Two Parts of Me

这篇essay根据《古代》的作者Norman Cantor的说法，我们都是过去经验的产物。换句话说，就是过去我们所做的和我们所经历的造就了我们的性格，并且这些经历也在时时刻刻影响着现在的我们。作为一名在美国生活了四年的中国留学生，我认为我已经有所改变。就我个人而言，中国文化和西方文化的不同之处和其影响就是我改变的原因。

  According to Norman Cantor, the author of Antiquity, we are product of our past experiences.(1) In other words, what we have done and what we have experienced in our past shape our personalities, and those experiences makes us who we are now. As an international Chinese student having studied in United States for 4 years, I find that I have changed. As far as I am concerned, the culture difference and culture impact between Chinese culture and Western culture is the reason why I have changed.
  First of all, as a Chinese child, I live in a happy and harmonized family and a collectivism society. I am not single child, and I have a brother and a sister. When I was young, my parents told me to think others before myself, and do not be selfish. In addition, they always told me that I would make a lot of mistakes if I was stubborn and refused to listen to other’s advises. Therefore, I had learnt to be coping with collectivism and to go with the flow even though I might not feel comfortable. Sometimes, being a good kid meant I had to give up my own interests in certain ways. I was 4 years old when my parents started to tell me about collectivism. According to Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stage theory, I was at the stage of Initiative vs. Guilt. At this stage, it is time for a child to develop a sense of initiative, and feel secure in his or her ability to lead others and make decisions. If the child fails during this stage, he or she might develop a sense of guilty. As a result, the child could be slow to interact with others and sometimes may “inhibit” his or her own creativity.
During Initiative vs. Guilt stage, I was constantly told not to be selfish and always to give candies away to other kids even if I didn’t want to. My parents never really explained why I have to do that clearly, so I just do whatever they want me to do, or they would say that I was selfish child. Especially when my siblings wanted to share my stuff, I had to do it only because they are my brother and sister. As I grow up, I developed a habit that I tried to hide my own opinions in conference and group works. For me, I really didn’t understand how to express my thoughts because I used to worry all the time that I might hurt anybody else’s feelings. However, after I stayed in United States for only a month, I noticed that people say out loud how they feel and think on certain objects. If they don’t feel comfortable to do something, they would just refuse at the beginning. At first, I was terrified. My cultures and my past experiences tell me not to do that. For example, in China, if I really want to go and see a movie but my friends don't want to go, it means that I shouldn't insist on going movie. Instead, I need to ask my friends to see what they want to do and do it together. However, here in America, if friends don't want to come, people just go themselves or ask someone else. I am always amazed whenever I know something like that. For me, those kind of behaviors means betray my friends for me, but here, America people just tell me it's normal, because even if someone is your friend, he or she has  their own lives. Instead of betray, it actually means that you respect for your friend's choice. They call it as individualism. The first year in America I was only 16. According to Erikson, I am at my stage. It is my time to explore the world and find my own identity. I have been American for 4 years since then. I have learnt the meaning of individualism. I used tithing individualism is all about one's self, which mean people are selfish and stubborn. However, now, I know that my previous perspective is wrong. Individualism does mean consider oneself first, however, it is not necessarily meaning that people who practice it doesn't care about others at all. All they need to do is to take care of the selves first. Once they could take care of themselves, it means they have the abilities to take care about others. I like this idea. In the past I really put others first. Sometimes, I feel frustrated since I barely take care of myself first. Helping other under this circumstance makes me exhausted, sometimes; I even mess up my own things.
  However, unfortunate, I am raised in a collectivism culture and I have only been in American for four years. Sometimes I feel like I really want to do things in the ways Americans do,  such as telling my true feelings and desires, standing up for what I believe in but I just have feeling that something inside of me pull me back to my Chinese personality. This power is so strong sometimes that I could not reject it. just like what Freud has said once that we are all controlled by our own unconscious which developed when we are kids . (3) I guess that's one of the reasons that I am trying to find out who I am and what I want to do in this situation. I know I want to stand up for what I believe in, but sometimes I just know I couldn't do it for I am a Chinese deed inside of me, and if I want to do something like standing ， my Chinese experiences and personality just jump out and stop me form doing that, for I might get into trouble by doing that. According to my previous education and life experience, I know that no matter what I do, I should stay out of trouble; even it means I have to give up my belief. As a result, now I am I a stage of nowhere.  It is very complex for me. I am struggling for my Chinese identity with my American perspective. This is happened after I come to America. I have talked with a lot of international student about this issue. I am not surprised that almost everybody has similar problem despite where they are from and how old they are.
  In other words, it is hard to keep one's own identity while stay in another country, especially at my age. Besides I have found that American tend to be more individualism country, I also noticed that I felt isolation when I am in America. I am a Chinese and raised in a traditional Chinese culture, studying in America makes me have homesick even thought I have done a lot of preparation and research before I came to America. America is a highly individualism country, which means people do their stuff first. However, Chinese cultures teach me to help others as much as you can, even sometimes you have to much to do and you feel frustrated. In addition, in my home country, my parents basically take care of me about almost everything. The only thing I needed to worry was my study. However. Here in America, I have to live on my own. American educational system and Chinese education system is very distinguished. In Chinese school, we only need to concentrate on our study. On the contrary, there are not only school works but also out school activities in American school. In addition, students like me; we must live on ourselves while working hard on school works. It is not easy to find the balance between school and personally life. At the beginning I felt like I was throwing into a brand new world. Everything was new and fresh. So I felt very excited at the beginning. Leaving away from my parents and living on my own like what an adult would do make me feel a sense of freedom and proud. Classes were not hard at the beginning, and I was busy to set up everything, so at the first couple of months, I felt ok to be in America. However, as time went by, I found it got harder very day to balance my personal life and school. First of all, language was big problem for me. I had hard time communication with others by using English. I made some Chinese friends. But whenever we hang out together, I had a strong feeling of guilty, because I knew my parents work very hard to support me studying in America, and hanging with bunch of people who are from my original country would not help me a lot to improve my English and to adjust to American society. Second, American teachers requires to do outside classrooms research, which is brand new for me. In China, I basically just need to finish what my Chinese teachers told us to do in classrooms, and we didn’t really pay attention to improve self-learning skills. I was lost at the beginning, so I asked some of my classmates to form a study group so that we could learn and improve our grades together. However, even though my classmates would be willing to help me with my study, but they have their own time schedule so that they could not come to meet with me whenever I wanted to. I felt frustrated because in China, if I had some similar circumstance, my friends would give up their things to help me out. As a result I didn’t perform well in my school reports and stress building up every day.
I tried to work out myself first, but it didn’t work. So I went to get help from my parents like what I always did in the past. However, due to different time zone, it was hard for me to get contact with my family on time, which forced me to rely on myself. I tried to find someone to talk with; however, I suddenly realized that my friends in China had their own lives as well. If we tied to talked something, they wouldn’t understand me while I would understand their situations if they tried to tell me what happened in their life. As time passed by, I couldn’t handle this stress any more. I started to miss my family members and all my friends back China. I was crazy about going back to China where I felt most familiar and comfortable in. Every times when I tried to walk out my room, I had serious hallucination about everything in my room just moving around and the sizes of my furniture just became large or squeeze,  and I also had a strong feeling of dizziness like I was drunk so that I couldn’t walk straight. I also had amnesia. Sometimes when I walked on the stressed, I would suddenly realized I was standing right in the middle of the road without any idea how I got there at first place. My mental stage affected my school performing and ability of daily life functioning dramatically. I could not make to school because I felt serious panic and anxiety whenever I tried to go to school. When I was in bus, I had feeling of disassociation. I felt like I was in a totally different work. Like a psychological term describes it, I was addicted into my hallucination that I could not get myself out of it. What the worse was that I felt panic in front of public. I didn’t like people looked at me. I felt like they watched me and observed whatever I did. I felt like I didn’t belong to this world, everything was just so gross. This world was filled with disgusting people and pollution. One time, I felt so stressed out that I started to cut my self with a blade for two hours. It was a wired situation because basically I was watching a funny show at that time, while I cut myself and erase blood from my arm with a tissue paper. I watched my wound opened and healed without having any idea what I was doing. The feeling was very strange because I didn’t know what I was doing while I was cutting my arm at the same time. After two hours later when the funny show finished, I just suddenly realized that I was actually doing self-mutilation which I had never done something like that before. I realized that I had a break down and I got serious depression.
  Therefore, I had to go to local psychological clinic to see a doctor and try to get the help to pulled me out of situation, for I stopped going to school and I was actually facing a deportation operated by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. I went to a local clinical and diagnosed with major depressive disorder. As a result, I had to go to the psychological clinic and to take medication regularly. After several sessions of interviews, my therapist just told me that a lot of Asian immigration and foreign students suffered the same disorder as I did.
  Those two groups of people faced serious stressor once they arrive in United States, such as how to get to contact address from airport, where to apply a bank account or a SIM card, how to apply for a green card, how to find the most convenience transportation between school and dormitory, etc. Most of the Asian students are young when they leave their home country and come to America to study. The gap between expectation and reality is so huge that a lot of students want to go back to their home countries at the moment they arrive, and therefore, they just don’t have enough interests to find house, choose classes, prepare for exams and do their homework. Due to language and culture difference, some foreign students have hard time to adjust to local mainstream culture so that their social network is based on the students who are from their original countries. Even if some students do get in touch with local students, it is hard for them to really feel comfortable to hang out with locals students due to culture differences which make students don’t have secure feelings. Some students just go to school and come back home to play video game due to financial consideration. Under this circumstance, anxiety, depression and social phobia occurs easily, which may even cause more serious psychological disorder like what I had.
As a conclusion, the psychology of Asian foreign students is complex. There are enormous factors that could have impacts on those students. As one of those students, I know I am struggling with my identity and culture differences. I experienced it and I have a lot of friends facing the same problem. This situation should no longer consider as one of the subculture. On the contrary, it has became so obvious as the number of immigration and foreign students increasing that we have to consider it as one of the social issue we are facing right now.
  Reference
Saul Mcleod(2013), Erik Erikson. Simple Psychology . Retrieved October 14, 2014 from http://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html
Yuantao Wang (2012), Spain Foreign Students Are Facing Multiple Stressor.Chisa. Retrived Oct 14,2014 from http://www.chisa.edu.cn/news/syyw/201208/t20120807_414504.html
Personality (2014) American Psychological Association. Retrived October14, 2014 from http://www.apa.org/topics/personality/
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