“My mom told me one month prior that we’d be going to the U.S. I was shocked. I was afraid. But I was still excited because I had been to the U.S. before. 

Before 7th grade, my first impression of America was ‘Oh, that’s an English country. Everyone speaks English.’ But when I visited, I saw that it was pretty diverse. I saw Chinese Americans speaking Chinese. A lot of people were pretty open to me. 

The school system is very different [than in China]. In China, we have fixed classrooms and classmates. Different teachers walk into the room to teach us. The schedule [varies]. [One day] they’ll have like Chinese, English and math, and [the next day] they’ll have math, science and English. In China, the lessons are not weighted equally. Chinese, English and math are weighted more than anything else. The second tier is science class, and anything else is not important at all. I thought that was the case in America, so, I actually ignored some of [my]  classes for [about] one week [before] I found out that [they] will [affect] my GPA.

This year, I was originally [supposed to be] an 11th grader. But after one month, they found out [that] I have enough credits, and I was just bumped into 12th grade. I was terrified. I was in doubt. I didn’t feel ready [for] college applications. I got a lot of great help from some parents, from the college center, from my colleagues and from my classmates. This year, I met a lot of great people, and I started to make friends. My close friend inspired me to join yearbook. [I asked if] I could borrow a camera from yearbook because my mom refused me to buy any camera equipment. I didn’t hope [for] too much because I didn’t know anything about photography. Before, I had never touched a camera. Now, it’s become a hobby. Yearbook was one of the high points [of the year] for me.”