Posts Tagged ‘past’

One month after taking the GRE in Cameroon, I was able to find out my scores today via the telephone. I really didn’t intend on re-taking this excruciating test, since the scores I had from the first try were respectable; not fantastic, no, but passable. I suppose I thought I would give it another shot to improve my score.

What a bad idea that was.

I was never good with standardize tests. In the process of applying to college, I think I must have taken the ACT/SAT at least 6 times, and my score more or less stayed the same. Why I thought it would be different 5 years later is beyond me.

True to my Asian upbringing, I have a predisposition to brand name schools and the Ivy world. And with those institutions, comes the emphasis on standardize testing. While I more than understand that gaining admission to prestigious programs/institutions requires more than a perfect test score, I still hate the idea of having such blemish on my otherwise fantastic application.

I was brought up in the school of thought where your effort is positively correlated to the outcome that you will achieve. More time and effort in your studies yield good grades, performing well in your current task will be beneficial in your next move, etc. That school of thought has more or less applied to every aspect of my life; all except in the arena of standardize testing.

This evening, I attempted to understand why my emotions went array from the disappointing score. I realized it’s not necessarily the score itself, but rather that it did not reflect the effort that I invested. Also, I am kicking myself for letting ETS take another $180 of my money and wasted several weeks’ time preparing for this exam, when I could have been doing something far more noble – say, helping African people.

The more I thought about this test, the more annoyed I became. What is the point of this test? It is in no way an accurate depiction of my abilities. When will I EVER in my entire life find myself in a situation where I have to write an essay by hand analyzing an argument within 30 minutes? NEVER. How is my ability to recognize mathematics trickeries and calculate the distance between two point an accurate measure of how I will perform in economics or other quantitative-related courses? Furthermore, what is the point of knowing hundreds, if not thousands of esoteric vocabularies? Have we not heard of the dictionary?

I understand that these scores do not define my intelligence, but the mere idea of submitting them with the application means there are someone out there who will take those numbers as a measurement of my intellect. To the admissions committee, I am just another random person. *sigh* On the other hand, if some numbers will trump my two years living without running water, shotty electricity, all the while building 30+ libraries, then well, that’s just too darn bad.

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Ever been in a conversation where everyone is speaking a language you don’t quite understand or completely clueless about? That’s me from the very beginning of life. Well, I suppose that’s everyone. But for as long as I remembered, I’ve found myself time and again in such situations. Frankly, I love it.

It began with the family from my father’s side who speak Hakka, a traditional Chinese dialect. Hakka is less prevelant on the island of Taiwan than the more popular Taiwanese or the official language of Mandarin Chinese. I was fortunate to have grown up in a family where many languages were thrown arond at all times. Besides the holidays, I am seldom around the Hakka-speaking family, thus never quite learned the language. Now living in Cameroon, when villagers speak their local languages, I am reminded of holidays spent in the Hakka speaking village in Taiwan.

Besides the Hakka family, I have a blond-hair, blue-eyed American uncle who paid yearly visits to Taiwan. While always amazed at my parents’ ability to communicate with my uncle in English, I had absolutely no idea what was being said. Yet somehow always conveyed perfectly that I would like my uncle to take me in his suitcase back to the USA and go see Winne-the-Pooh.

Fast forward to 1998 when I suddenly find myself in a classic suburb of USA during first day of sixth grade, knowing only maybe 60% of what is being said to me. Nothing to help a kid learn language when you throw them in a setting where he/she is the only person not speaking the language. No one wants to be the “weirdo” in 6th grade, so one learns at lightening speed.

During time in university, I traveled to cities were German/French/Italian were spoken and understood very little of it. However, knowing English helped me saved a group of Chinese tourists who were utterly lost while waiting for a night bus in Venice. They approached me with somewhat atrocious English, so I helped them out by throwing them the Chinese rope. So they could breathe comfortably and not drown.

Fast forward again to 2008 when I somehow ended up in Cameroon, West Africa with the Peace Corps, sitting in the living room of my temporary host family, understand maybe 10% of what is being said. They gave me strange food to eat, but it was easier to just eat it than use French to figure out what the heck it was. Just as I am grasping Cameroonian French, I get sent to a small village that happened to have French students from France doing their internships. I have lunch with them, and their French is something like a different language than Cameroonian French. Whoa! Once again, smile and nod. And of course it’s always a pleasure when village mamas approach me speaking in Batié trying to tell me something, and I seek frantically at any kid around who can translate it in French for me!

And this is where I am today. I continue to embrace all the situations where I understand nothing of what is being said. Being a polyglot makes me a curious wanderlust, always seeking for the next time I can understand absolutely nothing and be wildly amazed. Searching for the next stop around the world, one language at a time.

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