Friday, March 30, 2007

New place, New Experience: A Blogger in California from Hong Kong






Today, it is March 17, which means I have here, in California, for two months. I’m Ian, a foreign exchange student from Hong Kong, and I’m the online photo editor for this semester’s Access magazine.

Within this short amount of time, I have experienced a lot, some ups and downs, but overall, a great learning adventure.

My Frat Brothers and Language Barriers

I joined a fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega. There, I have met a lot of friendly people who are passionate about community services. The brothers are helpful and have a strong bond. Joining the fraternity has made my exchange-student life more fruitful. Moreover, at the beginning when I arrived, I found that some people were speaking very fast, and I couldn’t really comprehend much. After a few weeks, I got used to the speaking pace, but, sometimes, I still couldn’t understand. That is the reason why sometimes I wouldn’t join the conversation with others.


Journalism 155, Access

I think that working in this course has widened my horizon a lot because it’s like we are working for a real magazine in the corporate world. Also, this course is practical because the class has been divided into different department, like front of book, circulation, online, features, art and management. The class works like a real magazine production house. Plus, I think that our class would have a good training because we have to cooperate with people from outside of class, like the photographers and writers. In a working environment, it is common to interact with different people from different department or companies. That’s why I think this course is practical and it prepares my classmates for the magazine field.


Hong Kong Culture

In Hong Kong, students are different from Americans: What I have observed is that students here are more serious about their academia. They pay a lot of attention and effort on their schoolwork and assignments.

U.S. students are very hard working. They work on weekdays and relax during the weekend by going parties or clubs.

In Hong Kong, it is a bit different; they don’t pay that much attention and effort. They can have different types of entertainment every day. After classes, they would always find some form of entertainment like having lunch or dinner with a bunch of friends. After going back home, they have different pastimes. For those who live in the dorm, the residents would have fun together, like playing TV games, playing Mahjong (a Chinese game). There is more of a vibrant nightlife in Hong Kong than here. There are karaoke, pubs, pool and restaurants all open 24 hours.

Hong Kong is a small place, it is easy for the Hong Kong people or students to reach their locations since everything is within proximity. That’s why nightlife is common among us: We can still see the same amount of people on the street as in daytime. So, the life of students is quite different between Hong Kong and United States.

As an editor


I’m the online photography editor, and I also edit a feature story about [confidential]. I feel a bit anxious because this is the first time for me to be an editor for an article. At the beginning, I had no idea what to do. As time passed, there was some guidance on what to do, what to turn in; I started realizing the tasks and obligations of an editor. I feel glad for being an editor because I have a new experience under my belt.

Being an editor is a bit challenging because apart from editing writers’ articles, we have to know how to interact with the writer. An editor has to pay attention to establishing a good working relationship with the writer. Otherwise, the writer would not be as willing, and you won’t have articles to put in the magazine. I’m relived that my writer, Mike, can turn in his work on time.

Also, I would like to appreciate the team’s effort in this magazine because I can see that everyone has put a lot of attention and time on. I want to give props to everyone because everyone had met all the deadlines. Everyone has done a GOOD JOB! We are already halfway through the end of publishing spring ‘07 Access magazine. WE CAN DO IT!

3 comments:

LT said...

Ian,
Great pictures. Great blog. Great job.

Iancyw said...

Lesger,
Thanks for your appreciation!

Joker Rita said...

Great Blog!