I can’t come up with a better one (“global nomad” just sounds incredibly patronizing).  I’m also curious as to how you HKIS kids are adjusting to college life.  I, for one, absolutely love it here at Reed, but I do miss Hong Kong.  37 days and counting, folks!  I can’t wait to see all of you again and hear about how you’ve been doing.  I also can’t wait to go out and drink legally again…but yeah, don’t even get me started on that one.

40 Days

Lesson #1 on reading my blog: Never believe me when I say I’m going to write a post “tomorrow”, “soon”, or “in the near future”.  Throughout the duration of this blog’s existence – which, by my count (and by “my”, I mean some online calculator), stands at 976 days, I’ve tried to establish a steady pattern of blogging consistently without too much of a gap between posts.  And if you’ve ever followed this blog, you’ll know that I have completely and utterly failed in this regard.  Instead, I developed this tendency to write a post, not write for three weeks, and then write two or three posts in a span of three hours.  Not exactly reader-friendly, but oh well.

I never got into the habit of using bookmarks on my internet browser until I came to college.  There’s no real explanation for it, but when I got my new computer I decided it would be a good idea to add some bookmarks, since most of my internet browsing consists of a handful of websites anyway.  Now my Firefox bookmarks toolbar is completely filled up, and it consists of, among other things, “Weather”, “Facebook”, “Twitter”, “Gmail”, “Google Reader”, “International Herald Tribune”, and some other sites I read.  Then, at the very far right of the browser, I have a bookmark entitled “Countdown to HK”.  Basically, I went to one of those countdown websites and punched in the date I fly home and bookmarked it, and every so often I check it to see how many days, hours, minutes, and seconds I have until I’m finished with my first semester of college and touch down in the HK once again.

So today, I’m down to 40 days.  Wait, what?

I’m a big believer in the idea that no matter how much you try to teach someone or advise them on any given matter, nothing is an appropriate substitute for experiencing it yourself.  This is not to say that I use this platitude as an excuse to try, say, crystal meth, but I think you know what I mean.  And in the context of my life, this applies especially to college life.

I’m going to sit here and tell you that the first semester of college is going to go by so, so quickly.  It’s something you should know in advance, but you’ll never know exactly what I mean until you get to college.

I have 40 days left in the semester, and essentially a month of classes left when finals, reading period, and Thanksgiving weekend are all taken into account.  This is nothing short of mind-blowing, because so much in my life has changed and nothing that I write here can fully explain it (although I could have written more – sorry for the laziness on my part).

There are two main thoughts I want to get out there before this post degenerates into another random digression with no real point.  The first is rather simple, and is more of a general reminder for myself than anything else.  You would think that this maxim is easily remembered, and it probably is for most people.

However, I’ve discovered that my personality isn’t conducive to naturally living this out day-to-day, mostly because I am a compulsive daydreamer and find it frustratingly difficult to control where my thoughts go.  It is simply this: live in the present.  40 days isn’t very long, and while I still have seven semesters to go after that, they will all fly by without a moment’s notice, because time doesn’t stop to remind you how fast it travels (that thought made sense in my head, but I’m not sure if that necessarily translates into text).  It wasn’t until the last semester of my senior year of high school that I became fully aware of how little time I had left, and how it was imperative that I make the most of it.  So I did, and I accomplished more, learned more, and made stronger and more numerous connections with people in a span of five months than I had in any similar period of time before that.  I don’t want to wait until my last semester of college to realize how little time I have left.  I don’t want circumstances to dictate my mindset.  And most importantly, I don’t want to fall back into a state of perpetual complacency, in which my mind is always wandering off every which way.  There’s so much here at Reed to see and learn, and I cannot overemphasize how important it is to take advantage of where I am.

(Wow, I wasn’t expecting that paragraph to take up so much space).  The second thought I have is of a more speculative nature, and it doesn’t really accomplish anything.  In fact, it might, in some ways, contradict what I just wrote for the last 300 words.  I do wonder, though, what it will be like to be in Hong Kong again, to be thrust back into a familiar environment after spending 4+ months trying to fit in somewhere else.  No doubt people will have changed, but I don’t think any of us will realize or understand how much or how little we’ve changed until we go back to the place we left in August.  I’m looking forward to going back to Hong Kong and enjoying everything I love about the city (read: drinking legally and efficient public transportation, often at the same time), but part of me wonders if it will feel a little weird to be back after spending so much time at Reed.  But I guess, like college and everything else, I’ll never know for sure until I get there.

And…that’s all for now.  I won’t be so presumptuous as to guarantee when I’ll write a post or how long it will be or how many deep thoughts it will contain, so I’ll just say for now that I will write something again…eventually.

Post Postponed

…okay, maybe I’m not great on commitment yet.  Yesterday, I committed to writing something today, which didn’t happen.  I’m going back to Portland tomorrow, so I’ll try to write something then.  There’s something I think I’ll want to write about when I get back.

My Life Goes On Without Me

The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: life is a story about me.

The last bit of my last post featured a brief digression regarding the expectations we hold on the places that have memories waiting for us, and on the people who helped provide them.  This is something I’ve had stewing in my head for a long time, and this post has been sitting in my “drafts” category for a few weeks with nothing written in the box.  In fact, when I go back to the last few posts I’ve written, there are sprinklings of this post here and there that were never quite fleshed out.  That ends now.  I don’t know if this will end up sounding too disjointed or convoluted, but regardless of how well (or not well) written this post ends up, I’ve committed myself to writing more regularly again.  It’s good for the soul.

I’m a pretty nostalgic person, and I don’t say that solely for the purposes of making this post easier to write by connecting its title and theme with my personality.  It’s really, really true.  Every day, I find myself replaying the moments and the memories that have made a difference in my life – the poignant, the hilarious, the romantic, the thought-provoking – to no real end, other than the fact that doing so is just incredibly comforting.

But the entities that produced the most important memories in my life didn’t simply disappear with the moment.  The second semester of senior year was a transformative period in my life, and it’s long gone – but my high school is still there, and the people who changed my life still exist.  Over three months ago, I spent a week in Kolkata, but Future Hope, Daya Dan, and the Mother House are all still there, going about their business.  I lived in Hong Kong for thirteen years and it changed my life, and it’s still there.  But while all the things and places and people that have changed me still exist, they will never be the same.

That’s because, as Donald Miller wrote, life is not a story about me.  Life does not stop and start at my convenience (oh, how I hope somebody caught that reference, although I definitely changed the context in this situation), and the things about life that bring me joy and happiness don’t exist for that purpose.  Everything that has made me happy is still there, but all of them have changed in some way and will continue to do so.

Let me take a minute to narrow the subject matter of this post before this becomes too broad and all over the place.  Although I’m sure there are countless situations to which these ideas can be ascribed, I’m still 18 and haven’t seen much of what there is in life.  What I do know is that this subject applies especially to college life, and the adjustment that comes with moving from Hong Kong (and the “international life”) to a college campus.

I love my life at Reed, but I really miss Hong Kong.  And when I go back to Hong Kong in December, part of me will expect my home city and my best friends to evoke the same beautiful memories and feelings that I’ve experienced in my time there…and that part of me will undoubtedly come away disappointed.  When I go back to my high school, part of me will want everything to be exactly as it was when I left it four months ago.  I’ll want the same teachers sitting at their desks (many aren’t there anymore) and the same people walking through the hallways (people graduate, move, and change).  But the teachers that I wished were still there have moved on with their lives, and the students at HKIS are continuing theirs and changing all the while.  It doesn’t mean that the things that make me happy can’t do that anymore, it’s that I cannot expect the same in a world that is always changing.

Maybe I’m just spewing crap, or stating the painfully obvious.  And there’s a lot that I don’t know, and so much that I haven’t figured out.  However, this is what I do know: there’s something to be said about attempting to re-create memories, and none of them are positive, because when you let your mind wander and obsess over memories long gone, you close off the possibility of creating new ones, both in your new environment and in your old one when you go back to it.  It’s the moments that sustain us and the memories that make us thankful, not the other way around.  My life is not a story about me.  If it were, the happiest moments of my life would slow down and the most painful moments would speed up (instead of life’s decision to make it go the other way around), and I would relive the best times of my life every day.  But that’s not how it works, so we have no choice but to make do with what we’ve got – to not take sorrow in the fact that the best days of our lives have passed, but instead to revel in the fact that because everything changes, we have new ways to make ourselves happy every day.  I enjoy being around the people I love, not because holding on to the ways they used to make me happy yields any results, but because they make me happy in a different way every time I’m with them.

All right, that’s more than enough sappy and trite subject matter for one day.  Don’t worry though, tomorrow’s post (yes, I just committed to writing one tomorrow…again) will be a little more sarcastic and rant-ish, I guarantee it.

A Fall Break from Reed

It’s a little bit surreal, but I’m at my grandmother’s house in northern California.  Reed has generously granted its students some time off from October 17-25, and I’ve taken full advantage of my free time by doing absolutely nothing at all.  The most exciting thing I’ve done this week is go out for dim sum, and although that was certainly exciting – especially since I haven’t had dim sum since I left Hong Kong – my break has generally consisted of eating, sleeping, and watching TV.  With that in mind, it’s a bit of a shame that this is the first post I’ve written since fall break started.  I do have some homework and reading to do, but I’d rather not talk about that, because I’m pretending it isn’t there.

Even though I’ve spent part of nearly every summer in this house, it feels a little strange to be back.  I suppose part of it is because I’ve finally reached a point where I’m used to living in such close proximity to other people, and coming back to such a familiar environment after spending two months settling into the unfamiliar feels a little jolting.  It’s almost too quiet here – I’ve been able to sleep in until 11 every day without a peep from the area outside my door, and there’s nobody to talk to or laugh with in the early hours of the morning.  Still, I guess being able to eat home-cooked food makes up for all of that.

Oh yes, home-cooked food.  I’ve missed it so much.  Commons really doesn’t stand a chance – and it’s not terrible on its own, but its quality can be erratic and it’s rather lacking in variety.  And for all of the “weird feelings” I just wrote about, it’s nice to take a break from the utter insanity that is Reed College, because Reed is such a quirky and bubble-like place that you sometimes forget that most people in the world don’t go to school there.  At Reed, everybody is witty, brilliant, thoughtful, and a little weird.  In the real world, not everyone is.  Normal people don’t engage in intellectual conversations on a regular basis while dropping more swear words than you can shake a stick at.  And that’s probably a good thing, because while I love Reedies, I’ve become convinced that if everyone were like us, society would be in great peril if it hadn’t already collapsed in on itself.  More on that in a later post.

In addition to that, there’s also a little bit of home in this house.  It’s not the same as Hong Kong (which I miss dearly), but there’s still a sense of familiarity here.  I’ve spent 17 of my 18 summers in this area, and my grandmother has lived in this house for a long time.  I know this house, and I have family living in it.  Although Reed is technically my new home, I have memories here.  The thing about college (and, in reference to the previous post, this is one of the things on which I can speak with authority) is that your life is completely new, and your first few weeks are lived with the purpose of making your own memories and creating a home for yourself.  And while that’s really great and liberating, there’s something truly comforting about coming back to a place that already has memories waiting for you.  I have three main places (there are many smaller ones scattered around the world) that have memories waiting for me.  The first is Hong Kong, the second is Manila, and the third is California.  I still can’t really answer the question “where are you from?”, but I usually say “Hong Kong” for convenience.  But if you held a gun to my head and told me that I couldn’t say “Hong Kong”, I would say “I’m from California”.

I do miss Reed, but I suspect that going back will feel a little weird.  There’s just something about places you can call home, and I guess since I’m a) a college student and b) a third culture kid (Google it, fools), I have a tendency to desperately hold on to any “homey” feelings that creep up on me.

At the same time, there’s a difference between holding on to memories and expecting those same memories from the places that gave them to you every time you visit them, because it’s an easily forgotten fact that everything changes.  But that’s something for tomorrow’s post.  Yes, I just committed to writing something tomorrow.  Maybe that’ll help me get the wheels turning and motivate me to finish my homework.  Or maybe it won’t.

Fast Times at Reed College

I’m sorry I haven’t written anything on a regular basis.  You see, back in high school I blogged rather compulsively instead of working and still managed to graduate.  Unfortunately, I’ve discovered over the last six weeks that you can’t pull that kind of shit in college.

Anyway, I’ve reached a point where I’m incapable of coming up with original or creative post titles, and instead revert to names involving cultural references to books I haven’t read – or, in the case of this post’s title, movies I’ve never seen.

There are some things that college students can say with full authority when they attempt to give advice to their younger, college-bound friends, but the number of issues that fall under “some things” is much smaller than people think.  The problem is, each college is different, and each person is different.  Not only are my college anecdotes insufficient “advice” for things you should know when going to college, they’re even insufficient when giving advice about Reed College.  No matter how much I like to talk about my college, I’m still a freshman, and I’m still only halfway through my first semester.  Furthermore, I’m still only four months removed from high school, and less than two months removed from Hong Kong.  And for me, that’s a pretty scary thought.  So instead of attempting to create naive, contrived, and inaccurate platitudes about Reed (or about college life in general), I’m just going to write about me, my life, and my college experience thus far.

It’s Tuesday and I’m in my sixth week of classes.  I’m currently in the library, typing out this blog post instead of reading Antigone, which I need to finish before my Humanities conference meets tomorrow.  If I don’t, I’m going to look like an idiot tomorrow while my freakishly bright and well-read peers banter endlessly about some issue of Greek culture, poetry, history, or politics while I sit helplessly and try to keep up in my head.

Before I talk more about that, I should probably back up for a minute.  Reed College has a mandatory freshman humanities class entitled “Humanities 110: Introduction to Western Humanities”, referred to colloquially as simply “Hum 110″ or “Hum” (pronounced “Hume”.  Unfortunately, no readings involving Hume exist in the Hum 110 curriculum).  This year-long course covers ancient Greece and Rome, with one semester dedicated to each civilization.  The course consists of lectures at 9:00 am every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, along with smaller conferences that meet during the week in which you discuss the reading.

In high school, simply reading the material was sufficient preparation, and I didn’t need to do any extra prep on my own to adequately contribute to class discussions.  But things are a little different here.  I find myself having difficulty getting a word in edgewise – not only because everybody has something to say, but because the discussion moves so quickly that I sometimes struggle to even mentally keep up.  It’s really humbling, and while I sometimes miss the days when I didn’t need to work in order to keep up, I also know that I’ll never get any smarter unless I’m challenged.

So in short, Hum 110 is all right.  There have been some really stimulating lectures, and discussions are always interesting.  I wouldn’t have picked this class if I had the option of taking something else, but I’m enjoying it anyway.

Chemistry is a different story.  I’m not really a science guy – I wanted to be a scientist when I was little, but that was before I had any idea what studying science entailed beyond mixing cool-looking liquids.  At Reed, there’s a physical sciences requirement that can only be filled by two semesters of either biology, chemistry, or physics.  I picked chemistry because it was the science I had taken most recently (and by “most recently”, I mean “junior year of high school”), and I had heard good things about the faculty in that department.  And while that fact remains true (the professors are great), I’m still not a fan of the hard sciences in general.  Chemistry is just one of those classes I’m struggling through to get the requirement done.

And then there’s Chinese.  The Chinese language and I have had a weird relationship.  I’ve taken it since I was an R2 student at HKIS, and until Grade 6 it was my best subject.  I got nothing short of straight A’s in Chinese class from Grades 1-5.  Then, Middle School rolled around, and all of a sudden Chinese became my toughest subject.  I would struggle along with grades in the C and D range, and I never understood why.  Later, I realized that the reason why I got straight A’s in primary school is because learning Chinese at HKIS’ Lower and Upper Primary divisions includes nothing more than singing songs.  I still have the songs memorized to this day.  Do I know what they mean?  Hell no.

Then I started high school, and Chinese remained my Achilles heel.  So, in an effort to boost my GPA and rid my senior year of stress, I dropped it, with the intention of taking it up again in college.  All I had to do was ace the Level 1 placement test here at Reed, and I could place into an advanced class.  There was just one problem.

Chinese characters are written in both Traditional and Simplified forms, and I had only learned Traditional characters all my life.  But at Reed, Chinese students are required to know and recognize both Traditional and Simplified.  So in other words, I couldn’t read practically half of the placement test.  My inability to read Simplified characters coupled with my rusty Chinese skills (and my general difficulty with the language) landed me in Chinese 110, where I’m learning characters, phrases, and words that I learned when I was 12.  Granted, we’re moving exceptionally quickly, and it’s always good to reinforce certain fundamentals, but it can get a little frustrating sometimes.  At least I have one class that doesn’t require nearly as much work.

I’m only taking three classes – most Reedies take four, but most first-semester freshmen take three.  I’m probably adding an economics or religion class next semester, but for now I’m taking Humanities, Chemistry, and Chinese.  Academically, this is the year I’ve decided to knock off as many unwanted requirements as possible so I get to take the fun stuff for the next three years and not worry about taking some 101-science class my senior year because I didn’t fulfill the requirement.

From what I know and what I’ve gathered from my time here, there seems to be a genuine dedication to scholarship and intellectual discourse (provided it’s not political discourse…but that’s another story).  Case in point: Every year, there’s a Humanities lecture entitled “Black Athena” by Pancho Savery, one of the African-American literature professors at Reed.  His lecture lampoons the curriculum and criticizes it for being too Eurocentric and ignoring the achievements of Egyptian, Persian, and Phoenician civilizations.  And while I may not have agreed with his points nor his approach (again, that’s another story), there’s something to be said for a school that, every year, allows one of its own faculty to launch a polemical attack on one of the pillars of its own curriculum.  In high school, you sometimes tend to see “the faculty” as one body, when in reality they consist of many personalities, life stories, and opinions.

For the moment, virtually all of my friends are in my dorm.  I don’t know if that necessarily holds true for most Reed freshmen (in fact, I doubt it), but part of why that’s the case at Sullivan III is because we’re in a substance-free dorm.  Of course, that isn’t to say that other dorms aren’t conducive to bonding, but I think it’s that commonality of sub-free-ness that bonds us all together and makes us friends.  We hang out together, we eat together, we spend Friday nights together…it’s kind of developed into a cult of sorts, but it feels wonderful to belong to a great group of people.

Now, people back in Hong Kong who know me might say “Hey, wait a minute!  You drank in high school.  And sometimes you drank way too much.  In fact, there was this one time when you finished an entire bottle of wine.”  There are two things I would do in response to that.  First, I would punch you in the face for bringing up that particular incident.  Second, I’d note a really weird fact given that I drank in high school: I haven’t had a drink since I left Hong Kong.  I know, crazy, right?  It’s not that I’ve given up alcohol (I do miss being able to go to a bar), it just so happens that most of my friends here don’t really party or drink.  I probably will at some point, but I haven’t really gotten into it here.

I haven’t gotten involved in too many extracurriculars, to be honest.  I wrote an article for the newspaper once, but that has kind of fizzled out as I’ve gotten more and more work and become less adept at managing my time.  I am a member of the Christian group (called “Oh, for Christ’s Sake!”), and that’s been really great and generally where my focus has been on the extracurricular front.  The people at OFCS have been, without fail, friendly, open, and genuinely kind.  There aren’t many Christians at Reed, but there’s something genuine about the people who are.  Donald Miller once wrote that, at Reed, your faith either becomes real and true, or it falls apart.  I think he’s absolutely right, because this is a place where people are generally skeptical about religion, and if you’re going to follow one, you sure as hell need to be able to explain why.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I’ve got October 17-25 off, and I can’t wait for Friday.  I’ll try to update this on a more consistent basis, because there are still other things I’d like to write about in the near future.  But for now, I’ve got to go back to reading thick books written by dead white guys.

Midterm Update

I have a Chemistry midterm exam tomorrow, so I’m not really inclined to write an update at the moment.  I will say a few things, though:

- I should have developed better study habits in high school.

- I’m going to the Oregon coast this weekend, and I’m excited!

- I really, really need to write more often.  The lack of recent posts isn’t because I don’t have anything to write (quite the opposite), but because I’ve been too lazy.  Maybe blogging is a more productive use of time than watching “How I Met Your Mother”.

- I wish I could be in HK to celebrate Moonfest/National Day weekend.  Ah, good times…

Sunday Mornings in Portland

I’ve heard it said by many upperclassmen Reedies that it is essential to get off-campus regularly in order to preserve a reasonable level of sanity, mostly because of the small size and absolute craziness of the campus bubble.  So on that topic, I’m kind of glad that I’ve already established a weekly routine for myself in order to maintain that much-beloved sanity.

Every Sunday, I get up at about 7:45 and walk a mile to a Catholic church nearby, where I attend Sunday Mass at 8:30.   Slightly after 9:30, I walk to a coffee shop conveniently situated about halfway between the church and the campus, where I have an onion or cinnamon raisin bagel smeared with cream cheese and accompanied by a cup of coffee.  Then I sit down and scan the headlines before I do some homework and light reading.

I’m happy that I’ve actually managed to work out a routine on my own.  It’s not really that special for adults in general, but as someone who has been living away from home for less than a month, I’m rather proud of myself for growing up a little.  And I would be even prouder if I stopped blogging and got back to writing my Humanities paper, which is still without a first draft and due in six days.

Settling Down

I’ve been in Portland for about three weeks and taking classes at Reed for about two, and I guess I would say that I’m starting to settle down here, even though I still suffer from the occasional bout of homesickness.  There are times during the day (especially when I’m left to my thoughts) when I truly feel the pain of being away from Hong Kong.  But I feel like there’s a difference between missing a place and feeling the pain of separation.  The latter is something that will fade eventually, but feeling the former consistently isn’t something that I consider to be detrimental to a college experience.  It’s good to miss and appreciate where you came from, and in that sense, I miss Hong Kong all the time.  I miss the freedom I had to go anywhere at any time (thank you, incredibly efficient public transport system), and the invigorating sensation of feeling the earth turn that I felt on a daily basis as I walked the lighted streets of my home city.  I miss it dearly, and I always will.

But I’m settling down anyway.  Over time, I’ve come to discover that the connection between missing home and loving college is almost nonexistent.  It only hurts when you attempt to create one yourself, when you compare your life at home and wish that you had the same life in college without recognizing the opportunity you have in your new environment.

There’s a lot I had in Hong Kong that I don’t have here.  I don’t have the same mobility that I had back home, since Portland’s public transport system, though efficient when compared to other American cities, really doesn’t hold a candle to Hong Kong’s.  I don’t have the ability to go out into the city myself.  I can’t buy alcohol for another three years.  I can’t find good Asian food.  The list goes on, but it doesn’t pain me to think of the things that I don’t have here, because it goes both ways.  I have so much here at Reed and in Portland that I never had in Hong Kong or at HKIS, and I love that fact.

Portland is wonderfully clean and green.  It’s filled with quirky, liberal, and off-beat citizens who are capable of maintaining an air of genuine friendliness.  The coffee here is incredible.  Downtown Portland is endowed with the world’s largest independent bookstore.  And in general, it’s so much more – for lack of a better word – chill.

And with regards to Reed, there’s something beautifully liberating about living in an environment full of such brilliant, thoughtful, and passionate individuals.  The girl who lives across from me is a Physics major, and her eyes simply light up with joy and excitement whenever she talks about her beloved science.  I don’t understand a single thing about science in general, let alone physics, but I can’t help but find it inspiring.  And at Reed, that kind of passion is the norm rather than the exception.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m here, especially since I don’t quite fit the stereotypical image of a Reedie (Hi, I’m Alan.  I’m Catholic, conservative, and have no plans of doing drugs in my entire life).  But today, I sat down at a local coffee shop and spent two hours taking notes on the Iliad and outlining my paper – and my goodness, did I enjoy it.  And that feeling of enjoyment in learning, of pride in scholarship, of joy in knowledge, is something that I found tragically rare at HKIS.  But here it’s commonplace, and I love it.

I guess where I’m going with this is that I’m starting to settle down.  I’ve finished the college honeymoon and endured the emotional crash of homesickness that follows, and now I’m home again.  Portland will never be Hong Kong, and Hong Kong will never be Portland – and that reality is what makes both places beautiful to me.

…and now, back to my paper.  It’s been a good Saturday.  By the way, here’s the prompt, if you’re curious:

In Book 16 of the Iliad, Zeus longs to spare Sarpedon from death, though Hera persuades him not to (16.431-461). Later in the same book, Zeus rescues the body of Sarpedon and orchestrates the death of Patroklos, the man who killed Sarpedon (16.636-693). Through a close reading of these passages, analyze the significance of death in the Iliad. You might consider what types of relationship divine and human characters have to death, what sort of power divine and human characters have over death, and what limitations are placed on that power.

A little tough, a bit daunting, but not impossible and rewarding to endure.  Sounds a lot like college, doesn’t it?