Student’s Sharing

KIM Jae Im, Tracy (BA Media & Communication)

As a city girl, the windy city feels like home now. Even so, there are times when I forget that I am from Hong Kong. As a third culture and immigrant kid, I somehow felt excluded in both of the cultures from my motherland, Korea and my current home, Hong Kong. However, I felt the inclusivity and unexplainable familiarity in Chicago because of the citizen in Chicago did not make me feel like an outsider.

Growing up listening to 1990s and 2000s American hip-hop music made me dream of going to America one day before I die. The American dream is surely based on the concept of the pursuit of happiness. But it is above all, a matter of ambition.

Joining the summer school, I thought it was a golden opportunity to immerse myself to opportunities and offerings that America has for me. Through increasing my understanding of cultures, networking internationally, and continuing personal growth, studying abroad gave me the skills and experiences which can potentially catapult my future career into a success.

Even though I had to challenge myself to diverge from my way of thinking and how I consider surroundings, I got to experience the inner workings of culture and tried my best to make attempts to understand others. With that being said, I learned to avoid ethnocentrism. I told myself to not forget that people from states and also other countries would have other customs, beliefs, etiquette, values or traditions that we should respect.

For instance, when I happened to come across my surroundings or people around me acted differently, I had to constantly remind myself to not assume they are making a mistake. Learning to appreciate differences was one of the learning points so far in my life journey.

People in Illinois has the ability to express however they want freely and directly. My reaction and impression on such behavior inspired me to be more comfortable in my skin and the way I think. I used to be overly self-conscious about the way how I present myself to the world because I did not want to face negative judgments from others. This part is still an ongoing process with lots of errors and trials to go through in the future, but in the meantime, I have a motto that can remind myself to stay focused: I AM GOOD ENOUGH.

Therefore, being comfortable in my skin and the journey in my life became one of my top priorities to care about. To be more specific, being genuine and real is to feel comfortable and it is okay to not be perfect in the eyes of others.

Beyond the personal growth, this trip gave me confidence regarding my education aspect of life. One of our professors during the summer school period, Dr. Mike Yao explained how we, media students do not have to be specialized in a single aspect of media career. He continued with his explanation saying he never worked for an advertising agency in his life and his current position at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) proves how you do not have to be good at just one thing.

The diversity and interconnectivity of media major studies that we had in UIUC pave the way for the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) students to think bigger and dream bigger. We should never settle for less and limit ourselves.

Truthfully, after so many years of studying, media studies made me question my choice and decision whether I am studying what I love. The main reason was because of the lack of guidance and experiences that I had in the previous media company. However, this summer school broadened my horizon to look above the typical career such as PR, reporter, production, etc. Professor Steve Hall showed us the whole list of his previous students’ current position in their workplace and I was shocked at how diverse you can reach in the media world. I did not know that media student can work under the politics field?!

Professor Steve Hall did not enjoy our first draft of the presentation. He thought that we should just delete all of the text and stick to just one word or phrase to present idea. He also added that we all prefer visual elements rather than texts, therefore utilizing pictures and infographics would be much more efficient and avoid visual monotony. He showed us his teaching materials, specifically his PowerPoint file and he had more than a hundred slides with just a single word per slide. At first, my initial thought was, "That is insane, so many slides?" But, he explained that many presenters in an advertising agency does the same thing as he does.

Now, I have to train myself to be articulate and speak coherently when I have to present any projects and he pushed me to speak my thoughts clearly. I am still on the road of becoming articulate and hope one day I can make Professor Steve Hall proud of me.

Middle of the Windy City

Finance Buildings in Downtown Chicago

Cloud Gate (The Bean) at Millennium Park in the Loop Community area of Chicago, Illinois