| Wow, I don’t use xanga very much anymore… my last post was on Sunday, October 22, 2006.. -_- I think I wrote about how time flies by at Northwestern… and it turned out to be so right.. my freshmen year just flew by, and I’m already done with it… is this how the rest of college years is going to be? In high school, the year seemed to drag on and every week, day, and hour seemed to drag on… So different in college… the weeks fly by and even though i live through them, I don’t have very much awareness about time or what I’m doing with that time exactly.. Looking back at freshmen year, I feel like I’ve come across so many different situations that I’ve never been in… Living in the Midwest is certainly different from New England, and people are very different. I’m still not sure how to deal with being a typical New England boarding school graduate in a place that views the East coast as snobby and stuck-up. Inside, I love Exeter to death and this year has just proved to me that though I may not want to live through it again, it will always have a soft spot in my heart. But outside, I’m always embarrassed to say that I went to Exeter and often times I omit that part when I meet new people and they ask where I went to high school. It’s often hard when people will have preconceptions about who you are, whether they are good or bad. Being in Midwest for college has cleared up a lot of my identity issues, I think. In high school and at the beginning of freshmen year, I always struggled to make myself fit in with Korean people and never really identified myself as Korean-American. But at some point, I stopped trying to make myself friends with the “fobs” and just let myself be. Though I still do not feel completely comfortable with my American friends at school, I don’t feel that I am missing out on anything by not being friends with Korean people. And also being in Midwest has made me realize how much I miss New England and how much living in New England has shaped who I am. I realized I’ve never missed Seoul or Korea like I missed being in New Hampshire or Boston, and I feel like I can now really call this place home. For my meditation, I wrote about not being sure of where I fit in the picture of being Asian or being Asian-American. I still don’t classify myself as Asian-American because at least in college, Asian-American often refers to a specific group of people, much like being just Korean, who hang out with each other. But now I know better than in high school, where I think I tried to downplay my American-ness and struggled to bring out my Korean self in order to try to identify more with my friends. And for the first time in my life, I think I’ve felt closer to more guys than girls. But at the same time, I have such a hard time understanding them. I think a big part has to do with the fact that not only do they come from such different backgrounds from me but also I apparently don’t understand guys in general -_- Sigh… At this point, I think I’ve given up on understanding them.. and if I haven’t yet, I should soon -_- |
