Student Life: Take two

One year of teaching in China just came and went with the suddenness of a few congratulatory text messages and nostalgic pictures. The arbitrary mark in my service, while brief, was still notable. I thought back on the past year and enjoyed recognizing all of seen, learned, and experienced. The depth of my foreignness and the breadth of my ignorance of been constant breeding grounds for life lessons. The most important of which was recognizing the hazy borders of the plane on which I stand.

            Toward the end of last semester, I took the time to write out a description of my student’s lives. I wrote it as an outsider. I saw so much and understood so little. I had to deduce intentions and explanations according to perceived patterns. Looking back, and with an understanding derived as much from conversation with my students as from those observations, I see the fault lines of my own prejudice—deep canyons that not only form the borders of my world view, but also hold tremendous shifting power. And with each shift, an earthquake of change must follow. This post is an aftershock.

            My students live busier lives than the average 9-5’er in the US. That I can say comfortably. However, comparing their experience of time in college to my experience of time in college is difficult. Most significantly, this is because the role of the college and the role of the college administration is so significantly different here, at the school I teach at, than that of a college back in the US.

            The administration at my school is in charge of not only preparing students for their career, but also instilling in students appropriate social and political values as outlined by the central government, helping students develop useful performance talents, helping students develop healthy daily habits, and keeping students out of trouble. As a result, teachers are also scheduling extra lessons in political thought; dance, singing, and sport competitions; dorm room inspections and lessons on the negative effects of smoking; and mandatory evening study sessions. Clearly, the task at hand for teachers here is much more than is expected of a college teacher back in the states. Important to keep in mind is that I am at a technical school. I’ve been told the experience at a 4-year university is much different.

That said, I work in the tourism departments and my students are preparing to enter the service industry with degrees in hotel management, train/flight attendant, tour guide, and tourism management. The other departments on campus are land surveying, construction, art, geology (focus on resource acquisition), management, and accounting. Each student has two years at school and then a one year (or so) internship working with a company that very well might turn into the student’s job. Within the tourism department, the post-graduation employment rate is about 90%.

One of my students, Mǎ Hóng(马红), is a 19 or 20 year old female student majoring in hotel management. She sits in the middle of the classroom surrounded by a bubble of empty desks, spare one other student that she quietly helps with understanding the day’s English. Her English is most certainly one of the highest in the class. She is one of the only female students I see regularly eat at the men’s cafeteria. She only ever goes to the Halal restaurant and sits with one other female friend. When I asked her for a description of her daily life she wrote:

“Normally I wake up at 6 AM on Monday. At 6:40 AM I go to take a morning shower. At 7:00 AM I eat breakfast. Then, I go to class from 8:00 AM to 11:40 AM. At 12:00 PM I eat lunch and have afternoon break at 1:00 PM. At 2:30 PM [until 6:00 PM] I go to class (when I don’t have class I go to the library to study). I eat dinner at 6:00 PM. At 8:00 PM [until 9:30 PM] I go to evening self-study. At 11:00 PM I go to bed.”

I then asked what she does on the weekend and she replied “go to the library and review.” I asked her “all day?” She said “half day.” Beyond this, she also washes her clothes by hand every night. And, based on general student habits, it is likely that she also washes her bed sheets and hangs out her quilt in the sun once a week.  

Most students wash their bedding on the weekend. Once a week my student must post a picture of their bed and dorm room
after they have properly cleaned it so that a teacher can inspect it. This is part of their grade.

Tourism Management students practicing for a singing competition between different classes.

The female Tourism Department students dancing during "Sports Week" for which three days of classes were cancelled.
They prepared for several weeks to perform this dance together. 

Hotel Management students during a bed setting competition. It is events like this that happen the most frequently.