First Semester of Masters: Completed.

Linguistic Theory Class

A couple of years ago I would NOT have imagined myself going on towards a masters, especially not in Malaysia. Now that I'm here, I truly appreciate being able to learn something I'm interested in alongside people from Nigeria, China, The Philippines, Iran, to name a few...

It's been difficult to adapt to the expectations of my lecturers, who are much different than my professors at the University of Arizona.  Oh, and you know how some students complain about having trouble understanding professors with an accent? I never did. But it is REALLY strenuous getting together with a group of people all speaking Malaysian English (comparable to Spanglish) for hours and collaborating ideas to write a paper together. They were all lovely, intelligent ladies but oh the headaches! I was humbled by my dad when talking to him about it when he encouraged me by saying "Study hard. You only have a year to learn there and then you have to come home." My dad is awesome.

Things aren't always what they seem.

I can't say much for what has happened and changed the last couple of months because I've spent so much of this time in my head. The best way I can think to describe it is to compare it to driving through a tunnel and in the darkness I couldn't see anything around me but was left to my thoughts.  Thankfully, I'm coming up on the other side. Sorry I can't provide a more fun description of my adventures in Malaysia!

I've had to think a lot lately about my interactions with people because of some rough sailing and have found myself surprised at how such an agreeable, young lady could ever have any trouble getting along smoothly with others. I did think too highly of myself but the bigger problem was thinking too highly of humans in general. It's taken my Malaysian experience to realize that when people spend this much time together, people are bound to make mistakes no matter who they are.  I only wondered why it took me so long to figure that out. I think that before now I've refused to see my sin, I mean unless it was really obvious but I'm a pretty well-behaved girl so that didn't happen too often. Having friends that always understood and saw things from my point of view whenever situations did arise made me less inclined to think any further on it.

I can only consider it a good thing to be "convinced of the depravity of man", as a friend of mine put it. Unrealistically high expectations of what man can be and a denial of my own sin got me into a mess, into a tunnel of anger and confusion.  Thankfully, I'm a little more rational now and I can see things from a better perspective.

The way I feel doesn't mean as much about reality as I used to think. I feel like someone is insulting me but that doesn't mean they are insulting me. I feel attacked but it doesn't mean they are attacking me. I feel someone is hinting that they don't want to spend time with me but it doesn't really mean they are hinting so. I feel someone made a remark in anger but it doesn't mean they did. I hope that whenever I'm disappointed by someone's actions I remember to ask myself, "Did they really mean that?" and "What am I really expecting from them?" because sometimes it's impossible.