Sweet memory

Every once in a while, I would think of the great time that I spent in high school and college.

I came to US in 2009, and I had two years of high school at Manhattan. I had four years of college after that. But I feel like four years of college life went faster than two years of high school. People say 1 second is 1 second, but 1 second can mean less than 1 second. That is what exactly I would describe for my college, I did not do much everyday besides going to classroom and going back to rental property. I felt like my high school life was much richer.

As an international student, I was busy catching up my language skills and at the same time I was working harder than anyone else to catch up on homework. Then I went to try out for basketball team since I started to play basketball from very early age, I was lucky enough and got picked by both Varsity and JV coaches, but I ended up on JV team because I need to get familiar with school basketball system according to JV coach. So with language problem, homework and basketball team all adding up, my daily routine was like this: wake up at 6am, finish brushing and washing at 6:15am, leave house at 6:30am, eat breakfast on the way to subway station, and catch the 6:45am D train, (btw, I live in a host family at Brooklyn), switch to B train halfway, get to school at 7:50am, and then get ready for the first class. After school, basketball training comes or game for winter season, otherwise it will be pre-season conditioning or running in the park. By the time I get home, it will be like 9-10pm depends on whether we have a late game or not, then spent 1-2 hours doing homework, then take shower and go to sleep. Some people may say: what a f***ing day. That was exactly what I thought. And I would randomly woke up found my nose bleeding when I was brushing my teeth due to the tiredness. But I did enjoy that two years of high school.

As most international students will experience, I got to school first day by knowing nothing and being shy to talk to anyone. In order to get involved into new environment, you have to have some sort of tool, it could be your outgoing characteristic, a special skill or anything. For me, I guess basketball was the way for me to get to know people. I remember my coach told me that: you gotta show what you got, you do not earn anyone's respect by not doing anything. So we had a practice game, all team members from varsity and JV were mixed up, I played so hard and carefully, tried my best to create space for my teammates and made the best pass for them to score easily. After that game, all the teammates came up and shook my hands with brief introduction, I felt so great about it and I laughed, so hard. Coach pulled me aside and shook my hands: " Congratulations, you just earned everyone's respect. Way to go!" I earned respect, I gained confidence, and I successfully completed the mission. I had to say that two years of experience were the best two years of my life so far. That was also my fresh start in US away from my own country!