Journal 57: Welcome to My Special Place

If I would bring anyone to any place I want, I would bring my friend in the United States who used to say that “Taiwan is nothing but a small island” to Taiwan. I would like to show her that she is wrong. I would like to show her that Taiwan is not what she expected, an undeveloped little island without any trace of civilization. Taiwan is a place full of cultural diversity and enthusiasm. We definitely have a highly-developed society. Taiwan is known for its hard-working, sincere, enthusiastic, and welcoming people. Anyone who has been to Taiwan can surely testify that they have been helped warmly by local Taiwanese citizens. If she looks at the development of a country in another perspective, I can tell her that Taipei city is not much different from the important cities in the United States. Taipei city is surely a bustling city with commerce and social activities going on every day. Taiwan to many people is not just a small country, but a place where dreams get started, planned out, or achieved.  Me, myself thinks of Taiwan as a place of where the place connects. Because of the cultural diversity and tolerance of Taiwan, I then have the opportunity to learn and accept the different cultures and study at an American school where I can get to achieve my dream and goal of studying abroad.

Journal 56: Big Apple

I have always wanted to live in a metropolitan city that connects that can fulfill my wish of connecting to the world. Living in a global network for me is like experiencing different cultures at the same time. You can choose to whether assimilate with a particular culture or learn important life lessons and even establish your inclusiveness or tolerance of cultures and concept different than yours. I believe attending a university like New York University will educate me to become a well-rounded adult in many ways. First of all, the experience of a cross-cultural society is not one a person can encounter ever day. Living in a society like this enables me to have a broader sight of the view. Seeing the diversity of different people, cultures, and ways to handle situations can enable me to be more tolerant to different opinions and help me develop more diverse techniques to a variety of situations. In my opinion, learning is not just from a text book or in school. The environment is also important in which people absorb the information they experience every day subconsciously. Thus, interacting with exotic people is like reading different genres of books. Each book has a specific topic you can learn from and is important. Learning from these books can help you adapt to any environment you arrive fast. In conclusion, a cross-cultural society is like a bridge that leads me to a world of broader opportunities.

Journal 55: Public Interest

I think the public interest this quote is talking about is to seek materialistic success. The majority of college graduates these days tend to find jobs and careers based on how high is the salary or wage paid. Little of them ever think of their rue interests and specialty in which certain field. I do not think it is their fault that they think this way, but rather it is our society that changes them. The society today values economic ability and success more. It is as if our success is based wholly on how much money we make but not on how much self-actualization we really achieved. Many people then feel they have no passion for what they are doing, whether doing a research in a lb or typing in an office. Many people also start to lose the most basic human nature of sympathy for other people or the zeal to help out others. Due to the change of society, it seems that finding a job is easier for people who have better relationships with employers or friends who can get to the employer. Even though they have better skills for work, they sometimes couldn’t get recognized by employers because they have no portal for the employers to meet them. I think the quote is saying that only by restoring these righteous basic principles can we achieve the true meaning of a democratic society.

Journal 54: Literature and Death

I agree with the author of the quotation that literature is the best and most effective way to overcame death. In other words, it is a way to live one’s life. Writing is better than acting in many ways. I do not think acting is a formal way to express one’s feeling or record one has been through. In a sense, one is just acting out another person’s life rather than taking it and transforming into one’s own life. On the other hand, writing is a way of recording a person’s own life. It is evidence that a person has truly lived this life and fully recognized the meaning and importance of it by writing it down. It enables us to remain in the future by leaving something, for example experiences, that is your own. Thus, keeping a journal is the best way to live in the present and remain in the future. In my opinion, photographs, drawings, or even songs can just be a temporary memory of an event. Those kind of expressing methods do not specify the whole process of an experience. Instead, it just gives you a incomplete memory that a person may not even remember that stays in the past.

Journal 53: Reasoning and Insight

I agree with this quotation because me myself has the same findings. I can say that I have somewhat suffered from memorizing all the intricate equations of mathematics. What makes the equations so hard to understand is that unlike Sciences, you cannot observe the reasons behind a certain equation in everyday life. The number system itself is not a discovery; it is simply a creation by a creator. It is the creator that determines the meaning of each concept in math, and not what we have observed in life. The computational methods are not observational either; it is directly created by mathematicians. On the other hand, the field of science usually contains findings from experiments and observations. There is no creator behind a concept in the field of science; scientists only name what they have found. For example, when the scientists discovered cells, they name what related ti the whole subject. What makes the field of science easier to memorize and more insightful is that we can memorize more profoundly by investigating and observing for ourselves. Not only does the evidence from observations serve as insight of the world, but also the “rigorous reasoning” as in math. In result, science is a subject of valued insight to find out tiny place; mathematic is a rigorous way of reasoning to put the equations in different ways for eauations.

Journal 52: Life of Service

For me, a life of service is a life of learning. You learn while you provide any kind of service for others. And To do well on your life of service or learning, you will need to hold a certain kind of belief and persistence.

My life of service is being a teacher assistant at Fremont Chinese School. I hold the belief of maturity, discipline, and kindness toward students. You need the maturity to set the define goal of assisting the teacher diligently. You need to teach the students with patience and with clarity. You could not lose your patience while dealing with children. What they need is the patience, kindness, and time to educate them until they understand. I constantly reminded myself to follow these rules because if comply with these rules, I believe the students will also put their best effort to cooperate with you. That way, I can learn more good lessons from this teaching experience.

This service learning really helped the renewal of my mind and community improvement. Every time I helped the teacher instruct a lesson to the students, I felt like I helped the society improve a step further and created a bright future for the country by educating the next generation. I think this helped enforce my sense of confidence and renewed my mind of a new reason or goal for life. 

Journal 51: The Best Laid Plans

The most challenging difficulty I faced I life must has been the time when I thought I was prepared for the High School application test in Taiwan. During ninth grade as the test date neared all students were very nervous and all started to plan out their review schedule accordingly. Because I missed the seventh grade school year in Taiwan, I really do not have a appropriate schedule for reviewing. Even when I tried to concentrate on reviewing, I started to get frustrated because there were so many questions I do not know how the answer due to my lack of learning in seventh grade. I then hypnotized myself that I will know the answer just by “reading” questions without doing them, and I will just know as time goes on or when the test date arrives. I was also somewhat influenced by my peers that the test is going to be easy; this made persuade and soothed me even more that everything is going to be fine. However, when the test came, I soon regretted that I have not put all my heart into reviewing. I felt like I have been awaken from a dream; I was forced to face the truth of needing a good reviewing plan. In the next two months, I gathered myself up and wrote a complete preview plan. I worked accordingly o the plan and made devotion to abstinence of using the computer and watching TV. My plan worked well. On my second and last high school application test, all subjects of the test improved. This taught me to face any dilemmas in life instead of trying to escape by consoling yourself; only by confronting unpleasant truths and weighting both sides of an issue can one clearly understand the choices and make the right decisions.