National Security Language Initiative for Youth Chinese Summer 2018
It's 3 am and raining... AKA the perfect time to write :)I've been particularly bored tonight, so I thought I would write a little before I went to bed in a couple of hours. I just went on a walk in my neighborhood to get some inspiration, and in the end I decided to write about my Chinese experience in the last two years up to NSLIY. I'll talk a little about my NSLIY application process too if you are interested in that. There haven't been too many program updates, so I'll save them for a later post. In about a week I'm supposed to hear about my flight itinerary and my host family, so stay tuned :) Where to begin... I guess I'll start with talking about how I even got into Chinese in the first place. There is no clear cut moment of inspiration, but I guess a lot of little moments that influenced me to try it out. My earliest memory of hearing about learning Chinese was probably from my dad when I was six or seven. He told me I should learn Chinese because it would be the "global language of business in this century". I told him that was stupid and I went off to learn German for some reason (and failed). Going through how the image of China has changed in my mind throughout my life is a bit excessive, so I guess I'll skip to the summer before I decided to take Chinese I. It was the summer before 8th grade, and back then I was really into learning Japanese. I loved Japan and everything about it (yea I was kind of a weeb). Anyways, learning Japanese I guess was my focus in life at that point. I was pretty upset that my school didn't offer Japanese, so I decided one faithful day, sitting in Panera alone, that I would fill out the google form that I had an "interest in taking Chinese", in my mind the next best thing. Now for some background about the Chinese department at my school. Our department is small and surely underfunded, but it is fully developed. We have Chinese I through V and AP. We have one teacher for the whole department. The one thing that is unique to our school's Chinese program (and Latin) is that they have an opportunity for the 8th graders at the feeder schools to take Chinese I as a zero-period before school starts. You have to drive to the high-school, but a bus takes you back to the middle school after the class is over. Me, the high-achieving eighth grader I was, decided to do this. It turned out to be one of the best ideas I have had. Chinese I was not only unbelievably easy, but also fun. I think there were only like 12 of us with the one teacher, who might be the nicest person in the universe. Anyways, the 12 of us formed a real bond taking this easy course with no tests and many movie days. Even though I did spend the first few months trying to connect what I was learning with Japanese, I had a fun time and learned a lot about Chinese and China as a whole. The class almost made it worth it to get up every morning :) If you are considering taking Chinese I right now, do it!!! I can't assure you it will be as easy as my school was, but I can assure you it will be every bit as interesting! At the end of my Chinese I year, I had a big decision to make. Since I took Chinese I before school, my eighth grade year was still open to take a language at the middle school: either Spanish or French. I ended up taking French with Chinese I that year. But now that I was going into high school, 2 AP classes and honors everything else for my freshman year, I would have to drop either French or Chinese so I wouldn't have to take a zero period freshman year too. It was a really hard decision, but ultimately I chose to continue Chinese and drop French. I can't exactly tell you why, but it just felt right. Another great decision for my part. I'll put my 8th grade and 9th grade classes below so you can see what I'm talking about visually.
One other thing happened my freshman year that had a big impact on my life: I got to visit Japan for 3 weeks in the winter. It was an awesome trip, I got to see Japan, practice my Japanese, and have a nice winter vacation from school for a couple days. A few weeks before our trip, my dad and I decided to extend our trip by a week, but we wanted to do something with that week that would be meaningful. First thing we thought of was going to the beach in Okinawa, so we added Okinawa. As you might guess though there aren't many flights from Okinawa to Atlanta, so we had to find somewhere after Okinawa to fly home from. Our final choice: Taipei, Taiwan. Yes, I did get to see the country I will be living in all summer for a few days last year. I like to think of it as a preview. While we didn't get out of Taipei, I thought Taiwan was nice! It was a mixed bag of good and bad, but you'll get that anywhere. Looking back, it was a lot nicer than I initially thought when I was there. Overall, I am excited to see how life is on another part of the island and I am sure as heck ready to go back :) I started my freshman year taking the most rigorous classes I could, while balancing that with the huge time commitment that is marching band. There was one other thing that kept my fall occupied, trying to find an exchange program so I could study Japanese in Japan. Now I did go to Japan, but if you know anything about me, I have no problem with getting out of America for the summer XD. Believe it or not, this is how I found NSLIY, some Google search online for a Japanese exchange program. Now if you know anything about NSLIY, they of course do not have a Japanese program. But they did have what I thought was, again, the next best thing, a Chinese program to spend the summer in China. Now after convincing my parents to let me apply back in September, I did more research about the program. I was stunned. I found Youtube vlogs from alums that made it look like a dream come true. I couldn't believe that I had been handed this opportunity on a virtual silver platter. I spent 2 weeks just hardcore hammering out my application, until finally, on October 13, 2017, I hit submit. I read from alum that there are 3 things that they are looking for in an application: passion, independence, and drive to use what you would learn from NSLIY later in life. I made sure to max all 3 of them out in my application. Quick Side Note: Prior to my NSLIY application, I had very little passion for China and Chinese. Throughout this arduous journey of essays and interviews and long waiting periods, I developed such a strong passion for the language I grew to love. NSLIY gave me the opportunity to find what I love even before I step on that plane. Even if I didn't get in, I knew I would be content with the fact that NSLIY had given me love for China, that I will never lose. Back to the application process. NSLIY's acceptance rate is about 16.5% for the unacquainted. It shakes out to be about 1/3 of the applicant pool are selected as semi-finalists (December 1), and 1/2 of the semi-finalists are offered finalist positions (Mid-March to April). Most apply 3 times, flat out rejected the first time, next time rejected after semifinalists, and finally usually accepted the third time. So almost all of NSLIY finalists are sophomores, juniors, and seniors. So come November 30th, I'm stressing out (first-year freshman applicant), just waiting for my rejection letter. That next day, I get the email. I got offered a semifinalist position as a freshman!! I was so ecstatic I was almost crying. When you become a semifinalist, you then have to schedule an interview. Now it gets serious. But then again, my odds just went from 1 in 6 to 1 in 2 :) The day of my interview came. Me, as always, showed up so early my interviewers weren't even there yet lol! I was the first interview of the morning. Since I was there so early, I got to help them set up, so I think that increased my chances a little. When it was time, I went downstairs and had my interview. I had heard conflicting accounts whether the interviewer has access to your application or not, and for me, it was not. I had to explain my story to her, as well as answer a few "what would you do" scenarios. They have a sheet that tells them what questions to ask, so my person just picked and chose which ones from the list to ask. My interviewer did tell me one thing that surprised me though. About midway through the interview she told "Just so you know, I care more about how you react as you answer my questions rather than what you respond." I think that is good advice that you don't hear a lot, so any future applicants, don't forget to show your passion! My interview was pretty smooth and very fast, but nothing extraordinary that would make me think "yea I have this in the bag". On my way out, I did meet my first alum, a girl who did the Oman program a couple of years back. It was fun to meet one in person instead of through YouTube! But yea, my interview wasn't anything special, but I guess in the end it was good enough :) The longest waiting period in the whole process is between the early January interviews and the March-April finalist results. NSLIY does their finalist results kind of differently though. Since there are 16 programs in total (8 languages, 1 summer and 1 AY for each), NSLIY does rolling decisions. But it is over a looong period of time. Anywhere from March 1-mid April your program could publish decisions. But if your program releases and you don't hear anything the first day, you're almost a definite no. This year Chinese had to wait a while, while most of the other summer programs released. I was checking Facebook and College Confidential constantly... First Hindi and Russian, then Persian, then Arabic, then finally, Chinese results came in at the most unexpected time. I was home sick from school that day, so I was in bed on my phone. Suddenly I got the email. I literally fell out of my bed LOL! I got in!!!! I rushed down to tell my parents. It went something like this:
My mom: How are you feeling? Me: I GOT INTO NSLIY!!!! My Mom: oKAY BUT HOW ARE YOU FEELING XD but more seriously, all of my hard work paid off. In my haste to tell my parents I didn't even read my program location. So I ran back upstairs and scrolled in the email... TAIWAN??? I was not expecting that! I thought that was only for the academic year kids! Turns out, we are the guinea pig year, the first summer program in Taiwan. Was I sad at first? A little. But I got over myself pretty quick. I was going to Taiwan for 7 weeks for free!! The rest is history :) or I guess 3 blog posts lol. But that's my whole story. How I got into Chinese, how I found NSLIY, my whole application process, everything. It's 4:30 am and I'm very dazed so sorry for the weird sentence structures XD. If you have any questions for me, please comment or email me at [email protected]! I love sharing my story and maybe someday it will help someone get in :) If that's you or even if you read this before or after applying, please let me know! I'd love to be a resource to help you if that's editing your essays or just answering a question. I am about to post my whole application, essays and all to my blog, so read that too. Good night guys :)
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