I was told an anecdote about Cornell when I first came here. People say there are four seasons in Ithaca: Orientation week, pre-winter, winter, and post-winter. By now I think I understand what they mean. Ithaca is gorgeous, and Cornell is definitely the most beautiful school that I have ever seen. The days before school started were relaxed and fun, filled with furniture shopping, campus walking, pictures taking and of course, food tasting.

For that week of orientation we enjoyed a beautiful Ithaca summer.

Then school started. And no matter how you wish you could just enjoy the weather and have fun, times flies. And I can’t believe right now 1/3 of the semester has already passed.

For most Chinese students who take undergraduate study in China, graduate study in America will be a challenge. You can no longer be fine skipping classes, partying or dating and cramming the night before finals. And college life here in the U.S. is not about Justin Bieber and ice cream as you might think.

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My bags are packed, my final papers submitted, my apartment sublet, and as of next week I’ll be gone from George Washington University and the United States until the end of August.  It’s been a fast nine months, but I’ve officially reached the halfway point of my two-year graduate school program.

To mark reaching the end of year one, I’ve put together some superlatives for my first year at graduate school:

Biggest Adjustment:

Working on a class assignment

My first blog post last October was all about the workload difference between graduate school and undergrad.

Having to read 1,000 pages a week for class, depending on the week, was pretty miserable sometimes.  There were definitely some long nights in the library where I wanted to be anyplace else.

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Our student organization logo.

At the end of last semester, I was elected president of the Organization of Asian Studies at my university.  It’s a pretty cool deal – the school gives us a lot of support to host fun events, like foreign movie nights, happy hours, and special receptions, and we also sponsor speakers to give special talks on Asia-related topics.

All George Washington University students interested in Asian studies are welcome to join, and we attract a pretty even balance of international students and Americans and graduate students and undergrads.  Two of our five executive board officers are from Asian countries (Taiwan and South Korea), and three of us are graduate students.

Since we’re about five weeks into our spring semester, and we’ve hosted or co-hosted seven events, I thought I’d share some general thoughts on what it’s been like so far.

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New Year's Eve in Ho Chi Minh City (Photo courtesy NamDao)

So 2011 has commenced. I am now onto the fourth week of my winter break here in Vietnam. Basically I am exhausted from all the travel, not to mention the tremendous amount of food I have tried to stuff myself for the last three weeks. I figured I better try to take all in, as fast as possible: the “home” food, the warmth, the rain, the exotic fruits, the incense-filled air, the unique feel of Tet holiday coming…because in exactly one week, I will be stepping on a plane that carries me back to the dry land of Santa Fe to start off my second semester at St. Johns’ College.

Actually, I am excited and a bit nervous thinking about this coming semester: excited because I miss the college and my friends, nervous because the periodic stress from first semester is still dawning on me. It is certainly not a good thought to enter the new semester with. Nevertheless, this is an opportune moment to look back at my fall semester in 2010 and review what I have done right and wrong.

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Responding to the New York Times article “The China Boom,” a Chinese student at the University of Illinois takes a deeper look at life for himself and his Chinese classmates.

For two weeks I asked other Chinese students in the U.S. to tell me about their lives. Some were acquaintances, others complete strangers. As far as they’ve told me, they aren’t “booming” at all, not even close – they are troubled, isolated or sleep-deprived.

It’s a brutally honest and insightful look at the different ways people respond to coming to the U.S., and worth a read.

I sometimes think of my graduate program at George Washington University as a rite of passage.  It helps keep me motivated through those 12 hour days in the library, when I worry that I’m wasting the prime years of my life cooped-up in books.

Students at the Global Resources Center

I remember what my political science professor said on our first day of class: “If you’re a graduate student, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be reading all the time.”  He was talking about the trials of graduate study and his personal approach to teaching.  Of course, last week he appropriately assigned 553 pages on the comparative historical analysis of revolutionary change.

I think a lot of professors share that mindset though.  I met last April with my former Russian literature professor, who gave similar advice that, as a young man at this point in my life, I should be working my fingers to the bone.  His exact words: “Now’s the time to be like Stoltz!” – a particularly industrious, and awesome, character from Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov.

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After seven weeks of graduate school and a fury of policy work out of the way, I feel like it’s finally time to share!

My name is Terence Kelly and I work with the New York City Coalition Against Hunger (NYCCAH), an anti-poverty non-profit representing 1,200 emergency food programs operating throughout the five boroughs, and the 1.4 million people who rely on them.

I recently started studying at the School of Public Affairs at the City University of New York – Baruch College to earn my Masters Degree in Public Management & Administration. I continue to work full-time while attending class, which is very common for professional, executive, and continuing education graduate degree programs. However, just because it’s common doesn’t mean it will be easy – so far it’s been really difficult to balance both.

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