MERGED: Art & Identity

A few weeks ago, a few friends and I submitted an art project entitled MERGED to The Balcony art show. It was my first time participating in an art show at Pomona, and it was a really neat experience. (I might be overblowing my role in the project -- mostly I connected the people who thought up and designed the project, helped write the artist statement, then showed up to a...
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What Are College Summers Like?

It's that time of year -- everyone seems to be anxiously applying to programs/internships/jobs/research positions/funding etc. Over Family Weekend, standing in front of my CDO Summer Experience Funding poster, I fielded tons of questions from eager parents of first-year students. I've been asked the vague questions "Where do you want to be this summer?" and "What are your s...
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Returning from Abroad: New Perspectives on Pomona

Coming back from studying abroad has been a difficult adjustment, compounded perhaps by having returned to the States only 6 days before arriving in Claremont. For a couple weeks, I was overwhelmed -- by the sheer number of people I knew on campus, by jumping right into classes without having time to readjust or catch up with friends, by having to answer the same questions abou...
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Education on a Farm: What You Can’t Learn at a Liberal Arts College

Extending my post-study abroad travels through winter break means I don't get to spend the holidays at home. Luckily, I get to spend them on a 10-acre organic farm in the tropical hills of northern Thailand -- not a bad alternative. I am spending 17 days WWOOFing at Mae Mut Garden, doing volunteer work in exchange for room and board. In the past 2 weeks, I have learned so...
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Travels and Thailand

In the last couple of weeks, my semester in Kunming ended, I spent a week traveling in China, and then made my way to Thailand. It has been quite a whirlwind, but I’m finally settled down on a farm in the mountains of northern Thailand for the next two weeks. My semester ended with a week of finals and a paper presentation. During the last few weeks of the semester, each...
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Field Trips and Farms

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been on two very interesting class field trips -- one to a Christian Miao minority village and one to an organic farm. As part of my Ethnic Minorities in Yunnan class, we visited an isolated Miao (Hmong, in English) village about 3 hours outside of Kunming. Besides honoring Miao traditions, this village was unique in that almost everyone p...
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Thanksgiving in China: At Home Away from Home

I'm not someone who is particularly into Thanksgiving. At the risk of sounding like a party-pooping Grinch, I have to admit I've never been too crazy about the holiday some people claim as their favorite day of the year. I like the idea of a day set aside to give thanks, I love having a break, and it's pretty great to spend an entire day eating. But the American tradition o...
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Classes in Kunming

Browsing through Pomona's newly released Spring 2015 course schedule, I couldn't help but think about just how different my classes here in Kunming are from classes at home. The most obvious difference is that all of my classes are conducted in Chinese. Adhering to the language pledge, we speak no English at all. Another major difference is size. While my classes at Pomona can ...
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Fall Break: Lost in Rural China Edition

After a long week of midterms, a few friends and I set off for a week of terrifically underplanned backpacking adventures. We had not yet booked hostels or figured out any transportation, but with packed backpacks, the exhilaration of having finished midterms, and overconfidence in our Chinese abilities, we boarded a 9-hour overnight train for Lijiang. (more…)
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Why Study Abroad?

A pretty large number of my Pomona friends are studying abroad this semester, and if not this semester, they plan to go abroad in the spring. We are in places as far-flung as Cameroon, Germany, Australia, Hungary, China, Greece -- the list goes on. We all made the decision to forfeit a semester at Pomona, giving up loads of interesting classes, on-campus involvement and respons...
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