Nine days ago, January 3, 2019, marked 30 years of my living in America. It is a rewarding experience, letting me live a life I had never imagined. As Socrates believes that the unexamined life is not worth living, I will write a few words for my 30th anniversary.
I remember that morning of January 3, 1989, a friend of my brother's at Stanford picked me up from San Francisco International Airport, and drove me over Highway 17 to Santa Cruz. I could not help but remark how uniquely twisting the road was with dark green mountains on both sides. "Yes, it is unique alright," the friend agreed but not totally amused with the stress of driving.
Around noon, I was dropped off at the my contact's door, near the county jail, waiting to be led to a rental on Laurel Street. Hours later, after meeting with the landlady, I was settled in my new room, feeling as though I had landed on the moon. Thus I restarted my student career at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and Berkeley the following fall.
Academic life at UCSC might not be quite as challenging as the one at Berkeley, however, it helped me tremendously to transit for the latter. Even though I did not take any compulsory language classes, studies at UCSC provided me with basic Americana, preparing me for a brand-new field, library and information science.
Looking back, I have found that the beginning of everything was particularly challenging and thrilling in my 30 years' life and work here. During my first week of class at Berkeley, once a required class on cataloging was over, a very nice Chinese American classmate asked me if I had ever worked in a library. "No," I replied honestly. "That'll be interesting," he concluded and walked away sympathetically. Visualizing his prediction for me to quit school, I was discouraged but not totally in despair. Our 4-member study group consisting of two experienced copy catalogers, one inspiring one, and myself, came to my rescue. I attended every group activity, a big improvement from my ignorance of group discussions at UCSC. One semester later, I finally grasped enough of the concepts and practices of cataloging and classification to go on with the advanced class. Our term project to automate the Pacific Rim Library based on a real library collection at University of San Francisco was a success among class projects.
Years later I started to work for Dialog, as a member on its Product Support Team. As I was not born in the US, nor did I grow up here, my lack of pop culture background, and my accented English have not been a problem to most people, but imposed a big scarlet letter to a few narrow-minded people. At one of my beginning shifts, I got a call from a corporate librarian in the deep south. She was screaming for help and demanding credits, for she was unable to get the right data for her clients due to a file error. After I told her that I would report the problem to the right team, and emailed her the desired data with credits, she was still unhappy, because she detected my accent which shook her confidence. I asked her if the accent in question interfered with my analysis and handling of her problems. Partly because of the passing of time, partly because of her realization of the uncalled for bias, the librarian was never difficult after that, though I am keenly aware of the root of such bias, when it pops out from time to time.
In 2002, Gail and I adopted two sibling kittens at the bottom of the steps at the Santa Cruz Main Post Office. When Paul came to pick up our kitten to take home, Pat, one of my old workmates, asked me if I had ever had any cats before. "No," I admitted honestly once again. "That'll be interesting," she shot back, echoing my classmate's doubts. Contrary to her doomed prediction, our Chippy has turned from an ugly kitten into a beautiful white cat, featured as the October girl in the 2014 Baker and Taylor cat calendar. TLC is the key.
It is true that the remark "That that'll be interesting" is negative semantically; nevertheless, we can turn it into an incentive for going forward, if we are courageous enough. Bias of any sorts is like a poison, all of us need to fight it to make sure it has no ground to grow or spread. That's the summary of my 30 years in America.
