“You were born in Vietnam, you are French, but you speak perfect English… Can you explain your life to me?” asked the Customs Officer in Logan Airport two years ago. Explain my life… I didn’t really feel like telling him about my whole life, but still, I did. (...) So yes, my identity is far from being clear, I often tangle my explanations about who I am, but I am genuinely happy to stand between two cultures. And unlike bi-national...

I choose Brown because of its open curriculum that would give me access to a personal, liberal and pluralistic combination of social sciences and visual arts, especially through Anne Bergeron’s unique Arts Initiative, encouraging me to intertwine as many subjects as I can. Because of its growing links with Asia and special opening to China that President C. Paxson has wonderfully described in her speech at Tsinghua University, Beijing. Because of the recent launch of the Watson Institute’s...

Once a month, I contribute to the Art section of TRIP Magazine, a review only written by passionate French students. I visit museums, galleries, exhibitions, fairs; I forge my opinion and finally I write. My last article was about the dissenting Chinese artist Ai Weiwei exposing his giant paper animals at Le Bon Marché. Truth be told, no one really cared what those animals meant, people just came because “it was Le Bon Marché”. So I like to think that...

My weekend Art class is my one true community outside school. We are 40 students, sharing Art as a way of communication. I completely feel at ease among teenagers who are as committed to Art as I am. Finding them reassured me as I finally don’t feel alone preferring exhibitions to parties. However, bonding with them made me realize that I don’t want to become a fashion or graphic designer, but I would rather focus on social sciences and...

I was born in Saigon, but I don’t remember this period of my life. I was adopted when I was three months old and since then I have lived in Paris, my first home. However, Beijing, where I lived for three months while being in 8th grade, is my second home and I was able to find my second family “of heart”. Today, I am seventeen years old and I have lived in 30 different countries, only for a few...

In 2014, I embarked on a two-week journey to a remote region of the Sichuan province in south central China to volunteer as a veterinary research assistant alongside a team of Chinese scientists in charge of protecting Giant Pandas at the Wolong, YanAn Bifengxia and Dujiangyuan bases located at the foot of the Himalayan mountains. During my stay I was lucky enough to be introduced to ethology by studying pandas’ behavior in game reserves. I prepared their food myself and fed...

This summer, I read this article about Overshoot Day. It happened exactly on August 8th, I remember, because it was actually 2016’s official Overshoot Day, and I have never felt so endangered in my life. Earth Overshoot Day is a symbol more than anything, no one can sense it on an individual scale, and I’m sure a majority of people went on with their lives on August 8th. It is a warning to Humanity in general, marking the day...

Wellesley 13. The way in which we have your back “I got you” is not something I have often heard over the last thirteen years of my academic life. Since 1st grade, I have been prepared to resist the ultra-competitive French system and rival my peers, even my friends, even my best friend. I therefore envy a community like Wellesley where people truly care and have each other’s back for academic work, for moral support, for sports, for life. “I...

Visiting Barnard a year ago, I was amazed by how comfortable our campus guide was when she spoke publically; I was mind-blown by all the buildings dedicated to women’s thriving. I wanted to be that young woman; she seemed to simply be who she was meant to be. I dream of a place where I can genuinely be myself, without fearing to be judged for my complicated identity. Barnard is a place that promotes my core values, inviting young...

Me: “Hello Olympe de Gouges. You lived right next to my house in Paris, I’m honored. I wanted to meet you because I believe I, or any woman for that matter, would not be standing here today if it weren't for you. You fought so diligently to have granted women the human rights they deserve, unfortunately The Terror got your head. I wonder, if you could relive those days back in 1793, would you do anything differently? Would you be...

People think it was easy, that I just had to socialize and everything would be fine… but what a terrible underestimation to believe surviving alone, at fourteen in a boarding school in Beijing is easy. Obviously I was not living in the wild like Robinson Crusoe, but in a jungle of concrete buildings inhabited by Chinese people. And that can be scary! Everything appeared as an obstacle that had to be overcome: the language was a serious barrier, I was...

When I visited Tufts, Meghan McHale Dangremond said being there is “four years of testing yourself with people who disagree with you”. I couldn’t have found better opportunity. Tufts is a pluralistic environment promoting intercultural awareness through its International Center, therefore encompassing many challenging perspectives from around the world. Tufts prepares my generation to face international crises through its Institute for Global Leadership and therefore is home to study political sciences. Tufts also gives real importance to Art through...

I was raised in the most typical nuclear family, with my two parents, in an apartment in Paris. Although I have always stayed in only one city, I feel like I have lived in several places. I went to a kindergarten where most children had different nationalities; that was my first step to what I call my “international sphere”. I was lucky enough to have parents who wished their child could master English. I therefore entered the Ecole Jeannine Manuel...

During my last term of 8th grade, I decided to attend a boarding school in Beijing. Alone. Today, I believe that somehow my experience was life changing, both to me and to all the people I met there. I think my stay in Beijing actually impacted the entire Wang family I stayed with. “The Wangs”, as I like to call them, sure didn’t expect me to willingly ask to stay with them for another three months when we barely...

Upon arriving to Singapore by train after having travelled through Thailand and Malaysia for 67 hours, I believe I found the perfect multiculturalism I had been seeking. Yale-NUS is part of that multiculturalism. It is the crossroad, not only between American and Asian ways of thinking, but among all other countries’. It is, in my opinion, the most diverse, multiethnic, polyglot community that might be the first sample of its kind. I yearn for a place like Yale-NUS where people are...

Reinhold Niebuhr and Lao Tzu may have agreed on one point: changing, and therefore trying, is what makes human existence worth living. I think trying is the most personal way to educate oneself: as a toddler one can try standing on one’s feet, stumbling but eventually walking; as a teenager one might try playing an instrument and maybe become a maestro at piano, guitar or saxophone; as an adult, one might quit one’s job for a totally different...