Essay 1 Draft 3

Ke Ning

Professor Kelly Rowley

English 113A

8 December 2013

New Environment, New Situation

  In a person's life, they will be exposed to many different environments, some environment gave us joys and sorrows, some environment gave us many valuable memories. As the change of different environments, we are also changing. Include me in this situation. I always made the change, but just a little. After my high school I made a big choice. This choice was enough to change myself.

  Looking into my past, the whole high school life is just like a vacation, I can’t believe how fast the time goes by. In retrospect, it seems like yesterday I was a high school freshman. I felt I had nothing done in the high school until now. I never tried to challenge myself to do new things, no goals, no purpose, no surprises in the high school life. I repeat everyday life, getting sleepy. But faced with the coming college entrance examination, I felt helpless and afraid, afraid of my parents’ disappointed eyes, afraid relatives and friends laugh at eyes. I was afraid. I want to change myself. Not only in the high school, but also in my next way of my new environment of college.

  First, I changed my work and rest time. I become to have regular timetable. I irregular work and rest time is no longer what I did. I had the concept of time. I no longer procrastinated, I did things I should do immediately, not until the second day. At the beginning, I was not accustomed to it. When my friends called me, I went out. I always have no reason to refuse. But gradually, I had to learn to control my time. I became orderly.  Life was no longer confusing.

  With my high grade I ended high school life. I was faced with the choice of university. My parents wanted me to go to the United Kingdom with my sister, but I wanted to go to a new place where everything is new so I could create a new self. So, I came to America. At first, when I came to America, I was excited and scared. Excited was because it was a new environment and I could do everything by myself. Scared because it was new situation, I had no interpersonal relationship in the America, and it wasn’t like in China where my parents had many interpersonal relationships, and I never care about my problems. But right now I don’t want have the interpersonal relationship by my parents. Since childhood they take care of me, I am grateful to them, but I think something I still need to be by myself. Of course, they also agree with my idea. So they decided to let me have a try.

  Before I came to college I made a plan for the new environment. High school is different than college. So I needed to the change to suit the situation. Since I stayed a few days in America, I had a lot of problems, such as the culture difference and the customs. The customs of America are totally different from China’s customs. For example, in China’s restaurants we don’t pay for the tip, because the tip is included in the. Waiter’s salary. Sometimes, I would forget the tips. I felt embarrassed. Also, once I worked on my math class, that’s really easy and I always like to do the work by myself. So, when the math professor said group work, I still worked by myself. After class, my math professor told me needed to learn how to work together, not only by myself. After that, I tried to chat with my group mates, and discussed the work together. English is not my first language, so sometimes I would be too shy to talk with other people, American are more open than Chinese, In China, people conversations will be more tactful, so sometimes when I made a mistake they would tell me directly, and I would feel embarrassed. At the start, I just had a few friends. I felt lonely.

One day in the night I did Facetime with my mother. I cried and said I wanted to go back home. My mother gave me two choices and said: Going abroad was your choice, there will be problems. If you try your best to change but it still doesn't work, you can come back. Mother won't blame you, but you didn't do your best to solve the problems you want to escape. You can come back, but I will despise you. I remember before I left my father said to me: I need to strive at work. You do, too. Then I chose to stay here to try to be more by myself. After that, I tried my best to suit the environment. I studied America’s custom, I tried to talk with classmates and friends, and even though I have some pronunciation issues, I still tried to correct them. I tried to blend in to this new environment, to participate in more activities and meet more friends.

  Right now, I’m on my way to changing myself, I just want to prove my abilities in my friends and my family’s relatives eyes. I’m not a baby. I can create the interpersonal relationships by myself. I don’t need by my parents to solve everything. I can prove to myself that when I left my parents, I still can do all things. At the start I needed to assemble the furniture by myself. I needed walk a long time to find a market. Leaving a familiar environment was a very painful thing, but this was not a kind of torture, it was a kind of growth, the growth of courage, ability of growth, the growth of the self.    

  I am not just staying in my parents’ arms. I made a big change in my high school; certainly I can do it twice.