This I Believe 

Jiawei Yan 

This idea I am sharing today isn't about me, not only about me, but about us, about the experience we might all share. 

First of all, recall the first month or week that you had been in this country when you came to study, or the first year, actually. Has anyone who you talked to said anything like, “Oh, it must be tough living and studying with a foreign language!” or “Your English is good, though…” when you tell them where you are from and that you just came to the country? Well, please raise your hand if you have encountered conversations like that here... I have to say that these phrases are usually said by people all the time, regardless of how you identify yourself, or whether you think your English serves sufficiently your own study or your social life. Often, those who say these easily are those who themselves do not share any experience living overseas, or who never have to tackle the challenges such as overcoming a language barrier. They assume that it (the barrier) is unbreakable and is constantly suffering because most people have the fear of something they don't know.  

But the point is, we know, and we are facing it everyday. We try everyday and we learn everyday. Every time we have a word to say in our head that we know what it is called in our first language, it probably takes a bit of time for us to search in the vocabulary that we memorized earlier in order to say it in English. However, by the time we get it, the one who listens to it might already find other things interesting during the time we process in our mind. In other words, by the time that they are waiting for you to get to your point, they'd realize the difficulty, even just a tiny bit. And then they sympathize. They give you their sympathy by saying: "It must be tough, etc. etc." or by correcting: "you mean this, not that?" 

I'm not talking about how they should react towards anything we do. Because their reactions are natural to them and we can't really change others' mind. We don't want to judge, either. The most important thing, then, is how we react to what we do and what others see. And this is what I believe: we do not need sympathy. It's never that others would stop sympathizing, but that we need to tell ourselves that we don't need any of it instead of sympathizing ourselves when people give their sympathy, or thinking that we "deserve" to stay where we are just because "we have been through a lot." We have to be honest with ourselves that we haven't been good enough not to learn, not that we have worked on our abilities so that we are comfortable with where we are, with laying back from complex subjects of study or choosing to be in a class that involves less writing, or even staying in the circles of our original language and culture. Besides the interests that can be developed in multicultural perspectives when we put ourselves to the majority groups and actually initiate conversations, we need to believe, and always remember, that we are here for a reason. This I believe: we do not need sympathy.