A Day in the Life

One of the topics my students ask about most is American university life – What’s it like? How’s it different from China? Are there similarities? etc. I always try to answers these types of questions to the best of my ability; I use my words to paint a picture of a typical American college or university. Unfortunately, I don’t think my students are always convinced by my answers and explanations.

So, while I was home over Spring Festival/Winter Break, an idea struck me: If I can’t successfully explain American college life to my students, what if I could show them?

And so the “Day in the Life” video production began. For those of you who may not know, my fabulous younger sister, Sammy, is a college student herself at Appalachian State University. Not only that, she is also a sophomore who studies English – just like all of my students! Coincidence? Definitely. But, a coincidence I decided to take full advantage of.

So, when I went to visit Sammy at school for a long weekend, I brought along my flip camcorder and followed her around, recording her daily comings and goings. I taped her getting ready, going to classes, eating meals and everything in between. Then, I edited the video, added some voice-over and music and Voila! “A Day in the Life of Sammy” was complete.

I showed this video to all of my classes on the first day of this semester so that they might finally get a real feel for the life of an American university student. Then I told my students that they could come up with a list of questions for Sammy (about anything) and I would get her answers and show them to the class. I thought this would make the whole experience even more interesting for them, as well as a little more personal. And so, I collected their queries and I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of questions.

So, two nights ago when I finally got around to interviewing Sammy, she asked me, “Oh my gosh, Liv – have you typed these questions out? I want to remember these forever.” Which, as you can probably tell, is what led to this blog post – because I think you’ll find these questions just as entertaining as we did.

Most Popular Questions:
- Why do you want to be an English teacher? What are the requirements for becoming an English teacher?
- What’s your career plan? Will you teach abroad/in China like Olivia?
- Do you have a boyfriend? If not, please describe your ideal boyfriend/dream man.
- What do you do during your vacations? Do you have a part-time job?
- Do you pay for your own education or do you use loans?

Most Difficult Questions:
- What percentage of your monthly allowance do you spend on entertainment?
- What’s the most popular dressing style at your university?
- When did your parents allow you to have your first boyfriend? How many have you had since then?
- Do you think your college classes are actually useful?
- What do you do if you have a friend who you don’t really like, but you have to get along with?
- What will you do if you can’t graduate from college in four years?
- How would you compare American university life to Chinese university life?

Our Favorite Questions:
- How do you organize an exciting party?
- What kind of parties do you go to? What do you do at these parties?
- Would you ever date a Chinese guy?
- What do you do if you meet a boy you like? Will you take action?
- Will you get married as soon as you graduate from college?
- Do they have balls? If yes, how often do they hold them? And what do they do?**
- Can you describe your ideal brother-in-law in detail?

And, probably my favorite of all the questions was actually a sort of survey from a group of girls. This is what it said:
1. Do you have a crush on the guy in your creative writing class? Yes or No
2. If yes, have you ever taken action? Yes or No
3. What is your ideal boyfriend/describe your real boyfriend.
4. What were your actions and what was the result?
5. American girls are well-known for bravery. Come on! Go for it!
Yours, Conservative Chinese Girls

You can't deny it - it's adorable!

Needless to say, Sammy and I had a great Skype date reading through and answering all these questions. Also, I’m in the process of attempting to put up the “Day in the Life” video on YouTube. If this ever happens, I will certainly post it here (with Sammy’s permission, of course).
In other news, after 7 hours on a train (a pretty nice one, actually!) I made it to my destination of Xiamen where I am now writing from my lovely hostel room. It’s a little rainy, but the temperature is nice and I can smell the ocean already! Tomorrow I’ll begin exploring and adventuring, but before that, I need some serious beauty sleep.

The first of many awkward selfies - this one's in the train station

Also, the cutest (and probably cleanest) hostel room I've ever seen

Goodnight, y’all!