Erin is a second-year biology major at Cuiying Honors College who has just returned from attending a Yale Summer Session in which she attended courses on cognitive science and biological anthropology. By way of introduction to the field of cognitive science, she showed us some fascinating videos, one about change blindness and one about the McGurk Effect.
Erin started her lecture as her cognitive science lecturer at Yale had, with the story of monkey 85B who fell out of a tree and was badly injured. The monkey almost died, and for a long time his growth was stunted, but the infection cleared up; he recovered and became the king of the monkey island. Her instructor taught her “When you have nothing to lose, you have nothing to be afraid of.” This story encouraged Erin to not let her fears limit her, as she struggled to keep up with her classes at Yale.
Studying at Yale was very challenging for Erin. During her first cognitive science class, she took part in a discussion about the metaphysical concepts of dualism, materialism and free will. She had to read up on it beforehand in able to join the discussion. In fact, she read more scientific papers in that first week than she had ever read before, since almost every class had a small discussion like this. Even with all that preparation she found it hard to express herself in English during the fast-paced dialogue. She feared that she appeared stupid to other participants because of the language barrier. However, despite these fears, she realised that all the people she interacted with at Yale had a basic respect for one another. One expression of this respect was the way that grades were kept private, and another was the willingness of world famous scientists to talk patiently to undergraduate students like Erin.
Erin loved the study facilities at Yale. The classroom was also a lab with shelves full of bones. To Erin it felt as if when she entered the classroom she really entered the world of biological anthropology. The library was so comfortable it became like a second home for her. The course materials were all on the website, and announcements were forwarded to her email. However, she found the workload tough. Once she had two exams and a presentation in three days. She hardly had time to sleep in crunch times like those, but she was really inspired by a sixty-year-old lady from Alaska who was also on the Yale Summer Session. This lady was full of energy and willing to work hard despite her age. Erin was left with the feeling that everything is possible!
While in America, Erin watched a video about why people around the globe want to be Americans. Most people talked about freedom, justice and the American dream, but Erin was most impressed by the kindness and care of ordinary people in America. She told the moving story of a woman who treated her like own daughter. The women, who she met on an intercity bus, had a daughter studying abroad in France, and so had great compassion for Erin as a foreign student, and empathized with Erin’s mother who also constantly worried about her daughter overseas. Unfortunately Erin never asked the woman’s name, but she will remember her always. Erin also found many Americans willing to offer a hand when she was struggling with heavy luggage on the subway.
On her trip to New York, Erin was impressed by the tall buildings and Central Park, but Chinatown in Manhattan, was like a different world. She was surprised to meet Chinese who had lived their lives in America, but had never learnt English. She encouraged Cuiying students to learn English not only to pass the TOEFL test, but in order to be able to thrive overseas.
College Executive Dean, Prof. Long thanked Erin, and encouraged students to learn from her example. He said that in the future our college will have more students like Erin returning from top university to talk about their experiences, and that although this year we only sent three students to the world’s top universities, next year we might send thirty!
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Lanzhou University and Former Dean of the School of Biological Sciences, Prof. An Lizhe also praised Erin, and encouraged college leaders to learn from Erin’s experience at the Yale summer school.
See the presentation she gave here:
