This is the script for my Pechakucha presentation, which I roughly followed. I had never done a presentation like this, and it was an interesting experience not having control over when the slides switched due to the 20-second timer. Each bullet point is around 20 seconds, but in some areas it is longer, and in some bullets I made sure to leave extra time so that I could use those spaces to keep track of where I was in the presentation, adding extra pauses if needed.

Creating this presentation in this form forced me to think even more about what I was going to say and how to consolidate ideas. Realistically, if someone were to ask me about my entire GEM experience, I would have considerably more than six minutes and forty seconds of speaking. Shortening my GEM experience forced me to really look at the main themes and main areas of growth that I have done.

Script:

  1. Growing up, my family was me, my siblings, my parents, and my grandparents. It was a very multicultural home. My grandparents and my dad are from taiwan, my grandfather didnt move to the united states until I was maybe four years old, so he cant speak any english and my mom and siblings and I all grew up just in New England (20)
  2. Living with my grandparents and being aware of that multi cultural dynamic got me interested in learning about other cultures because my grandparents only consumed taiwanese media which actually gave them differing political opinions than I just because of the difference in information we both received (40)
  3. In high school, I took advantage a program called global studies which worked to prepare students for a globally diverse world. Academically, I think the biggest thing was receiving an education that did not centre the United States. But most of my intercultural learning came because this class attracted many of our international students (1)
  4. So I ended up being friends with a very diverse group of people from all over the world, which really expanded my perspective on the world. This is me visiting one of my friends in Spain when I went to Spain last year (1:20)
  5. I wanted to continue my global learning in college which is what brought me to wesleyan and Global Engagement. One of my priorities in choosing a college was the ability to go abroad. Which was a little difficult with rowing, but Wesleyan was one of the only schools that supported me going abroad. (1:40)
  6. I ended up going abroad four times basically between rowing breaks whenever I could— to China, Spain like I mentioned, London, and Indonesia. And im actually not the only person on my team that has done that– here are all the wes rowing folk traveling abroad (2)
  1. But before that, I took up another language. I had learned mandarin growing up and was pretty proficient in it and I wanted to take up another language so I chose Spanish. Here are some of the many many Spanish quizlets I made (2:20)
  1. My first abroad experience was two months over the summer to China before Junior year. After taking Spanish for two years at that point I had realised I had forgotten basically all of my mandarin so I wanted to go somewhere mandarin speaking. I ended up choosing china because I wanted to see and experience something completely different from United States for my first time abroad. (2:40)
  1. It was definitely incredibly incredibly new. Having to deal with surveillance was completely new. Being in China made me also think a lot about my identity. Like I mentioned earlier, I am half Taiwanese so having to refer to myself as Chinese felt extremely uncomfortable but also necessary to avoid conflict (3)
  1. I also had gone my whole life being perceived as asian, so this was the first time I was called white. (3:20)
  2. That following winter, I realised I wanted to improve on my Spanish a little more, so I went abroad to Spain. I lived with my cousin, who has been staying in my room in Boston whilst im at wesleyan. It was great to be able to practice the Spanish I had learned at wes. But no one really wanted to hear my Spanish which was maybe a little insulting. (3:40)
  3. and I also thought people looked down at me because I was an American so my friend and I who I traveled with started this thing where we would only speak in a British accent because we theorised that that would gain us more respect (4)
  4. So that actually did not help at all and I learned that British people aren’t thought of too highly as well. I was looking for internships for the summer before my senior year and realised I actually didn’t know what I wanted to do for an internship so I may as well just get an internship abroad. So ended up working in sales for the summer which was incredibly boring and I will not being going back to that but I absolutely adored my coworkers they took me around London during our lunch breaks. (4:20)
  5. I actually struggled a bit at my job because I could not for the life of me understand English accents. No one had any problem with my English which was funny. But other than the accent thing, i was actually a little bored because London was super similar to Boston. Which makes sense because the English literally colonised Boston. (4:40)
  6. But they were similar to the extent that sometimes I would forget that I was even abroad. But I knew I had one more break and one more place I would travel to and I decided that I wanted to go back to asia (5)
  1. A lot of my coursework at wesleyan, being a government major, had been about the relationship between the global north and south and I wanted to see that in action. (5:20)
  2. I could see first hand the water crisis that Indonesia has. The water quality was absolutely terrible, if not filtered then it smelled like rotten eggs. Also, there were bottles of water everywhere and because of this a lot of plastic everywhere like in the rivers. (5:40)
  3. It was definitely a very uncomfortable experience being in Indonesia like that. (6)
  4. To connect these all together, Across all of these experiences, I started to see that culture is not just like differences between people. There is a huge institutional side with like power and politics. Intercultural competence, means being aware of your perspective, understanding context, and continuing to learn. (6:20)
  5. Unsure where ill end up but I hope to be able to take all of this away with me and to continue to learn (6:40)