WP2 — Raph
Throughout my life I have learnt to embrace change, especially from attending boarding schools in multiple countries. Despite being nervous about change and worrying if I’d like the schools, adapting to these changes enabled me to appreciate the importance of change and showed me that we are unable to improve ourselves if we don’t change.
The purpose of this WP2 is to explore how different students feel about the idea of change, and how they have experienced change by moving from their home country to LA. Being a student who has done the same thing, I have my own opinions, but I want to discover how others feel from different cultures. I want to try and highlight the importance of change, especially with how the world is today. Through holding many interviews with students who are not from LA, I was able to identify something really interesting: our characters can’t improve/grow without changing.
The core of the idea of change, which was present in all the interviews, was how the students experience growth and improvement in their character. Ljubo, a freshman from Switzerland explained how he “became much more independent” because he wasn’t with his family. This shows how Ljubo’s character is maturing; he is beginning to realise that he is not a young teen anymore, but a young adult. Vartika, a sophomore from India, was delighted by realising how she has improved in “connecting with people”. She explained how she used to battle with this. Coming to a place where she had never been before forced her to connect with people. GROWTH.
By undergoing change, especially from moving from your home country to another, you are able to improve your linguistics. Tianju, a junior from china, told me how much his English has improved. He really struggled at the start of his USC career, however now he is almost fluent and finds it much easier to communicate with people. If he stayed in China for university, this would not be the case. Period. This idea of change is crucial, as it is the only way to enable all of us to better ourselves.
However, Matt, a sophomore from Idaho, doesn’t like the idea of change and feels it is not necessary to experience change. “I feel that if something is not broken, there is no need to fix it.”, and he does have a point. Let’s visualize this; if you had a football team that was winning every game, you wouldn’t want to change the squad, and rightfully so. However, when another team starts to improve, or when things get tough, you will only be able to rely on the same old squad, and won’t have new, young, and fresh players. In the short run change may not be that important, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s vital.
If you do not change, you can become extinct. The world is changing at a rapid pace, and unfortunately if we do not adapt with it, we will be left behind. If we just simply repeat what our grandparents did, we won’t move forward with this modernizing world, period. That’s why change is IMPERATIVE. Embracing change, and being able to adapt, is the only way the world will be able to move forward collectively.
There can be change in everything: company, location, and mindset. There is room for debate when regarding if change is good or not, which I will dive into when writing my WP3. The change that students faced when moving from their hometowns to LA (USC) was change on all levels. They are meeting new people, learning to become independent, and are transitioning from teenagers to young adults. It is almost impossible to not experience this change, as a growing age is inevitable.
Regardless of if the world is in a bad situation or not, as human beings we need to develop the skill of adaptability. By constantly experiencing change, our skills of adaptability are honed which allow us to welcome change with open arms. If we do not change certain things, we will face grave dangers. Global warming is just one example of thousands, and more will be discussed about this in WP3.
