Tag Archives: Education

Goals

Posted on by Ryan K.
  • Eat Local, if possible: As easy as it is to save a few bucks by eating in the dining hall post-graduation, I’m not researching food security for naught. If anything, books like Omnivore’s Dilemma prove to me that I at least should try eating a bit more sustainably. Luckily, it’s somewhat easy to eat with a conscience in Middlebury due to the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op and hopefully the return of the farmer’s market come Spring. If I can’t do it here in Middlebury, I probably can’t do it elsewhere. I would hesitate to say that I’m going to kick off a Bill McKibben-esque challenge to ONLY eat local (for a year) but I want to make an attempt.
  • Cook: Connected with the above goal, I need to be able to consistently cook my own meals with enough variety that I can eat “in” for an indefinite amount of time. Nothing against eating out, but this is a useful skill that I must develop beyond sandwiches and spaghetti.
  • Investing/Money Management: It’s a little scary when you’re mother says to you, “You’ve graduated, I’m handing over all the accounts for you manage now.” My economics courses at Middlebury were not investing focused at all. So, my goal in the next few months is do my research. Any good books, tutorials, etc?
  • Blog Every Day: In 2006, on this very blog, I wrote: “Blogging is something that sharpens my writing skills. It’s a daily renewal of writing, as a skill and that is important to me.” Still is true.
  • Find an adventure for post-May, preferably without a resume: So, Seth Godin talks about showing people that you deserve to be hired. I’m not even really talking about getting a job via guanxi but rather having my work speak for itself. I’ve been using this website as a portfolio for the past half year or so. It’s far richer and better than my actual resume.

Are there any other goals I should be considering?

Update: I’m adding a goal.

  • Read like a champion: If there’s anything that I pick up from the blogs I read is that the smartest people read a ton. I currently don’t and I blame it on Middlebury for making me “read” so much useless stuff in my time as an undergrad. Consistency of reading longer work (not just web news articles) is important to really understand issues and do research.

Middkid Rap vs. Yale Musical

Posted on by Ryan K.

Compare:

This Middlebury student-created “Middkid Rap”:

AND

This video, a 17-minute musical treatise from Yale:

I don’t pretend to be a higher ed admissions guru but as a social media guy, I take an interest in how schools are trying to reach applicants. By many accounts, schools like Yale, and yes Middlebury, don’t really need more applicants. Still videos like the one above show that schools have an opportunity to really blow past the traditional admissions brochures in reaching prospective students. Furthermore, it shows that the most valuable admissions tools is the energy and initiative of the current students.

But Middlebury has “no plans to use [the Middkid rap song] in any official way in our recruiting efforts,” says Dean of Admissions Bob Clagett. That’s because it’s not admissions-approved. The lyrics of the rap have lines like:

Continue reading →

Rift of Taste and Work

Posted on by Ryan K.

Ira Glass of NPR’s This American Life talks about “the gap” between your taste (ideals) and your work. He argues that you can’t really give up just because you know your work “sucks.”

I’ve given up before: singing. There was a point where there was an enormous gap between my vocal production as a singer and my ideal vocal production as a singer. I know good singing from bad singing and I was sucking. So, I gave up. I stopped singing seriously and I know to this day I’m not going back to become a professional or even a serious singer.

But I think I made the right choice. Ira Glass argues that you have to work at it for years to achieve success, and everyone goes through this period. I agree, but I quit at the right time. I quit to work at something else. And I am OK with that. I am fine with the fact that my singing today doesn’t match my taste.

Hangzhou Evaluations

Posted on by Ryan K.

Two weeks remain to complete classes and finals. And so I think it’s a good time to begin reflecting and evaluating on my last four months here in Hangzhou.

Academic Program
Two weeks into the semester, many students signed a petition to reduce our workload. Tao laoshi, our academic director, made minor changes but, overall, it seems that the workload remained as it was before. She was right about one thing, though — we “got used to it.” But the reality of “getting used to it” was that we students got better at doing less work to achieve similar results/grades. The sacrifice was depth of study. Many students began studying to pass dictation quizzes and regurgitate the textbook. Different class topics (Business Chinese, Classical Chinese, Newspaper Reading, Discussion And Debate, etc.) is a fallacy. It’s all one class focused on the language study not the content matter. Of course, there were glimmers of hope on occasion (thanks to Cong laoshi and Mao laoshi) but the foundational setup is for language acquisition not cultural study. The academic program is not at the level intensity of Middlebury summer school nor the Middlebury Dept. during the school-year but, that said, the program accomplishes its goal: we learned more Chinese. Most important in the future is to manage student expectations coming into the program. Middlebury says little to its students about the program prior to leaving for China — this needs to change. Students need to know (before they arrive) that study abroad China is not a “walk in the park” academically and that there is no choice but to adopt the goal of studying Chinese intensely. For once, I think the Chinese program students may have run into the Chinese burnout. That should never happen or else you risk students losing their passion for studying the language.

Residential Life
CET, Middlebury College’s partner, runs the residential portion of the program here in Hangzhou. Our strongest connection to CET is through our Residential Director Lin Laoshi. There is a reason he is popular among students: he is upfront, open, and manages expectations very well. Any higher education administrator (including the well-respected deans back at Midd) can learn a thing or two from him. He helps set our expectations from before we even step foot on the continent and then ensures that our experiences exceed those expectations. For that, residential life here is good. Chinese roommates are great and that tradition should continue in that fashion. However, I think there is room for alternative residential options here in China. I asked about a homestay option before coming to China and was flatly denied. Too much work and hassle. But I think CET should make an effort to try homestays to vary the experiences of students here in Hangzhou. As it stands now, all us American students have almost identical experiences here in China and, yes, we’re learning but we’re not learning from each other. A deeper cultural experience here would require adding another dimension to the program and one was to do that would be adding homestays.

Odds and Ends
- It’s a pity that the School in China refuses to give up Friday afternoon one-on-two class. It prevents students from leaving in the morning after their exam. Dedicated students should get the opportunity to at least try to make it a three day weekend by traveling somewhere new. Instead, if you have a late Friday class, you feel the opportunity to leave for the weekend is greatly dampened.
- All of our essays are written by hand. While in first and second year Chinese, I understand the logic of remembering characters this way but by the time you get to China, not of even Chinese people hand write anything more than their name on a regular basis. Give us a break from the two hours each week we waste copying characters from the computer to paper.
- Still a little bitter about getting a forth-floor room which are somewhat less well-endowed than the first through third floors. But hey, you win some, you lose some.
- Extracurriculars (taichi, calligraphy, martial arts, street dancing, etc.) are fun. Keep that up.

Overall
I think coming to the Middlebury School in China is a very worthwhile opportunity for those studying upper-level Chinese. Middlebury students may not have much choice for now. But the city of Hangzhou and a well-run program here are attractive. It’s a no-brainer to come here for a semester. Certainly, the program needs some tweaking still, and I hope maintains its quality even as folks such as Lin laoshi (the resident director) move on.

Chinese Schooling

Posted on by Ryan K.

Last week, I visited two private elementary/middle schools here in Hangzhou. The difference? One was meant for domestic immigrants to the city of Hangzhou and the other was a high-priced exclusive school for Hangzhou locals.

China has a “hukou” system in place where each citizen belongs to a place (a village, a city) in China. If your mother was born in the countryside to parents who were also country-folk of a particular village, you too “belong” to that countryside village. The original purpose of the hukou system was to divide land among citizens and during the communist rule it easily divided citizens into units to distribute services. But today, the hukou system only exists to prevent every farmer from China’s interior or west from moving to the coast, the more prosperous part of China. One of the restrictions is that children that go to cities with their parents to find work (usually low-level hard labor in factories or construction) cannot attend public schools in the city that they don’t “belong” to. So, private schools fill the gap in education needs.

I expected the so-called “immigrant school” to be somewhere closer to the one-room school-house in dire need of chalk. But in reality, Hangzhou’s immigrant school was in excellent shape. They boasted music, dance, and computer classes alongside a student population of ethnic minorities, families with more than one child (60%). I was impressed. The principal, a man from Hangzhou, said the school had been open 8 years and that they were proud to be serving the immigrant population. Tuition was 500RMB per a semester, still a good amount for working families, but within reach because of government grants.

The supposed other end of the spectrum was a private school where uniforms and projector-installed classrooms reigned supreme. I visited a middle-school Chinese literature class on the great Lu Xun, THE Chinese modern author. I didn’t understand half of what the teacher was saying but most revealing was that class was a balance of old and new teaching. The first half of the class was traditional style, repeat after the teacher and keep your head in your book. The second half of the class included a powerpoint and lots of hands in the air waiting to answer questions. No one got a price on tuition here but chances are that it was high.

The goal of all Chinese, of course, is to avoid private school altogether. Public schools are not only cheap but have the best and brightest teachers and students. Overall, this week’s trips finally gave me a glimpse into what I study weekly in my one-on-one course on Chinese education.