Communication II

International student

Shim Lew, whose hometown is Seoul, is a graduate student majored in teaching English as the second language. In her opinion, State College is really a rural area, which is greatly different from Seoul. The main difference between State College and her hometown lies in the pace of life. In Seoul, people are usually speedy while people in State College are more patient and tend to slow the pace of life. As a nervous person, she took a long time to get accustomed to such kind of life. She likes studying at Penn State since there are many excellent scholars. It is very hard to get a tenure position in her department, so the quality of faculty members can be guaranteed. She also mentioned that there are few part-time students at Penn State, which creates a favorable academic atmosphere. When we talked about the good restaurants here, Shim recommended a used bookstore at Allen Street where people can enjoy comfortable reading and delicious food. Besides, she is also interested in Bigbowl, where I always have my super. Shim thought there was nothing special about her life on weekends. As a Christian, she usually goes to the Church on Sunday. Sometimes, she will have dinner with her friends on Saturday.

Local student

Brad, whose hometown is Butler, Pennsylvania, is a graduate student in our research group. He thinks State College is very similar to Butler considering the city size and the number of citizens. However, there is a big difference between the two places in the aspect of culture. Due to the large amount of international students at Penn State, the life in State College is full of diversity compared to that in Butler. As for Brad, it is more interesting to learn from people with other cultures. He likes studying at Penn State although there is a lot of work to do. As a teaching assistant, Brad tries to make the chemistry knowledge easily understood by undergraduate students who are not majored in chemistry. Brad recommended a good pizza place on the South Acton Street where we can get any type of pizza we want. Another restaurant is Madmacks, which provides good Mexicon food. On weekends, he usually hangs out with his friends, does grading assignment and prepares food for the next week. During this period, sleeping, one of his favorite things, can help him get recovered from the busy weekday life. Moreover, Brad is also interested in cooking for a bunch of people.

As a new graduate student majored in chemistry, Brad is in the same research group with me. Recently, he had a conversation with two strange girls when they were waiting for bus. At that time, the two girls wanted to know the bus time. Brad gave them his bus schedule and then started the conversation. Brad used to shake hands when he introduce himself to another person. In his opinion, the expression "How do you do?" is too formal. Usually, he will choose one of the following expressions: "How are you?" "How is your day?" "How is going?". Similarly, he only stands up in a formal event when someone introduced him to others. Since Brad spent a lot of time taking bus, he prefered to communicate with strangers on the bus. Being a extrovert boy, Brad likes to find out some common points between him and others and strike up a conversation. I still remember how he started the conversation with me. When we met for the first time, Brad said happily," Hi, we have the same bag packet. So interesting!"

As for me, I will start a conversation with a stranger only if I have a good feeling about him/her. Actually, I had a recent conversation with a Chinese student at the Walmart. We just talked about our impression of State College.