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?

Why Reed?

The last few days have been great, but I think I need to backtrack a bit, since there’s a lot I’ve neglected to write amid the insanity that is Orientation Week at Reed College.  To provide some background, this is the “Why Reed?” essay I wrote for my college application, way back in December of 2008.

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Like many before me, my firsthand accounts of the college application process came from older friends.  I recall speaking with one in particular midway through my junior year.  She had just returned from a long trip of college visits, and I wanted to pick her brain and learn more about each college she visited.  After reeling off the names of several mid-size Catholic universities, the name “Reed College” rolled off her tongue.  She didn’t say much of it—all she said was that it didn’t seem to fit her, and then moved on.

I didn’t think much of that conversation until my mother lent me a book entitled Colleges That Change Lives.  It’s a relatively comprehensive book, so I flipped through and searched for any colleges I may have known or have heard of, and sure enough, Reed was in it.  In its chapter the book sang high praises to this little college in Portland, calling it “the most intellectual college in the country”.

After attending HKIS for 12 years, I remain grateful for the global perspective it has helped instill in me.  But rarely did I ever find myself completely satisfied with the educational experience I was receiving.  Almost every assignment and every lesson seemed to be on a task-by-task basis—i.e. “finish this homework assignment so you can you prepare for the test which will help you get a high grade.  The high grade will help you receive a high GPA, which will get you into a well-known university, which will land you a high-paying job and lead to endless years of unbridled prosperity and happiness.”

That’s the academic environment in which I have been raised, and I know nothing else—only that it’s not for me.  I prefer to go somewhere where the ideas themselves are valued just as highly as the goals they helped achieve—and I’m aware that immersing myself in such an environment requires far more than simply extolling its virtues in a pleasant-sounding phrase.  In Reed I see myself challenged and pushed in ways I can’t even comprehend, and part of me wonders if I’m ready for it, especially given my upbringing and academic background.  But then I think of the few classes I’ve taken during my high school career which helped instill in me a love for the life of the mind.  I recall initially struggling with taking a class in which learning, not grades, took precedence—and how I, over time, came to value and look forward to those classes over any other.  I owe my intellectual awakening to those special teachers who pushed me and stretched me to the limit, and I feel as though Reed has the learning tools needed to help finish what I’ve started—and possibly accelerate it.

A friend of mine, upon discovering I was applying to Reed, said simply “Wow.  I didn’t figure you for the type.”  That’s because I have been raised a Roman Catholic, and observe politics with a decidedly conservative slant—and if it were any other school, I would have agreed with the aforementioned friend.  But in my time spent visiting Reed’s campus and speaking with students there, I never once felt as though I would be ostracized for my differences.  Perhaps that’s because, unlike most, Reedies seem to recognize and delight in everyone’s differences.

Out of all the colleges to which I am applying, it seems as though Reed would be the farthest outside my comfort zone.  Then again, I wouldn’t be applying to Reed if I didn’t think that was a good thing.

Welcome to a Whole New Ballgame

It’s almost midnight and I’m typing this from my brand-spanking-new Macbook Pro in my dorm floor’s common room.

Today was the first day of Freshman Orientation at Reed.  I’ll do some backlogging about my Pre-O trip later.  I’ve actually been settled into my dorm since Friday, so I secretly felt rather smug as I watched the rest of my hall move in with their boxes while I slept in.

But enough of that.  Up until now, nothing had felt like college.  I’ve done numerous summer camps at American universities throughout the years, and the first few days here felt exactly like those programs.  The campus is semi-empty, not everything is open, and only people your age are wandering around, looking just as confused as you are.

Today was different.  After Convocation in the afternoon, it finally started to hit me that I wasn’t in Kansas Hong Kong anymore.

Let me tell you about Reed College, and just how different it is when compared to my high school years.

My high school seems to unintentionally place its students on a singular and, in my view, contrived path to “success” that involves treating every challenge as a means to an end.  I say “unintentionally” because, in my conversations with faculty and administration members, this generally doesn’t seem to be the mindset; rather, the students and the parents who pay their tuition are the ones intent on sending their kids to the top-ranked schools and the supposed fast track to getting rich (which really is what we’re talking about here).

But I digress.  Anyway, I’ve spent thirteen years at HKIS, and I was on a particular path, just like virtually everyone else.

Reed College represents perhaps the most radical divergence from the “path” that I could have possibly chosen.  Everything about it – its surrounding city, its intellectual fervor, its unapologetic quirkiness, its sacrosanct Honor Principle – contradicts everything HKIS runs on.  Reed does not manufacture super-rich executives of industry, it cultivates people who are in love with learning, and nurturing the life of the mind.  And most importantly, it generates people who believe in their respective lifestyles, however offbeat, super-liberal, or drug-infused they may be.

Sidebar:  That was a lot of commas.

But yeah, back to where I came from.  I never particularly liked the lack of intellectualism and homogeneity of HKIS’ student body (it’s racially diverse, but everyone’s rich).  But at the same time, it was still comfortable and familiar.  Reed is everything but familiar.

Case in point: Today, I went to go watch a firedancing show.  It was cool, until one of the performers took off her shirt and set fire to her nipple, which was conveniently covered by an “X”.  Yeah.  That’s something you won’t see at HKIS, let alone 98% of American colleges.

The liberal culture of Reed College isn’t the only thing that makes it different from my school of upbringing.  Reed is also noted (by those who’ve heard of it) for its staggering academic rigor, which has been known to drive students to the brink of insanity.  It generates an unusually high percentage of Ph.Ds, which can be credited to its emphasis on scholarship and learning rather than a pre-professional skill set.

By contrast, HKIS’ academic environment is permeated by a “grade culture”, in which the priority lies not in learning anything but in getting the highest number on your sheet of paper.  Did you read the assignment?  Nope, I read it on SparkNotes!  But that’s okay, I got an A anyway.  I’ve gotten better at disapproving of the academic culture without disapproving of the people themselves, but it is nevertheless a mindset which I found, for lack of a better description, “soul-sucking”.

Reed is something completely different.  When I heard Colin Diver (Reed College President) speak at Convocation, I felt like I could hear him whispering “Welcome to the bigs, kid.”

I wrote in my “Why Reed” essay that Reed was certainly the college furthest from my comfort zone.  This statement is still true.  But I also ended my essay with the following statement:

“But then again, I wouldn’t be applying to Reed if I didn’t consider that a good thing.”

HKIS was comfortable and easy, but I’m done with that.  I want something difficult and challenging, something that will push me to my limit and make me grow smarter and better.  That’s why I’m here.

In other news, I have a Chinese placement exam tomorrow morning, so I’m going to head off to bed now.