Life Beyond Beijing – Beijing Kids

Life Beyond Beijing #4: Things You Should Know Before Going to College, Part 2

Many freshmen are overwhelmed with how to deal with orientation and buying books during their first week of college. Here are three pointers for welcome week.

Don’t do orientation first, if possible. Go straight to your dorm room first to put away your belongings and get to know your roommates.
All freshmen are required to go to orientation on the first day of school, but I recommend arriving early to drop off your stuff at the dorm. I arrived at my dorm room after orientation to find that both of my roommates in our triple had claimed their beds, so I was stuck with the upper bunk (although it was later lowered to a bed), with no closet space for me in the bedroom (I had to use the common room closet).

If you arrive at your new dorm room later rather than sooner, there is no time to divvy up the desks, beds and closets. This may not be your experience, but it is common for three students to be placed in a double dorm room. And in my case, showing up on the first day after orientation meant I had a far-away closet and an undesirable top bunk bed.

Don’t buy your textbooks the first week of class, because you might want to change your schedule around.
A lot of colleges don’t let first-time freshmen choose their courses. However, here’s a secret about the bureaucratic administration of nearly all colleges: It might still be possible to add classes, in which case, you should look up the course online and find a professor who can add you to their class. Another tip is for getting into classes that fill up fast: Get on the class’s waiting list as soon as possible (perhaps that very first semester), so that you are next in line for a spot next semester.

Put yourself out there and meet people, even if it doesn’t feel like they’re friend material. At some point, the window of opportunity to make friends will be gone (or at least it will become much narrower).
During the first week of school, you will probably meet more students than you ever will during the rest of your college career. As the school year progresses and welcome week ends, people will have more or less formed their groups and become less susceptible to making new friends or talking to their classmates.

"Life Beyond Beijing” is a series of posts that chronicles a former international school student’s experiences in college. They’re written by Elizabeth Wu, a returning beijingkids summer intern. A former student of BWYA and CISB, she just completed her freshman year of journalism and will be returning to The New School in New York City this fall.

Image via educationsitescatalog.com

Life Beyond Beijing #3: Things You Should Know Before Going to College, Part 1

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Being an expat kid can be tough. However, by the time we leave for college, many of us are already fully-equipped with the qualities needed to be a successful “freshie” in university. Nevertheless, here are some insider details about this big thing called “going to college,” including packing tips and must-haves.

Many people come up with a humungous checklist of What to Bring to College. But come moving day, they suddenly find themselves juggling five pillows, a wheeled office chair, and a huge new stereo they bought to “enhance their living environment.” People always say freshmen bring more “stuff” than the average upperclassman. Having seen my freshman peers drag boxes and indistinct lumps of stuff on the campus lawn, most of which they could’ve done without. I get it: Parents have good intentions. They want to make sure we’ve got everything we could ever need. But I promise you that you’re never going to need that fancy espresso machine or ergonomic head massager.

College Must-Haves Checklist:

Bedding (You don’t need more pillows, but definitely a mattress pad or two to soften those back-splitting dorm beds.)
Towels
Shower caddy (especially if you use communal showers)
Clothes hangers (But not too many – usually, the college will provide you with a wardrobe where you can fold most of your not-so-easily-wrinkled clothing.)
Power strip (for plugging in your tech stiff when the wall outlet only has two plugs or is hard to reach)
Laundry basket (This saves your room from being a mess when you have clothing sprawled out everywhere and are too busy studying.)

College Optional Checklist:

Water purifier (North America has generally excellent tap water; take advantage of it!)
Mugs, spoons, and bowls (These are always useful, but don’t overpack.)
Bedside caddy (I found this very useful for storing my phone, earphones, electronic chargers, and even umbrella, but not everyone needs one.)
Bed raisers (A little-known item, bed raisers make any dorm bed as tall as the most luxurious queen bed.)

College No-Nos:

Flashlight (Most people have a smart phone or some type of device that lights up these days.)
Alarm clock (Again, most phones have this.)
Dishes and utensils (Unless you live off-campus or don’t have a meal plan, you won’t need a full dining set.)
Storage bins (Piling your stuff under your bed is perfectly OK most of the time, as long as it’s neatly stacked.)
First aid kit (Keeping some band-aids in your room is OK, but there’s a school nurse for anything more serious.)
Tool box (Unless you plan on fixing all the little things that squeak or rattle in your dorm room, maintenance can take care of repairs.)

These lists are based solely on my own experience, but feel free to tell us about what worked or didn’t work for you in the comments section.

“Life Beyond Beijing” is a series of posts that chronicles a former international school student’s experiences in college. They’re written by Elizabeth Wu, a returning beijingkids summer intern. A former student of BWYA and CISB, she just completed her freshman year of journalism and will be returning to The New School in New York City this fall.

Photo by ofeverydaylife via Flickr

Life Beyond Beijing #2: College Returnees Intern in Beijing

Many teens leave international school each year to head off to the college of their dreams. I recently caught up with some former high schoolers who used to live in Beijing. After their freshman year in college, they are back in the city for the summer. But although the battle to ace freshman year has ended, they are not resting on their laurels. These girls are not only experienced expats, but keen workers as well; they are doing internships in different businesses and organizations. Hear what they had to say about returning to Beijing as an intern and what they are getting out of their internships.

Amy Wan, Business Major at The College of William Mary in Virginia (Williamsburg, US)

Returning to Beijing as an intern is a great way to make full use of my summer. Unlike past summers in high school where I sat around doing literally nothing and wasted away three months, I am now learning so much from my internship at Harper’s Bazaar China. What is interesting is that the internship is teaching me about the professional world and the way people communicate with each other that high school could have never taught me. Certain things in life can only be understood through experience, and I definitely feel my internship in Harper’s Bazaar China has helped me gain useful knowledge to use both in college, and any other job or internship opportunities that I may come across in the future.

Rachel Wang, Materials Engineering Major at Northwestern University (Evanston, US)

My internship at White Collar, a top-tier Chinese fashion brand, is more of a job shadowing. Under the guidance of the fashion designers, I construct my own pieces and learn the process behind it, from finding inspiration to sketching to communicating your idea to constructing. I’ve had the chance to create my own cross back LBD. In a month, I’ve learned a lot about the fashion industry, which to me is an amalgam of creativity and advertisement, especially the methods of establishing a brand and the need to understand your customers.

I’ve learned fun facts, like how the average person looks at a window display of a shop for around 2-7 seconds. Thus, the display must be able to attract and welcome customers in the shop in a short time frame.Being back in Beijing is one the pluses of the internship. Getting to meet friends and family and basically being in a familiar environment is such a perk.

Jenny Wang, Double Major in Business and International Relations at University of Southern California (Los Angeles, US)

As just a college freshman graduate, coming back to Beijing as an intern is merely a means of finding something a little more meaningful to do than sitting on my couch and watching TV for the long summer holidays. My internship involved statistical consulting for the pharmaceutical market.

After starting my internship, I developed a strong sense of responsibility for my position and a genuine care towards its impact on the company, no matter how big or small. It also means getting up ridiculously early when I could have slept in, and sacrificing hangout time with old friends. For me, it has proved to be worthwhile, in tasting a bit of independence, of what it’s like in the working world, and how a business is run. So I encourage all Beijingers to return to this exciting metropolis as an intern, despite the petty pay or boring offices, because you’ll find it’ll be worth your time.

Life Beyond Beijing: Confessions of a Third Culture Kid

Living half of my life in the U.S. and half of my life in China, I thought I had mastered the different formalities, mannerisms, and cultures of each country. Little did I know, spending time in China would change me in a way that I could never have imagined.

As I walked through the streets of Soho on a rainy day in April, I recalled my first experiences of coming back to America. Both Beijing and New York are unlike any other city in the world, but they also share similarities. Locals move fast on their daily commutes, becoming impatient when a stranger walks too slowly in front of them. In Beijing, one person would simply walk in front of another person without signaling in any sort of way, and there is generally less respect for personal space. Likewise, in New York City, people don’t really say “sorry” or “excuse me” when they accidentally bump into someone.

Having vacationed in the U.S. before returning there for college, I had already noticed certain cultural differences about myself:

1. I didn’t line up. Like the time my plane touched down, and I jumped out of my seat before anyone else and raced to the front of the line. People looked at me like I was crazy, but I was just doing what any other Beijinger would have done.

2. I was no longer special. Or at least, not as special. In China, being bilingual (especially in English) is a big deal. But in America, a country of immigrants, many people speak a second language – even if they might not be fluent in it. I’m still “special” because I’ve done more traveling and lived in more countries than the average 20-year-old, but the distinction becomes more of a qualitative cultural knowledge, not so much an immediately quantitative language face-off.

3. I was truly bicultural. Although I said I was no longer special, that doesn’t mean that living in China and going to an international school hasn’t changed me. I still have knowledge of two worlds; I know what it’s like to walk in a North American mall surrounded by Abercrombie and Hollister stores as much as I know what it’s like to walk in an ancient hutong and purchase Plastered 8 t-shirts. I know what it’s like to go into a club at age 19 in the US and not drink any alcohol because I am underage, and also what it’s like to party it up in Sanlitun – provided I don’t go home too late.

4. The world is my backyard. One of the things about third culture kids is that our friends don’t all live in a cozy little town where everyone knows everyone else and no one ever moves away. My best friends and I don’t see each other all the time. We live in New York City, Berkeley, Chicago, and Ohio. Skype is our world, and texting and calling each other has made it easier to bridge the distance. A friend, who was of mixed Chinese-American heritage, once told me that she was still making the transition from having multicultural and Asian friends to having exclusively Caucasian friends.

Given I am very lucky that both New York and Beijing, the two cities I live in are surprisingly similar, I still deal with cultural differences to a greater degree. It is often easy for me to know what to say in front of Chinese people and expats. I know the language and culture of both East and West, but changing from the customs of China to America and vice versa is not as easy as it sounds. Of course I often like to reflect the culture shock I continuously go through both ways, there are times when I have to think about whether to lineup or if I am standing on the right side of the escalator, but traveling back and forth more often between the U.S. and China, I am slowly bridging the gap between the two places I call home.

My cultural instincts now turn on and off like a light switch, although at times rusty, I am becoming more efficient. Just the other day I reminded myself to be less courteous to people lining up for the bus. Still in my North American state of mind I was simply lining up for the bus, and realized that everyone who had come after me was already edging their way towards the front of the bus to get on.

Living a third culture life will never be easy, there is never one answer for how to act in public or what is really culturally acceptable. It is a process of constant change between culture norm A and culture norm B, but we learn to live with it as one of life’s little amusements.

Photo via 7th.List from Pinterest