Conversation 2: Lifestyle and Academic progress!

Conversation 2: Lifestyle and Academic progress!

After many times re-scheduling for a meet-up, I finally had the chance to see Palmira for the second time on Sunday, November 1. It has been hard for us to meet up nowadays because Palmira no longer lives with her friend in Fort Worth. She has moved to Arlington to live her aunt. I appreciate her effort and her cousin driving 30 minute from Arlington to TCU so that we could meet. This time, I asked Kaylee – one of my closest friends who is from Arizona – to join our conversation, because I think it would be nice for Palmira to have more opportunity talk in English with a native speaker.

Palmira appeared, as pretty as usual. We had dinner in the BLUU by the window, watching the beautiful sunset. That day, both Palmira and I were having salads for dinner, but our reason for having salad is different. I was eating salad because there was no good meat available in the BLUU (surprised!); Palmira, on the other hand, was enjoying her salad because she liked it. This was when we delved more into the topic of lifestyle. I asked Palmira about her new life since living with her aunt. Palmira rolled her eyes and said that her life was good but her aunt was very strict. She is not allowed to go out after a certain curfew, and not able to join some other outdoor activities. However, she was still able to have some parties at her aunt’s house. This is when I learned something new about Palmira. Not only being a friendly person, she is also very active, free-spirit, and fun-loving. Thinking that I could learn something from her lifestyle since I am more of an introverted, in-door kind of person, I started to ask her about her exercise routine and eating habit. I learned that she loves salad, and used to work out almost every day when living in Angola, but now in the States, she doesn’t have as much opportunity to go to the gym, so she works out in the park twice a week. This conversation was like a reminder for me to exercise more, since I have been immersing in the workload lately that I forget that health is the most important thing.

After a month not seeing Palmira, I recognized a noticeable progress in her speaking English. I commented that her speaking had improved a lot. To my expectation, Palmira confirmed that she is now at advanced level and she has only a few months to go before she can graduate from the IEP. (A month ago, she was in the intermediate level). Now she is able to express herself better and show much more personalities. In my blog about our first meeting, I wrote that I couldn’t wait until the day she can expressed herself better so that other people can see her beautiful soul; now my wish for her has come true. I commended her for her hard-work and strong-will to achieve such a progress in a short period of time. I started studying English since I was eight, which is why I feel comfortable using English nowadays and even find it much easier to express my ideas in English than in Vietnamese (there are some abstract topics that would sound fake and unnatural if I talked in Vietnamese such as religion, God, vulnerability, love, etc.). It has been more than a decade of learning in order for me to feel comfortable using a foreign language in an academic setting. On the other hand, Palmira has only studied English intensively for a few months, and now she is able to conduct a lively conversation with both me and Kaylee. I admire her determination and encouraged her to keep up the great work.

We gradually shifted our conversation to academic. Palmira talked about her wish to go to college here and asked me again about the scholarships availability. I answered her questions like last time, and reminded her to meet with her advisor to check the application process to college. I wish I could help her more on this but we are on different tracks: she can apply to TCU without the SAT score and may experience different policies regardless of the paperwork since she is in the IEP, while I had to apply just like any other American students a year ago.  I knew that Palmira is not confident about herself and her ability, so I encouraged her to keep working hard because I knew that she is smart and she just need a bit more of language efficiency to finish the college application.

After a while, we all looked out into the pink-ish sunset outside, embracing the warmth of our friendship. We were all going through different obstacles in life, and I’m glad we were able to be together, share a bit about our difficulties, talk about our plans, and give out words of encouragement to one another. It was such a lovely evening!

Learning Experience 2: “Inside Out” the movie – The Joyful Sadness

Learning Experience 2: “Inside Out” the movie – The Joyful Sadness

On Saturday night 10/25, TCU students get the chance to watch “Inside Out” – a Disney Pixar movie that has great ratings. If you have watched and enjoyed it, I’m glad. But if you haven’t watched it, I recommend you do. Disney has always been excellent at coming up with original ideas that nobody has ever thought of; “Inside Out” is an example of originality. It’s hard to imagine that someday, someone will make a movie about Emotions, yet Disney managed to come up with that idea and successfully created a good one. Furthermore, the meaningful messages that “Inside Out” brings to the audience (especially the young adults) makes it unforgettable.

 The movie is about the process of Emotions of an eleven-year-old, sporty, fun-loving, Minnesota girl named Riley. There are five main emotions that control her mind: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. Her life had always been full of joy until the day her family moved to San Francisco. Her life took a turn when she had to adapt to a new environment and her emotions has never been so unstable until then. Things got worse when Joy and Sadness was accidentally sucked out of the Headquarter, left Anger, Disgust, and Fear in charge of the Emotion Headquarter. From that moment, “Inside Out” took us on a roller coaster ride of emotions. It had the students in the room laugh so hard that they wept many times, and it also had us teared up for some times because of the meaningful messages that it brought. My overall impression was that “Inside Out” is a light- hearted, hilarious, yet meaningful movie.

The first meaningful message is a common-sense one. Without Joy in the Emotion Headquarter, everything can turn upside-down in a bad way. It scares me to just imagine that one day I am left with nothing but Fear, Disgust, Anger, and Sadness. If there is nothing that can make me smile or laugh at; who would I be then? Of course, the human beings are much more complex than just those five core emotions. However, Joy plays such an important role in our brain structure that our lives would be a struggle without it. The movie reminds me to appreciate those good times when I have reasons to smile and a motivation to wake up everyday.

The second intriguing message that I rarely thought of until this movie is the importance of Sadness. At the beginning, Sadness was such a bummer character that I even wished that she disappeared from the movie. During the movie, I was frustrated when Sadness kept messing up with Riley’s emotion balls, turning them into sad memories; Sadness was also the reason why Joy was sucked out of the Headquarter, leading to Riley’s severe emotion corruption later on. I adored the happy, goofy Riley to an extent that I wished for Sadness’s disappearance, and I knew some other students in the TCU Theater wished the same thing through their frustration. However, as Joy and Sadness embarked on their journey back to Headquarter, I gradually realized the role of Sadness in this movie. If it wasn’t for sadness, a person would not understand the value of happiness. Sadness is a vital part of life. What is the point of being happy all the time? Would life then be….less meaningful? When Riley is sad, her parents give her support and show their cares. When Riley burst into tears after deciding to return home instead of going back to Minnesota, her tears of sadness and guilty feeling were the glue that fix the breaking bond in her family. Moreover, her sadness acted as an outlet channel that soothed her pain and warm her heart. At the very precious moment, her sadness and guilt allowed her to express her deep-down feelings and help her parents understand her agonizing struggle better. Had it not been for sadness, Riley wouldn’t have had returned home, fall into her parents’ arms, and reconnected with her family.

By the end of the day, Riley’s core memories experienced great change. Before the incident, all of her core memories were pure joy (all yellow). However, after her life-changing event, her core memories were replaced by emotional ball of mixed colors: they are yellow (joy) mixed with blue (sadness), yellow (joy) mixed with purple (fear), etc. Riley has grown up fast and developed a more complex perception and feelings. As we grow up, we may realize that happiness is not meant to stand alone. We develop a more sophisticated mentalities that allows us to find the joy even in the darkest time. After all, the seemingly negative emotions is necessary for us to have a healthy mentality and a more complete life.