experiencing life through an always-nuanced worldview.

Back in high school, I once had a conversation with a friend about human beings always striving for something higher, wanting more than what they already have. Back then, we concluded that such is human nature: as kids, we grow up, go to school, continue onto higher education, establish a career, get married, settle down, have kids, want our kids to grow up to be just as successful, etc. etc. From one stage to the next, we strive for more — be it for better or for worse. We are never quite satisfied with what’s in our lot. Now, don’t get me wrong: this is not a bad thing; it was merely an observation.

So, what does that have to do with anything? Well, recently, I’ve consciously acknowledged myself doing this, and have been trying to determine why it is that I seem to want to strive for more.

In the past few months, I’ve thought about studying abroad for a semester in Europe. Last semester, I decided that I wanted to go abroad to London, England. So, when this semester rolled around, I began to look for programs and universities that I wanted to attend. I even planned out my class schedule for the next 2.5 years, to see if I could still graduate and have taken everything for my simultaneous degrees, which actually worked out (in my plan, that is). Anyhow, it wasn’t until I realized that I couldn’t go abroad to London through the UC Education Abroad Program (EAP) for Spring semester of next year that I re-evaluated my decision.

I’ve had battles in my mind about this for quite some time now, and I’m trying to possibly convince myself that I needn’t study abroad for a semester because:

1. I already went abroad this summer to Taiwan (which “technically” may not count, seeing as I’ve lived in Taiwan before and have family there…)
2. With my simultaneous degree/double major, my class schedule will be tight. In London, I’d be taking classes for elective requirements only.
3. The class selections at King’s College (where I would have gone) are not broad at all.
4. I want to take so many electives that is offered for the undergrad program of the Haas School of Business.

However, I DO want to study abroad in London because of an idealized image/scenario I have in my mind about how it would be: me in a new city, with new and interesting people, attending school in a foreign place, having an amazing time going out both during the day and nights…

It is then that I realize: this is what I used to think, before I came to college. This is what I thought/wanted (minus the “foreign”/”new”, persay) my summer abroad in Taiwan. I had the time of my life in Taiwan this summer. I lived my “study abroad dream,” meeting new people, going to places in Taipei I never really knew existed, attending school… Coming to college in Berkeley, studying abroad in Taiwan, all of these experiences–it’s the same thing, in my head, which makes me wonder why I seem to have/want “new experiences.” I guess I don’t take time to realize that me being in Berkeley, away from home, is the “new/foreign” place; it was and still could be a place where I’m meeting new and interesting people, having an amazing time day/night; I am living my dream.

So what is it about my life that makes me want to continue and ask for more, continue to ask for a new scene? I don’t believe I’m unhappy right now, I don’t believe the people I’m around are un-interesting… So what the hell is it?!

I’m confused as ever but needless to say, I most likely will not be going abroad. Although I would love, love, love to stay for a month or two in London one day…preferably in the next few years, if I have the money to do so.

I guess we’ll see.

Having immigrated to the United States from Taiwan when I was eight years old, I cannot say that I was instilled with much (or “enough,”) of my own cultural background. Living the first eight years of my life in Taiwan and amongst Chinese culture, I was exposed to and grew up with learning the Chinese language, barely understanding Taiwanese (which, paradoxically, I learned to understand after I came to the U.S.), and writing Chinese characters as a second-grader should. Obviously, compared to the “ABCs” (an abbreviation for “American-born Chinese” many use), I have an “edge-up” on them in that I picked up bits and pieces of the Chinese and Taiwanese culture.

Even so, taking classes in Chinese literature at school both last semester and again this semester, I’ve come to realize how little I actually know about Chinese history, culture, and literature. Last semester in one of my classes, I studied various poets and writers of the pre-modern Chinese era. When I was younger and taking Chinese School — not even in school in Taiwan — I remember reading the famous poems of poets such as Li Bai (in Chinese). In my class last semester, we read the poems in translation (English) and discussed the cultural and historic background and influences on such poems and poets. Sadly, I think that was one of the only classes I’ve ever taken in my 19 years that really covered any part of Chinese history or Chinese literary history. This semester, in another Chinese literature class, we are reading the great Chinese novel Story of the Red Chamber (or Story of the Stone). Almost everyone in my class had read that book in Chinese/English before, or at least knew something about it. I knew nothing. I am almost ashamed at how little I actually know about my own culture.

That is one reason to why I almost wished I had lived in Taiwan for a few years longer than I did. In second grade, I wouldn’t have learned the great Chinese poets nor about the timeless Chinese classics; why would I? We never learned any history in first or second grade either, and I don’t expect to have. I suppose the kind of “cultural education” I’m saying I wished I received would probably have been junior high or beyond. But obviously, had I lived in Taiwan until then, my grasp of the English language would probably have not been as strong and I probably would have had an English accent. Moving here in elementary school gives one the best of both worlds in eliminating any accent on either end of the two languages.

Anyhow, even if I did wish I had gained more insight and knowledge of my own culture, it’s never too late to start. I am happy my school has such a great Chinese (East Asian) Department. Thank you, Berkeley!