CECELIA HUA Experiencing Different Perspectives
When Cecilia Hua travels, she likes to take pictures of people in transition—on subways, walking down streets. She tries to capture the emotions they are experiencing as they move from place to place—what it feels like to be in between. A native of China, Cecilia started at OES as a day student because her mother was here working on contract for Nike. When the contract ended, her mother returned to China but Cecilia stayed on, making the transition from day student to dorm student. But as she no longer lingered in the Great Hall while waiting for her mother to pick her up, she saw less of her day student friends, and at first she had difficulty fitting into dorm life. “I thought it would be no problem to fit in because
I already knew people,” she said. “But the other dorm students had already bonded and had their own routines. I was new to that kind of community although I had known them for a long time. So I was lonely.” Cecilia responded by seeking out people through
sports and other activities. She played volleyball and basketball, and she played piano for the jazz band. Because of her interest in cross-cultural transitions, she joined the Intercultural Student Association (ISA) and participated in discussions not just about race and ethnicity but also about religion, beliefs, and sexual orientation. She eventually became one of the four leaders of the ISA and attended the Student Diversity Leadership Conference this year in Houston. She had lacked confidence because as an international student she didn’t have the deep knowledge of the culture she was living in, but the conference helped her overcome that. “I found that I don’t need to lack confidence about being international because I have my own special characteristics and international experience,” she said. “I have more experience of seeing the world in different perspectives.” She is not sure yet what she will major in at the
University of Southern California, but the experience of being an international student at OES has inspired her to pursue her interests in cultural relations, communications, and film and photography.
For her science project, Cecilia has created her own pinhole camera and created the chemical solutions to develop film.
“ We can’t base our opinion about a person on just one identifier; there are a lot of ways a person is unique.”
22 Oregon Episcopal School
www.oes.edu
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