Meeting Robin: Minorities, Music, and Psych

I first met Robin in my Gospel, Church, and Culture class at Wheaton College. The one thing about him that I remember from that class is that he talked and that I didn’t. How much could we possibly have in common?

One thing we did have in common was that we were both Asian (granted, he’s Korean while I’m Chinese), and we were both members of a 1-2-1 group through the Office of Multicultural Development. Coincidentally, we were placed into the same group. During one fateful 1-2-1 meeting, I heard Robin singing choir songs with a friend and, being a choir nerd myself, I ventured over to ask them about their choir experience.

The series of events that followed pleasantly surprised me. I learned in quick succession that Robin was an avid acappella geek like myself, was also in an acappella group on campus, and had recorded countless acappella covers of songs before coming to Wheaton. It was this last fact that piqued my interest. Within two weeks, we had already cranked out a completed acappella cover of the theme song to the TV show, Psych (listen here). I was incredibly proud of our work.

Since that day, we’ve become close friends. Whenever we walk anywhere together, we sing songs acappella style – one of us sings the solo and one of us creates the nonsense background syllables or beatboxes. It’s interesting and refreshing to have a friendship in which we only talk to each other half of the time we’re together.

But what surprises me the most about our friendship is that acappella music is almost the only thing that we have in common. Our majors are different, our home countries are different, and most of our cultural experience in and outside of America has been different. We live in different dormitories and we’re in different school choirs. Therefore, I find myself thankful for those required general education classes like BITH 111.

Had it not been for that class, it’d be quite possible that Robin and I might never have met. But I also find myself thanking Wheaton College for being such a diverse community and trying intentionally to reach out to people of different cultures, for creating groups in which minority students can meet each other, and for, perhaps unintentionally, bringing friends together who might not have been friends otherwise.

Robin’s not the only person who I’ve met and formed tight bonds with while being immersed in the diverse student body here at Wheaton. Since one of the College’s more recent and highly prioritized goals is to appreciate diversity, they’ve gone many lengths to make minority students comfortable and make them feel integrated into a community reflective of the Kingdom of God. Meeting Robin made me much more appreciative of the opportunity we’re granted as a students at Wheaton College.

And judging from the demographic of my freshman class, I not only hope for, but expect an incoming class full of totally different but incredibly similar students, ready to collaborate and achieve.

Kirkland An also blogs at Tumblr at http://therealkirkan.tumblr.com

Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/therealkirkan

Listen to Robin’s other work here: https://soundcloud.com/robinhsk

Courtesy: https://ballentinespencehouse.wordpress.com

Homeschooler in the Real World

Emma Folts, a sophomore at Wheaton College, shares her experience about her transition into college and how homeschool has both helped and hindered her.
How has your homeschool experience benefitted you, especially in your transition into college?
I think the one thing that homeschooling did that was really helpful as I entered college was that it taught me time management. As a homeschooler I had the same freedom as a college student has to put things off during the day and go see a friend instead. Since I had that experience, I knew the cost of that.
Also, personal responsibility and accountability with assignments. I feel like a lot of the other students had more expectations for gentler grading and that the professor would give them retakes or extensions, but that wasn’t something that ever happened to me in school. That learning curve wasn’t added because I never had it the other way. I think another thing was that because I was homeschooled, I was familiar with the format of teaching and then studying on my own.
Did you see any issues with your transition socially?
I think that homeschooling had two ramifications for me socially. One was helpful, one was hurtful.
It was really helpful because as a homeschooler, I had spent a lot of time realizing and developing who I was as a person and learning to recognize people who were being themselves, and those were the people I sought out as friends. Friendship as a homeschooler takes a lot more investment. I knew I was choosier with my friends which made me a lot less anxious and a lot more content.
The only real negative impact of the social bit was that I was really used to getting to choose the time I got to spend with people. As a homeschooler I spent a lot of time with people, but that time was controlled by me. As a college student, I found that you can’t really control the time you spend with people and alone time is not really available. Learning to deal with that was a lot harder than anticipated.
Any last comments on homeschool and how it has affected your college experience?
I think homeschooling is really helpful, however it does take a slightly increased amount of advocacy with your peers when you’re entering into college. I think a lot of people come in with certain assumptions about homeschool, especially students. You’re going to get a lot of, ‘oh my gosh, you don’t seem like a homeschooled person!’ [You can’t] take that too personally and explain your experience so that friends can understand it’s an important piece of you, though it might not look like the homeschooling that they’ve seen.
My encouragement to anyone who is a homeschooler transitioning into college is to realize the benefit that you have having been homeschooled, and to realize that the bit of advocacy and explaining that you need to do with your peers is totally normal and that it’s not a big deal. Once they understand your experience, it’s not something I’ve experienced being looked down on for.