Aside from my background. I would also like to share my life experiences here in the US. In this biography, I explore the good, the bad and the ugly in relation to the experiences I have faced during my stay in Los Angeles. First off, I would like to indicate that my formative years were spent in a completely different culture. So, I was socialized differently relative to most of the people I interacted with in high school. I moved from a collectivistic cultural orientation into a completely different setup. My upbringing impacted my level of class connectedness; I was passive in class. I also grappled with loneliness for a considerable amount of time. Most of the students I interacted with during my high school years were somewhat language proficient; I, however, grappled with perceived language incompetence; my friends were outspoken; they responded freely to questions raised by teachers.
Also, I would say that the collision between the Chinese and the American cultures somehow impeded the extent to which I could realize socio-cultural adjustments. I, from time to time, entertained the thoughts that my cultural predisposition was somewhat inferior. These thoughts made me overly self-conscious and bled into my classroom participation. While this was a challenge in my freshman and sophomore years, I was lucky enough to have good friends by my side by the time I transitioned to junior. This company provided the needed support and entrenched a sense of belonging in me in ways that encouraged me to interact more with others and to learn from them as well. Looking back, I would say that I have come a long way. I converse freely with people these days; I am more proactive now than I was when I first got to Los Angeles. It took me a lot of reading, talking to people in attempts to get off my comfort zone and I succeeded.
My woes, however, did not stop with the challenges in school; my initial weeks in the US were also marked by dietary challenges. I harbored misgivings about food which compounded my already unpleasant experience in the US; I would say, overall, my stay in LA and school life at the outset was a nightmare. I was exposed to the kind of food that I was not used to n Shanghai. While I did experience such a challenge at the beginning of my sojourn here in the US, I do not experience them as much. I am more acclimatized now and I enjoy my stay here.