Alumni Feature Stories

TRAVELING THE WORLD IN 2020 - ANNIE WU SU ’89’S COVID-19 FAMILY GAP YEAR

By Connie Ma, Alumni and Community Outreach Officer

Who would take their family with three children on a travel gap year around the world in 2020? Maybe only a family that has already done it twice. In 2020, Annie Wu Su ’89 and her husband, Jonathan Su, took a leap of faith repeating what they began with their children in 2008 and 2015. This team of five survived multiple quarantines, COVID-19 tests and uncertainties to make it through 13 countries, four continents, and the pandemic throughout 2020 and 2021.

Annie and her family on the beaches of Portugal on their third gap year in 2020

WHY A FAMILY GAP YEAR?

“When I look at my life story, the concept of traveling began at TAS,” recalls Annie. “During my three years as a Tiger, I joined IASAS and traveled to the Philippines for the first time in my life. The sights, sounds, culture, food and people left an impression. Joining ’Journeys into Asian Culture’ organized by Mr. Arnold impacted me for life, sowing the seeds to see the world from a new lens. Over 35 years, this seed developed into my own expanded edition: Journeys into World Culture— Becoming a Global Citizen.” In 2001, Jonathan quit his consulting job to pursue his childhood dream of helping the poor and the marginalized by doing community development. The family moved to Kunming, China so Jonathan could work for World Vision. “It was an intriguing but exhausting season for me raising three young children in a new country while Jonathan had extensive work trips either to the villages or doing urban projects for the rural migrants,” Annie remembers. “What I did enjoy was finding out who I was. I was treated as a foreigner despite looking Asian and given the grace to be different. We found our tribe in the local expat community: people from around the world, converging in China to do something meaningful and significant while building our families cross-culturally.” The idea of taking a family gap year evolved out of necessity for Annie and Jonathan. “Our marriage crashed by 2003. We were fighting all the time and had to make hard decisions: either divorce or get help. In 2007, our counselors encouraged us to create our own marriage and family vision statement, just like companies have their vision statement.” Annie wanted

their marriage to be a safe harbor for emotional healing and spiritual growth, while Jonathan envisioned a family life of fun, adventure and shared life experiences. Due for their first sabbatical after working on the field for seven years, they decided to try developing a new family culture through a shared gap year. “In 2008, we spent our first family gap year together: three months in South America, three months home schooling in North America, and 6 months living in a Yi village near the Lijiang region,” Annie recalls. “Our children were 11, 8 and 6 years old, and we had the time of our life! Despite having the least amount of resources, we thrived. In the village, we cooked out of a fire pit in the ground, shared the outhouse with the pigs, and took showers at the police station next door. Our 8-year old son was tasked by the Grandma the job of starting the fire, like any other kid in the village.” For entertainment, the family read Chronicles of Narnia out loud at night by the fire pit and huddled in bed together watching 《 三國演義》(Romance of the Three Kingdoms). “Even though our kids had the least, both Jonathan and I were there living a simple family life with them full time.” For their second gap year in 2015, the family chose to explore the Silk Road together on a budget. “We used to invite backpackers to our home when they passed through our village. They introduced us to Couchsurfing for backpackers, Warmshowers for cyclists, and Workaway, which is volunteering in exchange for room and board,” explains Annie. “In Egypt, we worked at a hostel near the pyramids of Giza. In Kazakhstan, we worked on an organic farm, where we helped them harvest organic tomatoes and chili peppers. In India, we served at the orphanage that Mother Teresa established.” Throughout their Silk Road Journey, the family broke bread and shared life with their hosts who are now a part of their family too, from Sudanese and Palestinian refugees to Jews, Jordanians, and many more. In 2015, with the encouragement of families and friends, Jonathan and Annie published a book on their first gap year experiences from 2008, entitled “不上班，不上學，陪孩子窮遊到地極” (No Work, No School--A Family’s Journey to the Ends of the Earth).

WHY TRAVEL IN 2020?

Originally, Annie and Jonathan thought 2020 would be the best time for a final gap year, because “our oldest Olivia would be graduating from college, our youngest Joani would be graduating from high school, and our middle son Nathan could take a gap year between his second and third year of college.” Despite the pandemic, the family decided to go ahead with the gap year in order to prioritize their mental and emotional health as a family. For a big change, the family could not choose where to go. “We went to whatever country was open and would take our passports,” admits Annie. “In August, we started by flying to the United Kingdom, staying at vacant homes of friends and family in Bath and hiked Hadrian’s Wall. We camped in Wales and stayed in Stamford and London. When the door to Portugal opened, we stayed in Lagos and played spike ball on the beach. We harvested twelve tons of grapes as Workaway volunteers at a vineyard in the Dao Valley, and walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain.” Finally, they were able to fly to Africa in October. “We were invited to volunteer at the British Language School in Morocco teaching conversational English. We were able to visit the Sahara Desert, walk the streets of Fez and Marrakesh, and Annie (center) with children Nathan (left), Joani (center make friends with street right), and Olivia (right) on their first family gap year vendors in Casablanca. In in 2008 late November, we flew to South Africa to meet many old friends.” In Africa, they spent a memorable few months trekking through Johannesburg, seeing penguins in Cape Town, volunteering at refugee camps in Uganda, staying on Mfangao Island in Lake Victoria, and visiting Chinese communities in Nairobi, Kenya, just to name a few adventures. In February 2021, Jonathan started feeling unwell and received emergency care at Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. Battling severe malaria, he suffered kidney failure, and almost died. “Our medical insurance just expired, and evacuation wasn’t an option. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, we could only take turns taking care of him in the hospital, cooking and bringing him food, playing games with him, and keeping up his spirits,” Annie recalls soberly. “Thanks to the prayers and financial support of friends and family around the world, Jonathan’s kidneys came

Annie (center) with daughters Olivia (bottom) and Joani (top) in India on their second family gap year in 2015 Annie and her family in Vancouver after finishing their third family gap year in summer 2021

back after six rounds of dialysis.” Annie is grateful to the many Tigers around the world who helped out with their medical bills. In April, a fresh round of COVID-19 lockdowns and Jonathan’s health condition made them decide to return to the US to receive COVID-19 vaccinations, receive trauma counseling, and rest and recover. By May, they felt ready to finish up the gap year and made one last fiveweek trip to Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador.

REFLECTING ON FAMILY, THE PAST, AND ASKING FOR HELP

For Annie and Jonathan, travel has changed from a form of marriage counseling to a form of family building and now into a family lifestyle. These gap years have helped them share their faith with others around the world and bring their children into adulthood. As a Third Culture Kid raising her own TCK children, Annie is fully aware of the pitfalls. “I told my kids, you’re not a one-shot drink, you’re a blended fruit shake of cultures. Don’t let anyone tell you what to be.” “The season at TAS isn’t easy for everyone,” Annie remembers. “But it’s priceless because it gave me a way to understand my children’s experience as TCKs and to know there’s a community of people who will get you. Especially during this season of my life when I’m going through menopause, I need support. There’s a safety net of Tigers that will do anything. I’ve seen so many of them around the world in Turkey, Europe, Los Angeles. There’s genuine care because we shared a piece of existence during the most tender part of our life. Tigers can help each other through whatever happens.”

All photos courtesy of Annie Wu Su ’89 Learn about Annie and her family’s adventures through their blog: www.sufamilyadventures.com!

REENVISIONING SOCIETY WITH A RESTORATIVE JUSTICE APPROACH - AN INTERVIEW WITH MIKA DASHMAN ’93

Mika Dashman ’93 (Photo by David Lindner)

By Connie Ma, Alumni and Community Outreach Officer

Mika Dashman ’93 had been practicing law in New York City for seven years when she read about restorative justice and changed her career path. Now as the Founding Director of Restorative Justice Initiative, Mika devotes her professional life to advocating for the revolutionary idea of restorative justice that reshapes the way that we think about justice, conflict, and harm and prioritizes human relationships at its core. In this interview, Mika reflects on what brought her to her current work and how it has the potential to change the criminal justice system and educational systems in the United States and other areas.

WHAT WAS YOUR TAS EXPERIENCE LIKE? WHEN DID YOU ARRIVE IN TAIPEI?

My parents were Peace Corps volunteers in the 1960s, and they met in Nigeria. They both had a love of travel, living overseas, and immersing themselves in different cultures. In high school, I started looking at that idea of living abroad. The plan was to live out of the country my junior year and then come back for my senior year for high school, but we ended up arriving in Taipei in November of my senior year of high school. By the time I showed up at TAS, most of my classmates had one foot out the door and were so excited to move back to the US. On the other hand, I was like, “I’m here in Taiwan and I want to immerse myself in this culture.” I had a lot of fun doing drama at TAS. My drama teacher was Mr. Robert Carelli, and I remember traveling to Bangkok for the IASAS Cultural Convention. We performed “Fools,” which was a Neil Simon play set in a fictional Russian village, which we rehearsed in Taipei and then performed in Bangkok! I also took a photography class at TAS. I remember enlisting various classmates to model for me, and we would run around and scout locations around the city to do photo shoots.

WHAT WAS YOUR FOCUS IN COLLEGE? HOW DID YOU COME TO ATTEND LAW SCHOOL AND BECOME A LAWYER?

I studied theater and dance at Sarah Lawrence College. It had never occurred to me to be a lawyer until I was in my mid-twenties. I started looking for a job that felt meaningful and allowed me to do good in the world but also to pay the rent. That led me to think about going to graduate school. I was interested in law and public policy, and someone told me about the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law. It’s the only dedicated public interest law school in the country, and only after I learned about CUNY Law did I think I should apply to law school; not because I wanted to be a lawyer, but because I thought it would set me on a path to find that fulfilling job.

WHAT DID YOU PRACTICE LAW IN? HOW DID YOUR LEGAL CAREER LEAD YOU TO RESTORATIVE JUSTICE?

I practiced law for seven and a half years. Most of my clients had HIV/AIDS so they lived with chronic illness and many were not able to work. I did public

benefits advocacy, eviction prevention and housing discrimination litigation for my clients. When you’re a lawyer, people entrust you with a lot of information about their lives. It was a tremendous privilege to hear and hold those stories and to be able to turn them into effective advocacy. What I didn’t like was the adversarial nature of the justice system. It didn’t suit my personality and my values to operate within that system where there’s inevitably a winner and a loser. It seemed to me like there had to be a better way of advocating for people, a process through which people could come together and meet in the context of their shared humanity and find common ground. That was the kind of process I wanted to be a part of, not this adversarial system.

WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF RESTORATIVE JUSTICE?

Restorative justice is an umbrella term. It refers to a set of principles and practices that originate in many different Indigenous cultures around the world. The term, “restorative justice” was coined in the 1970s by Mennonites and it describes a set of values that stand out in contrast to our dominant cultural values, the ones that shape our current criminal justice system, which is adversarial and also extremely punitive and retributive. Restorative justice asks questions like: What was the harm? Who was impacted? How can we come together to make things as right as possible? In restorative justice, the process and resolution is always going to start with the needs of the survivors or the people who were harmed. In contrast, the criminal justice system is focused on the law that was broken, not the needs of the people who were harmed. This approach represents a different paradigm of justice and comes out of a different cultural context, where there’s a high value placed on the common good as opposed to simply individual rights.

HOW DID YOU LEARN ABOUT RESTORATIVE JUSTICE?

In 2013, I read an article about restorative justice in the New York Times. It was such an epiphany for me: I knew right away that this was the thing I had been looking for, the process that I wanted to be a part of. I realized it exists, it has a name, and it’s used in the criminal justice system… which blew my mind. I started looking into who was doing this work in NYC and how I could get involved. As I began to meet people, I started to understand that the work was quite siloed: people were doing it either in the criminal justice system or in schools, and the work didn’t overlap. Restorative Justice Initiative, which I founded in 2015, serves as this connective tissue; we’re a network of practitioners and advocates, but we’re also an information clearinghouse for all kinds of people who want to learn more about restorative justice processes and facilitation. We bring the community together and connect funders to programs that need resources; we connect schools and

Mika at the Citywide Roundtable on Restorative Approaches in the Bronx, January 2020 (Photo by Maurice Pinzon)

organizations to trainers. We connect organizations and community groups to facilitators when they want to bring someone in to address conflict or harm in their organization.

WHAT ARE THE BIG APPLICATIONS OF RESTORATIVE JUSTICE IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN PARTICULAR WHERE YOU WORK IN NEW YORK CITY?

In the US, more and more people are recognizing the school to prison pipeline as a concept. Research shows that students who are subjected to exclusionary discipline like expulsion and suspensions are many times more likely to wind up involved in the criminal legal system than students who are not. The restorative justice approach has caught on in a lot of schools that are under pressure to rethink their disciplinary policies. When I first got started, there were a handful of restorative justice pilot programs in New York City public schools. Here in NYC, we have the largest public school system in the country; it’s a vast and

highly politicized bureaucracy but by the end of 2019, we had won a significant victory because the NYC Department of Education announced a commitment to implementing restorative justice programming citywide throughout all middle and high schools. And then the pandemic came, and everything shut down. It’s not clear how the district-wide implementation plan will play out now that schools have reopened. My organization is a member of a coalition called Dignity in Schools New York. It’s an intergenerational coalition to end the school to prison pipeline and rethink exclusionary discipline.

WHAT ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF WHAT YOU’RE DOING AT RESTORATIVE JUSTICE INITIATIVE?

In 2018 we started this participatory action research (PAR) project called On Our Terms. PAR is like a restorative justice approach to research in that the people directly impacted by the research are the researchers. We had NYC public school students, parents, and teachers who we trained to work as researchers interview their peers, distribute surveys, and conduct focus groups. They asked questions about safety, accountability, and restorative justice in schools. We are raising funds to compile a website with this data and advocacy tools which can be used to inform future campaigns around this issue in schools. New York City recently made a commitment to allocate several million dollars a year to community restorative justice programming. The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice hired us to convene an advisory council of restorative justice practitioners and thought leaders for three months this spring to define community restorative justice and make a series of recommendations for how that funding should be allocated over time. Our work was very well received, and they have asked us to continue convening community stakeholders to put together a detailed longer-term strategic plan for this funding.

Mika (right) with RJI Board members at the Citywide Roundtable on Restorative Approaches in the Bronx, January 2020 (Photo by Maurice Pinzon)

Cheerleaders (including Winnie Tang ’65, center) from the 1965 Yearbook

CHEERLEADING THROUGH THE DECADES

By Sharon L. ’22, The Blue and Gold, and Connie Ma, Alumni and Community Outreach Officer

The Taipei American School cheerleading program was a treasured tradition here for many decades. From the late 1950s to the early 2000s, middle and upper school students cheered on their fellow classmates in basketball, volleyball, and soccer. Although the program was eventually discontinued, the sport’s evolution leaves behind many fun memories for alumni and former faculty.

CHEERLEADING IN THE 1960S AND 1970S

According to past yearbooks, the cheerleading program started in 1958. The cheerleaders had to try out at the start of the year, where they were divided into two teams: varsity and junior varsity. According to Winnie Tang ’65, the tryouts received a lot of engagement from the students, who watched as the cheerleaders performed in front of a panel of faculty. “Preparing for the tryouts was the most challenging part because you’re always afraid of not being selected, so you want to try your best,” remembered Winnie. The cheerleaders had routine practice sessions almost every day of the week, where they choreographed their own cheers and perfected different cheerleading techniques. They also designed their own uniforms, which they wore along with pompoms while cheering for TAS basketball, volleyball and soccer teams throughout the year. Cheerleading meant a lot to the students who took part. Bernadette Toner-Whitney ’79 said, “I absolutely loved being a cheerleader. It gave me an outlet to express my school spirit and share this passion with all of my classmates.” Bernadette came to Taipei in 1974 with her family. She tried out for the cheerleading squad in Grade 8 in 1975, and joined the junior varsity squad her freshman year. During her sophomore year, she was elected captain. At that time, the cheerleading program was very much influenced by cheerleading trends from the United States. “We used to have these cheerleading magazines from the US with very small pictures of teams. We would take the photos to a local tailor, and they would create our uniforms. Because I love artifacts, I’ve held on to a lot of my TAS cheerleading memorabilia,” said

Bernadette Toner-Whitney ’79’s contributions in the USIC Exhibit

Bernadette. She also contributed four cheerleading uniforms, two sweaters, and two pom poms to TAS, which are now on display in the Upper School Information Commons. What did cheers sound like at the time? According to Winnie, one cheer called “Go Tiger” began like this: “TAS, around the world, and here we come! From the north to the south, from the east to the west, TAS Tiger is the very best.”

CHEERLEADING AS A SPORT

The cheerleading program started as a single-gender sport for middle and upper school girls, but boys joined the sport as the program expanded and peaked in participation in the late 1980s. Former Associate Athletics/ Activities Director Ms. Kathy Culter recalled seeing the team doing complex stunts involving pyramids and flyers around that time. Debby Krieger Bever ’90 credited fellow teammates with making that happen. “We were the only squad in our conference that had male cheerleaders. Because of the guys, we were able to do much more complicated stunts and with more safety, because they were able to catch us and spot us.” In 1990, three boys were full

varsity members of the cheerleading squad - Michael Lemme ’92, Peter Hexter ’91, and Alan Crooks ’90. Erin Mahon Wright ’93 was captain in her junior and senior years. “Being a cheerleader was very physically demanding, and required a lot of mental concentration. We had to memorize about 150 cheers, dance routines, and stunts,” said Erin. Lianne Lim ’94 agreed: “We worked hard in all our routines, sourcing complex dance choreographies overseas then breaking down the moves step by step ourselves.” Lianne joined cheerleading as a freshman and served as captain in the 1994 school year. Christina Chen ’97, a four-year varsity cheerleader recalled Cheerleaders from the 1973 Yearbook cheers from that time period. “One of the biggest challenges was coming up with new and dynamic routines that could wow the crowds,” she said. “If I think about it, we were quite young back then and never really received proper cheerleading training other than from our own parentled dance classes.” According to Samantha (Wong) Campbell ’97, who was a cheerleader from 1993 to 1997, “the biggest

challenge for the team was proving themselves to be taken seriously. “Many people don’t think cheerleading is a sport, but we sure did practice just as hard as any other athlete!” said Samanatha. “We spent hours and hours rehearsing and that in itself is quite challenging as well. It was always a bit of a struggle finding places to practice as well.” Mrs. Nanette Carreon-Ruhter, who served as the faculty sponsor for both cheerleading and The Blue & Gold, agreed. “We practiced a lot, even Saturdays and Sundays and after school,” said Mrs. Carreon-Ruhter. “These girls were indefatigable. They were such perfectionists.” Mrs. Carreon-Ruhter also taught English in the Upper School, and her two sons Ignacio ’96 and Miguel ’95 both attended and graduated from TAS. “I originally got involved in cheerleading because my boys played basketball. The girls were in my English classes, and they needed a sponsor,” said Mrs. Carreon-Ruhter. “Since I waited for my kids who were at practice, that’s how I started working with the cheerleaders. I didn’t know much about choreography, but I was a mother hen. I gave them advice, and we became like a family.”

MEMORIES OF TRAVELING

The cheerleaders also traveled with other athletic teams on various trips to compete against other schools. Many alumni cheerleaders specifically recalled cheering at the Morrison Academy in Taichung. They also traveled to Hong Kong International School (HKIS) for a Holiday Basketball Tournament, which was the highlight of the year for the cheerleading program, as cheerleaders from each school competed against each other in addition to supporting their respective teams on the sidelines. Ms. Kathy Cutler remembered, “Traveling to the tournament over the Christmas holiday was a big event for many families. Hong Kong was always really

festive with holiday lights everywhere!” Christina also remembered traveling to Hong Kong. “The TAS cheerleading program back in high school was quite competitive. The varsity basketball team was one of the best in the region so knowing that we could cheer for the very best and attend the yearly Christmas Tournament at HKIS was very appealing to Cheerleaders in 1997 (Mrs. Nanette Carreon-Ruhter at many.” far left) (Photo courtesy of Christina Chen ’97) The cheerleading team also participated when TAS hosted IASAS in Taipei by performing cheers and chants with the Tiger Mascot. Cheerleaders from the early 1990s also remembered visiting Okinawa for a basketball tournament.

REFLECTIONS ON CHEERLEADING

The TAS cheerleading program ended in the early 2000s. According to Ms. Kathy Cutler, it was most likely due to safety concerns. It was also not an IASASapproved sport and did not align with the School’s emphasis on particular seasons for athletic participation. Though the cheerleading program is no longer running at TAS, alumni remember their time here well and cherish the friendships they made along the way. Bernadette was only at TAS for a few years, but held onto the connections made here. “I made many good friends in my cheerleading team, one of [whom] lives close to me today. We get together a few times every year with other TAS classmates, still to this day,” Bernadette said. Winnie agreed. “Cheerleading was a mixed group. You were able to interact with people from different backgrounds. In my time, Asian students were in the minority [in the student body]. The majority were white students or families of international diplomats.” She says that cheerleading helped to bridge this racial divide in her time at school. Samantha and Christina also fondly remember their time here. “Both my brother and I attended TAS. It is by far one of the most significant experiences in my life that has shaped who I am today,” reflected Samantha. “The DNA of the school is so embedded in who I’ve become today. We learned to work hard and play hard, focus on becoming very well-rounded kids and continue to serve our community when we can,” Christina said.

Cheerleaders on a trip to Okinawa in 1993 (Photo courtesy of Erin Mahon Wright ’93)

Douglas Lee ’21 (left) with fellow alums (left to right) Wilson Huang ’21, Daniel Liu ’21, and Louis Asanaka ’21 who visited Douglas in Chicago over Thanksgiving break

CLASS OF 2021 CLASS AGENTS REPORT ON THEIR FIRST SEMESTER OF COLLEGE

By Douglas Lee ’21 and Julianne Vaughan ’21, Class Agents

This article is written jointly by Douglas Lee ’21 and Julianne Vaughan ’21, who represent their class as Class Agents. Douglas and Julianne are currently in their freshman year of college at Northwestern University and Boston University, respectively. The Class of 2021 will always be remembered for our resilience. Born during the SARS outbreak, we could have never foreseen that 17 years later, our world would once again go into lockdown. While we were lucky to have a “normal” first semester our senior year, a surge in COVID-19 cases in May shut down any hope of having graduation and prom. It felt as though the culmination of our hard work through our elementary, middle, and high school years had led to nothing. As we said our goodbyes to Taiwan, we were at least happy that we could have a normal freshman year at college. As soon as we set foot in America, we had to acclimate to our new environment. In particular, we were shocked to see so many people walking around the airport. People everywhere were not wearing masks, which was in stark contrast to the streets of Taiwan. Douglas became skeptical of Northwestern’s plan to go in-person. Julianne was also doubtful that people would adhere to the indoor mask mandates and would be cautious about social distancing in large gatherings. But soon enough, as freshman orientation began, we adjusted to this new sense of “normalcy.” While there were still a small number of reported cases on our campuses each week, we began to have a positive outlook on our freshman year. Douglas was pleased that the state of Illinois issued a statewide mask mandate. Julianne was pleasantly surprised by how her peers prioritized pandemic safety over individual freedoms. The majority of students wore masks properly, even outdoors, and students took contact tracing seriously and would choose to abstain from club bondings and parties. Knowing that most students on campus were vaccinated calmed Julianne’s worries, and she felt welcomed knowing that her peers cared nearly as much about the pandemic as people did in Taiwan. After one quarter/semester of college, we are in complete agreement that TAS prepared us extremely

well to handle the academic rigor of college. Even in a quarter system school, where classes are supposed to be more fast-paced, Douglas has not found any trouble keeping up with his work. Douglas’s first-ever class in college was legal studies. As Douglas began learning about the Constitution, he was reminded of his AP US Government class taught by Mr. Williams. Having studied the American justice system at TAS, Douglas found the class to be extremely manageable. In fact, Douglas actually had read some of the required readings for this class in his AP English Language and Composition class. Douglas believes that researching and debating philosophical issues in AP Seminar provided him with a strong foundation that has served him well in his college classes. In contrast, Boston University has a more traditional semester-based calendar system similar to TAS. Mainly taking introductory courses, Julianne was shocked when she discovered the number of free hours she had each day, because she was used to the time-consuming work of the IB Diploma and the rigorous courses she took in TAS.

Possibly one of Julianne’s favorite parts of college academic life is the wide variety of courses. There were over 50 different topics to choose from in a mandatory writing course for first-year students. Selecting a class called “Commerce and Character,” Julianne dissected economic philosophy readings by renowned philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle to Smith and Marx. Through unfiltered class discussions three times a week, she debated the differing morals and values taught under different economic systems. As a result, Julianne felt that she was learning subjects she was genuinely interested in. The most significant adjustment we had to make was in regards to our social life. For the first time in years, we both had to make entirely new friends in a completely new environment. Unlike high school, we didn’t have the safety net of meeting people through mutual friends, and Julianne was intimidated at the prospect of finding her “friends for life” in a school of over 16,000 students. Despite this, the thrill and excitement of meeting new people rushed through most freshmen, and the first month of college, we both heard hundreds of “what’s your name, where are you from, and what’s your major?” In both our schools, freshmen would knock on each other’s door just to say hello. In Julianne’s dorm, which consisted of 3 towers, students would even put sticky notes on their windows to communicate with students living in the other towers. Extracurriculars have also been a big part of our new college life. Like at TAS, there is always a big club fair at the beginning of the year. But unlike TAS, many of the clubs at Northwestern require an application just to be a member. At BU, only a few organizations, such as fraternities and sororities, required applications just for membership. Still, the significantly large number of students on campus meant that auditions or try-outs for leadership positions were highly selective.

Julianne (second from right) at BU’s Taiwanese American Student Association Boba Fundraiser

Douglas was immediately drawn to the Northwestern Mock Trial team.While Douglas never did Mock Trial at TAS, he believes his years of MUN and Speech and Debate prepared him well. After a written application and a competitive try-out process, Douglas was one of ten freshmen selected to join the team. To Douglas’s surprise, a graduate student in the film school was filming a documentary on Northwestern’s Mock Trial Team. After filming Douglas at two competitions and consulting with his Emmy award-winning professor, he changed the subject of his documentary to the life of an international student in the US. Douglas will now be featured in a documentary project that will follow his college experience for the next three years. Douglas is also exploring his passion for law by working in the Deportation Research Clinic on campus. Douglas has been busy filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the Attorney General of Illinois to turn over documents.

At BU, Julianne explored some of the previous interests she had in high school. After joining a theater club, she participated in a 24-hour theater event, where a script was written, props were made, lines were memorized, and the show was performed, all in 24 hours. She quickly fell in love with college theater, because students could create and perform in ways Julianne had never experienced before. In shows, both studentwritten and not, performers discussed and critiqued controversial topics such as abusive relationships, organized religion, and sexuality, while stripping down to underwear and cursing on stage. However, auditioning for roles in college theater was significantly more competitive. Having performed lead

roles in TAS musicals and plays, Julianne was shocked when she did not receive a callback for the fall musical production, even for the ensemble role. Initially feeling discouraged, she reminded herself that in such a large and talented theater community, she had to work much harder to secure a role in a show. Knowing that there are many more theater opportunities than in high school, she is keeping her head high, excited and passionate about her future experiences in college theater. Julianne, currently majoring in environmental analysis and policy, also searched for clubs related to sustainability at BU, finding a large community of tree-huggers and environmentalists. She is now in a co-ed environmental honors fraternity, Epsilon Eta, where they meet once a week for clean-ups, fundraisers, or alumni networking events. She has been introduced to many environmental organizations, and in December, she started working as an intern for the US Coalition on Sustainability. Our first quarter/semester of school has gone by in a blink of an eye. Through it all, we realized how lucky we were to have gone to TAS. The opportunities and resources TAS provided students are on par with what we have seen in our universities. We have also

Julianne (front row, furthest right) with new members of Epsilon Eta, a co-ed environmental honors fraternity at Boston University In a screenshot from the documentary, Douglas (left) during his Mock Trial Tournament at Tufts University

realized how large the TAS family is. During Douglas’s first week on campus, he ran into a fellow journalism student at church whose grandma worked as a music teacher at TAS in 1967-1968. As we write this article, Northwestern has shifted classes online for the first two weeks of the semester, and BU, while remaining in-person, has changed its COVID-19-safety policies. While we are uncertain about our future in college during a pandemic, we know that the Class of 2021 will be equipped to face any challenges.