神经多样性及跨文化交际 (Neurodiversity and Cross-Cultural Communication)

Written in April 2014 and then not published because ??? I think I wanted to work on this more but it's been sitting so here it is.

So I found out that on Wednesday a professor from Beijing's Foreign Language University is coming to talk to us about cross-cultural communication. And I just finished reading Thomas Orwen's thesis which suggests cross-cultural communication as a good approach for interactions between autistic people and allistic people (non-autistic people, though he uses "neurotypicals" for this meaning.) So I wrote a thing. Poke me and maybe I'll even remember to translate it into English.

人们一听到跨文化交际就会想到不同民族的跨文化交际，而不是只有民族才有文化区别。残疾人有残疾人文化（奚）。个别残疾也会有自己的文化，即聋文化（沈; Ladd），盲文化（French），聋盲文化（Saeed et al）,及自闭症者文化（Davidson; Robertson及Ne'eman）。每一种残疾人文化都有自己的特点：聋哑人有自己的语言，从语言对思想的深刻影响可以意识到手语在聋哑人文化的核心性。盲目人在沟通中注重非可视的信息。聋盲文化把聋文化及盲文化的一些特点混在一起，也有自己的特色。

自闭症者文化呢？自闭症者使用语言的方式跟神经正常的人使用语言的方式有区。我们的感觉统合及风格也跟神经正常的人有区别（Baggs）。这样的特征感知也不是自闭症者特有的区别：自闭症成年人提出的神经多样性(Singer)表明：公众对世界、自己的环境的感知不同，学习风格（思想风格）有很多种（胡)。自闭症者之间的沟通及特有的神经共同当自闭症者文化的来源，从文化的来源可以开始理解文化的特征（奚）。具体地谈，自闭症者的文化比神经正常支配性社会愿意接受重复行为，即扑棱手；也更愿意接受沟通的不同方式，即打字、选图片、和打说手语。而且，自闭症文化更注重认知通达性，为了提高通达性愿意把要求介绍的过具体和少用比喻或者介绍所有用上的比喻。面对面交流的时候，自闭症者注意：如果认识一个人，千万不应该把“肢体语言”的信息放在话的上面。这样的思路跟神经正常社会的思路差不多是反响的：人们说自己从别人的肢体语言意识到了谎话是平常发现的情况，而自闭症者没有说谎话的时候容易被这样认为。另外，在自闭症者文化里，话不一定有别的意思：“我现在不想跟你说话”没有“我不喜欢你”的意思。我们明白：对自闭症者来说，交流需要华很多能力，有时候不想跟别人说话。用目光接触没有的问题也不表明尊重情况：只有必着别人用目光接触才算是不尊重别人(Orwen; Davidson; Robertson及Ne'eman)。

在这样的背景下，容易问：跨文化交际的方式在神经正常的人跟神经岔开的人交流有没有效(Orwen)？至少，在神经多样性的问题上跨文化交际的思路值得考虑。

奚从清， 林清和， 沈赓方.残疾人社会学. 华夏出版社, 1993.

沈玉林. "论聋文化与聋教育."现代特殊教育1 (2002): 1-9.

胡壮麟. "从多元符号学到多元智能." 外语与翻译 14.4 (2008): 1-8.

Davidson, Joyce. "Autistic culture online: virtual communication and cultural expression on the spectrum." Social & Cultural Geography 9.7 (2008): 791-806.

French, Sally. "The wind gets in my way." Disability discourse (1999): 21-27.

Ladd, Paddy. Understanding deaf culture: In search of deafhood. Multilingual Matters, 2003.

Orwen, Thomas. "Autreat and Autscape: Informing and Challenging the Neurotypical Will and Ability to Include." Thesis. Bergen University College, 2013.

Robertson, Scott M.,及 Ari D. Ne'eman. "Autistic Acceptance, the College Campus, and Technology: Growth of Neurodiversity in Society and Academia."Disability Studies Quarterly 28.4 (2008).

Saeed, Shakeel R., Richard T. Ramsden, and Patrick R. Axon. "Cochlear implantation in the deaf-blind." Otology & Neurotology 19.6 (1998): 774-777.

Singer, Judy. Odd People In: The Birth of Community Amongst People On the "Autism Spectrum" Diss. University of Technology, 1998.

注释：神经多样性(neurodiversity)的思想里的两个单词词是我自己翻译的，不一定是完美的翻译：“神经正常（的）”(neurotypical)和“神经岔开（的）”(neurodivergent)。

自闭症者文化的一些内容也是从自己的经历而学的。

"Live" blog of my presentation to the Five Project

The Five Project is an autism organization of some sort (I actually didn't know much about them other than that they wanted a presentation on autism and neurodiversity, and now that they liked it and are apparently hoping I'd be willing to do something like it again.) I wrote a script that was kind of a mix of English and Chinese but mostly English, Vivien (an exchange student working with Steven Kapp) helped me translate, and then I recorded and edited a video that was mostly along the script, though rarely actually identical. We each updated the script to match about half of what I actually said. And then yesterday morning, I logged into the virtual presentation, which I live-"blogged" into Notepad++.

Now I'm sticking that here.

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IT IS HAPPENING NOW AND I AM A BALL OF NERVES.
People are interested to hear me talk, and they're impressed with my ability to speak Chinese, and they're not NLMC-ing at the moment (there's time yet and considering the opinion folks tend to have of white people's ability to speak Chinese combined with my actually being able to speak I'm expecting it any minute. Wonder what it looks like in the more subtle/委婉 Chinese way.)

Not a lot of comments going on at the moment, which is OK with me. I can hear comments arrive, and I can hear myself talk (ugh I sound so not-fluent, even compared to my usual Chinese, reading aloud sucks), so I can do something not particularly thinking intensive to try and distract myself from my nerves until I'm needed.

want to add "很多人以为自闭症有悖于好好生活。" (A lot of people incorrectly believe that autism contradicts with a good life, ish.)

Just learned that 卡=lag, that's cool, but the reason for learning (apparently the meeting room and video are laggy for some people) is less cool.

It's a good thing we did transcript because of the lag. Captions wouldn't have solved the lag problem, though I do still want to get those done. I have less time pressure on captions than we did on the transcript, so that's good.

At the bit where I say "my carrying my computer around isn't because I want to be able to play computer games whenever I want" in the video, I typed "(I also like to play computer games)" and that got a laugh. Typed in Chinese, of course.

Oh yay, comments so far including folks saying "huh, never realized that" kinds of stuff about the sitting still and not stimming taking the energy we could use for learning.  And needing to learn to understand our body language rather than assuming we have none or assuming it'll be like neurotypical body language.

Still no sign of "not like my child," I am so confused. Happy, but confused.
Also convinced that not like my child is coming in the Q&A, because it's not like that's how things usually go or anything, and it's not like I have anxiety or anything, of course not!(SARCASM on the "it's not like" statements.)

Q&A has a lot of "when did you start typing" and "what'd you do in China" type stuff. Also some questions about kids, and about managing sensory sensitivities. How is there no NLMC I AM CONFUSED.

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Note after: No one did the whole "not like my child" thing. I wish that didn't surprise me, because it should be typical.  But I am surprised, and getting "not like my child"-ed at is a common enough problem that We Are Like Your Child exists, and is a thing I contribute to sometimes.

I've actually been asked if I'd be willing to do something like this again. And I totally would. I'd let people share the video, as long as credit to me for actually saying all this stuff and Vivien for translation+transcripting help. It's on Youtube, not captioned yet so still unlisted, but I know Youtube is blocked in China. 

Translation?

Going through my drafts and doing some editing as I go to get stuff scheduled, make sure I really do start posting again. The Chinese quote is something I saw on August 27, 2013, for reference. (That was my 21st birthday, here is what I published that day.)

每个人想要的成功或许不同。

I saw that as someone's background for their laptop on the train to the airport to orientation for my study abroad program almost a year ago (omg.) I've actually got a tag for things about China/Chinese, and another for things that are in Chinese

Anyways, this was translated as "Different people value success differently." Which is true. It's not exactly how I would translate it- my understanding is that this is about what people think success means more than how they feel about success, but it works. [I am not saying the translation is bad or wrong. The meaning I think the original is saying is one of the meanings the translation can have, it just seems easier to get a different reading from it than the one that I think is intended. Translation is subjective, and it's definitely easier to translate into one's native language than out of it.] I'd have translated it to "Different people have different ideas of what success is."

There's a couple directions I could have been going from there [I wrote down to the end of the last paragraph on the train on August 27, 2013, and I'm writing this on November 5, 2013, so I'm not sure which way I was going to go.]

I could talk about how translating stuff is complicated and interesting. It is. Translation isn't a word for word deal, and I've run into this a few times since. I saw someone say that the social model of disability didn't translate properly into Chinese because one of the sentences that's apparently fundamental to the English version, “Disability is a social issue” or something of the sort, doesn't translate well. The translation I think of, and the one thought of by the person claiming this, is more along the lines of disability being a social problem, or a burden on society. That's kind of the opposite of what we want to say.

残疾是社会问题 is the translation I think they were thinking of, by the way. And honestly... the reading implied by that is one you can get out of the English version too, which is part of why I don't actually use that as my first explaining sentence for the social model.

Also, this is translation! We can be creative! In fact, we should be creative. Telling Chinese people with disabilities which model they should use to look at disability (or even assuming that their views will fit any of the main USA models) is a problem, and I'm not going to do that. But I'm also not going to say an idea can't be translated, especially when it's just not so. 

“残疾人最严重的问题并不是从自己的（障碍？残疾？身体？）来的，而是从社会的障碍来的。”

There. All I had to do was take a different core-ish sentence describing the social model of disability and see if it translated better. The one I went for was “The worst problems Disabled people face don't come from our own impairments, but from society's barriers.” That's a sentence I'm more likely to use introducing the ideas of the social model in English than “Disability is a social issue” anyways.

In the end, translation is... I've been told it's like a dance between the translator and the original author. Let's just say there's a reason that anything of mine that gets translated into a language I speak (English to Chinese is the only example that seems likely, though I suppose that Chinese to English is possible since when I write in Chinese I don't normally do it by writing in English and then translating into Chinese,) I want to be heavily involved in the translation to make sure that the ideas come through properly. I don't mind if the words get messed up a bit, or even if whole sentences get lost, but the ideas need to be the same.

Oh, and that's why I'm slightly mistrustful of the English version of “The Reason I Jump.” The translator and the author almost certainly have extremely different views of autism- one is a parent, and one lives in an autistic mind-body, and I'm aware of how basic worldview differences between translator and author can lead to differences between the translation and the original.

Growing up into an Autistic adult

This is in the Down Wit Dat August 2014 Blog Hop, BTW. The theme is about how disabilities and such are a natural part of life. 

Well, at this point I'm 21, almost 22, so I'm definitely already an adult. I've been working part-time in math education since I was 17, almost 18, and I've done some other kinds of work (research, information technology, physics lab TA.) Also I just read Mel Bagg's What Not Changing Us Means.

When we say we don’t want to change, we’re incorporating all four dimensions in life already. We’re incorporating growth through time into our concept of the thing we don’t want changed. We’re saying “We don’t want to be changed” in the same way that a cat, faced with becoming a dog, would say “I don’t want to be changed.” The cat isn’t denying the important passage from kittenhood to adulthood. The cat is saying I want to grow as a cat, not a dog.

Basically this. (I mean a lot of other things, too, I really do suggest that you read sier post in addition to mine, or even that you read sier post first since a lot of what I'm doing here is responding or building or putting on some of the specifics as it applies to my growing up into an autistic adult, rather than a non-autistic adult.)

But also the responses. A recent New York Times article that I am not going to give the honor of linking because it is terrible (it thinks early intervention leading to a child losing their diagnosis is 1) good, and 2) going to last.)

Basically, it works under the idea that an autistic child growing up into a non-autistic adult is a good thing, which is a social and cultural and otherwise made by non-autistic "experts" assumption about how autistic people should live sort of assumption. It also works under the idea that if you can reach this sort of indistinguishability once, it will last. That's not accurate, BTW. Neurodivergent K talks about that in The tyranny of indistinguishability: performance better than I could, the essential point is that as demands increase the effort needed to emulate them increases and gets even further from autistic needs.

But because autistic development and non-autistic development look different, are moving towards different... slightly closer to stable than in childhood but still always changing adult areas, and because people tend to expect non-autistic development of autistic people rather than admitting cluelessness, there's an idea that we will get less obvious as we grow up when the opposite is more likely to be true.

Back to Mel's words and the cat/dog metaphor for one way that it works:

Quite frequently when they say that they sneak in something about making us into dogs, only they call that part of the growth from kittenhood into adulthood. “Sure, learn about stalking mice and stuff, I’ll give you that, as compromise or something, but hey, wag your tail when you’re happy, not when you’re mad. That’s the right way after all. You can’t deny change. Didn’t I just talk about important skills of the adult dog… er… I mean cat?”

 Don't flap your hands, it's silly/childish. Make eye contact. Use oral speech. Sit still. These are things expected for non-autistic development in the culture of my particular bit of the USA. (Eye contact expectations are hugely variable with culture. Signed languages have a long history, and they have been an acceptable alternative that most people know in quite a few places, for quite a few reasons.)

Because of how widespread those expectations are, I actually did learn to do a lot of that (iffily, badly, actually pretty easy to distinguish from my peers even though I've always, always, even still meet the definition of indistinguishable that Lovaas and co use: placement in a general educational classroom and at least one non-disabled friend, and can we talk about how this definition depends on the person still being a student?)

But.
In growing up into an autistic adult, I've stopped doing some of those things. I've started using the skills that I need for navigating the world as I am, rather than for trying to navigate the world while pretending to be non-autistic. (By Mel's metaphor, I've started switching out "adult dog" skills taught to me as universal "adult" skills for "adult cat" skills that serve my actual needs.)

I carry an AAC device- in my case, either my laptop with eSpeak or my iPad with Proloquo2Text (or just a notepad application when I was in China because I never figured out a Chinese text to speech on the iPad.) I have one of these things and a pen and paper on my person pretty much all the time. A side effect of knowing that I'm covered even if oral speech does give out on me, funnily enough, is that I'm more likely to retain the ability to speak, but that's not actually the purpose of carrying the devices. The reason is that I'm not always able to speak orally, and it's important for me to have a way to be understood even when I can't. My autistic body language, while very communicative for people who understand it, isn't reliable for this because people tend not to understand it. Folks have a tendency not to realize I'm upset or uncomfortable until I've actually melted down, which is too late as far as I'm concerned.

I carry a stim toy, a fidget, whatever you want to call it. It's usually a Tangle, Buckyballs, or a square of satin-bound blanket. Any one of these can take care of my need to be not-still. I've also used knitting and making chain mail for this (the armor kind, not the junk mail kind.) When I'm taking care of my need to be not-still in one of these ways, I'm less likely to pick at my skin, which means my face itches less. That's actually a big enough thing that once I realized the effect was there, it got added to my list of purposes for carrying a stim toy. [As opposed to being more likely to retain speech, which I don't care all that much about.] The original reason was being better able to center myself and also better able to concentrate on whatever I want to concentrate on, which has tended to be school stuff.

I don't dress like most people. I tend to go for either T-shirts and athletic shorts (both out of the mens section) or homemade dresses and skirts. In the case of skirts, the shirt might be homemade too, or it might be a T-shirt. The common factor is comfort- I'm talking about cotton knit dresses, the kind of dress people think of as for kids because adults use more "mature" and not-stretchy fabrics that aren't as comfortable and harder to keep clean. Don't even get me started on stockings. I have refused to wear them for as long as I have been able to enforce this refusal. Actually longer but until I turned 18 I could sometimes be overruled by a parent and that was terrible.

I flap and rock and spin and jump more openly now at 21 than I did at 12. At 12, I was still simultaneously trying to get my weirds read as deliberate and trying to be more typical, more indistinguishable, than is anywhere near sustainable for me to be. At 21, I know that while the "make it look like deliberate weirdness" carries some benefits, it also means people are better able to ask me to change it, which doesn't go well because I really can't. Not sustainably, anyways. I also know that trying to act like a non-autistic adult super-duper not sustainable. That's kind of the reason behind "I really can't" on the changing said weirdnesses.

People tend not to read me as autistic anyways, because autistic... adult? Does not compute. Autistic person with college degree? Does not compute. Autistic person... as the teacher? Computes even less. Autistic person... read as woman? What? That can't be a thing. And yet... here I am. Here we are, I should say, because it's not all that unusual. Fairly sure all those things apply to Neurodivergent K, for one example. Melanie Yeargeau for another. Ibby Grace, too.

But people not attaching the word autistic to the pretty noticeable differences?

1) Doesn't make the differences stop being a thing. I jump, rock, flap, spin, openly stim, etc. I've had at least three broken bones, none of which got diagnosed at the time and one of which was very explicitly a non-diagnosis due to my not acting like I was in enough pain- I went hiking on a broken foot without realizing it was broken. I use language weirdly. I ran a 5k barefoot once. My records are fairly littered with autistic traits that didn't get called that, which means that I had the differences and that they got noticed.

2) Doesn't mean they didn't notice the differences.  R****d was my bullies insult of choice fairly often, and definitely the one they went for when I was jumping and flapping my hands. Crazy and weird were the two "negative" words that anyone had to say about me in high school. One of my college professors commented that I speak in a "unique" way. Chad Stokes (State Radio, Dispatch) still remembers me as the person who ran the 5k barefoot.

3) Definitely doesn't make me somehow not autistic. Seriously, I have no idea how the idea of "If we don't say the word then she doesn't have it" is supposed to work, but something along those lines seems to have been the philosophy that made it take so long for me to get diagnosed. But yeah. In terms of stuff I do in my life, both online and off, I probably do count as that ideal result because I'm in general education classrooms and have friends. The reason I can do those things is that I don't try to act like I'm non-autistic. My classmates and teachers from my year in Tianjin can totally attest to just how obviously autistic I am. So calling "doing stuff as an adult" the same as "not autistic anymore" (in metaphor, calling "adult" the same as "adult dog") makes zero sense. Actually negative sense.

I'm an Autistic adult doing things. Not a magically-not-autistic-anymore adult because I am doing things. Seriously. Should. Not. Be. That. Hard. To. Accept.

Back, I hope.

So it's been a month. I think that's the longest time I've gone without posting since I made this blog. And this isn't super-duper much of a post, either, really. I made a word of the day for a language exchange I'm in- in the absence of actual Chinese people in the group, I'm the best Chinese speaker/writer they've got for the time being, and that means I'm in the rotation for making words of the day and helping other folks learn.

Which feels weird. But the Chinese government is trying really hard to get more people learning Chinese, and when I meet folks whose first language is Mandarin Chinese and they realize I speak, they tend to be excited (iffy on happening, because I'm not going to go up to someone and randomly start speaking Chinese outside China, but if I hear folks sounding lost and speaking Mandarin, I'll help in Chinese assuming I'm not lost too.)

Anyways, without further ado, here's the word of the day I prepared. Maybe it'll even get me back in the habit of posting here.

Chinese Word of the Day- Day 15.

Image description: The five elements are in a circle, clockwise from the top are wood in blue, fire in red, earth in yellow, metal in white, and water in black. Each element has a relationship arrow pointing towards the next element clockwise and the second element clockwise, which isn't labeled in the picture. The one position clockwise relationship is a creation relation, while two positions is a destruction one, eg, water quenches fire.

Chinese- 五 (wǔ)

English- Five

The exact origins of this character aren't entirely certain: some scholars wonder if it may have originated as horizontal bars and then changed over time much as other characters did, while others think it began as two horizontal bars with an X between them. (Considering how long it was before characters were standardized, they may both be correct.)

五, sometimes written as 伍 in more formal contexts, such as on the 5-dime (五毛 wǔ máo) coin, is a culturally relevant number, as there were traditionally five elements: wood (木 mù), fire (火 huǒ), earth (土 tǔ), metal (金 jīn), and water (水 shuǐ).

When tallying to five (五, wǔ) Chinese people typically use the character 正 (zhèng.)

EXAMPLES

五块 - wǔ kuài, five bucks, five dollars. It's less formal than 五元 - wǔ yuán, which has the same essential meaning.

五毛 - wǔmáo, five dimes, fifty cents.

五分钟 - wǔ fēnzhōng, five minutes

五行 - wŭ xíng, the Five Elements

你家有几个人？ Nǐ jiā yǒu jǐ gèrén? How many people are in your family?

我家有五个人。Wǒjiā yǒu wǔ gèrén. My family has five people.

Language play off 因才而教

因才而教 is a pretty traditional Chinese statement on education. Confucius (孔子) said it. (A lot of traditional sayings come from him or from Lao Tzu (老子).)
因 is the same character from 因为, "because." 才 is from 人才, the person, the person's abilities. 而 is one of those complicated characters, but here the closest I can come is "therefore." In combination with 因 it's like "according to." 教 is to teach, or to educate. As a whole, 因才而教 is saying to teach according to the person's abilities, according to how the person learns.

Sound a lot like the ideas of individualized education, inclusive education, presuming competence? It should, because it is similar. That's not what mainstream Chinese schools are doing right now, but the idea has been around a while.

Anyways, now it's language play time.

The original statment:
因才而教.

Some things that I think are along similar lines:
因才而考: Assess according to the person's abilities.
因才而选话题:  Choose topics according to the person's abilities/interests.


Some things that the statement is really, really not.
因诊断而教: Teach according to the diagnosis.
因诊断而不教: Fail to teach because of the diagnosis.
因以为无才而不教: Fail to teach because of believing wrongly that there are no abilities.
因缺而教: Teach according to defects. (Not saying ignore the stuff that we're bad at. But don't choose to teach only to remedy percieved defects.)
因缺而不教: Fail to teach because of defects.

And of course, question the idea that the things we're thinking of as defects currently are deficits. What is valued, and what is not valued, are cultural ideas.

A Letter of Interruption

We (I) interrupt talking about the awesomeness that is 李金生 (Li Jinsheng) for me to get some words out that I'd like to have said to my academic director, but that I know it would be a bad idea to actually send her. (So um if you read my blog, cause I think you have the link thanks to the transcript of my presentation linking to another post here, remember that I did know better than to actually send you these words and that no one here actually knows who you are. Haven't told them your name or anything, not even pinyin.)

Anyways.

Hi,
You may have figured out at lunch today that the whole "sit in on one class, take one class" ending with my doing the finals for both was totally planned. At the least, you weren't happy that I was laughing about it. And yes, it was planned. I don't know how to fake a melt down, and I wouldn't try anyways, and I can't come up with deception during a melt down or anything- at the moment I suggested it, I was suggesting it for real as an act of desperation that I can't lose out on a thing I can do based on a thing I can't do yet again (this happened a lot in middle school and early high school, but by the end of high school I figured out what the weak points were so that my guidance counselors couldn't really pull that anymore.) But once I was calmed down the idea of taking both finals anyways occurred to me pretty fast and I decided to just go with it, and that telling you so would just be asking for trouble.

This is absolutely about that.
You said today that I shouldn't be laughing, because while there were gains (the reason I ignored you and did my two classes and the finals for both) there were also losses (true of every choice ever, yawn, give me news please.) I know full well what you think the losses were. You think the loss was to my grades in Chinese. You're wrong, and the fact that you still think my taking two major classes was the problem... well, your solution wouldn't have helped, and might have made things worse.

The problem wasn't my doing too many things. I've done heavier course loads before, actually, with better records at getting my homework in. The problem was insufficient scheduled transit time, or insufficient away time. Either one of those phrases, while they describe different things, would have been a partial solution. So what would really have worked? More major classes, strangely enough. Send me to the new campus daily, Sunday through Thursday, timed so that either I've got an hour or so of time between classes with nothing to do, or so that I'm going to get a seat on the subway in one or both directions. This needs to be because of an obligation, like a class or a sports practice, not just a thing that I'm doing because I think it's a good idea, or else it will fall apart quickly. That's why I say adding more major classes- it's something that could have been done, though it wouldn't have gotten approved in a million years.

I'd have needed something to do on campus, or on the subway. That would have been reading my class texts enough of the time to be helpful to my homework completion. [I know this works because transit has been how I've gotten homework done for quite a few classes over the years, and down time at an out of the way place where I don't really have time/means to go elsewhere during this time has gotten other homeworks done regularly over the years.]

Pattern recognition. It's something I'm good at. The classes I was most consistent at getting my homework done for were ones where I had enforced down time or transit time (or another class I didn't pay attention to, sorry, not actually a good student.) That doesn't happen by telling me to drop classes, by the way. That's happened when I've been ridiculously busy. Leave the house at 6 or 7 am and not get home until 8:30pm kind of busy, that was the best term and a half or so of the only year I ever got straight A's.

So yes. There was a loss from the way I handled my major classes, there's basically always a loss to every choice. So as for the loss: It's not a hit to my Chinese grades, that's mostly a function of how the class was structured (OMG so much homework, this is a problem) and partially a result of my not having that kind of stuck/down/transit time that let me get stuff done better in swim season than in not swim season. It's really, really not the Chinese grades, and you're probably not going to believe me no matter how many times I tell you that those aren't a result of my taking two major classes, not even a little bit, but that's the truth. There's exactly one day all semester where the major class I was supposed to audit but actually did the final for could have hurt my Chinese performance, and my homework was done that day- I'm talking about the day of my final presentation, when my paper was due. The paper was a one-night deal for pretty much the same reasons that my homework was an issue all semester.

No. Chinese grades weren't the loss. You probably no longer trust me not to nod along with what you think I should do, then ignore you and do what I want anyways. Which, I mean, you shouldn't trust me not to do that, because I absolutely will! It's not even the only deception-type thing I did this year- when they asked about disabilities for ADA reasons, I described way fewer effects than actually showed up over the course of this year because I didn't want to get kicked off before I even got here. But your idea that I'm pure or innocent? Yeah, I think that got lost. It's an acceptable loss, as far as I'm concerned. I'll keep laughing.

Alyssa

Some more on Li Jinsheng (李金生)

So I am now finally talking about the ways that Li Jinsheng （李金生） and his taking the college entrance exams (高考) has been represented in some Chinese media. I'm looking at articles published online in Chinese, on China-based sites, something that I don't think most USA folk look at, and most of my readers are from the USA.
The articles are

1. 盲人高考河南第一人参加体检 盲人试卷或将亮相 April 23, 2014 article, headline about the first Blind person in Henan (a province) to take the entrance exams.
2. “河南盲人自考第一人”报名高考遭拒 自言不放弃 December 14, 2013 article, headline about the first Blind person in Henan to take the independent study college entrance exams (Li Jinsheng was that person a while back) planning to take the regular exams. 
3. 黄诗欣：高考交白卷的权利 June 12, 2014 article, headline is the authors name followed by "the right to turn in a blank test on the college entrance exam" (Li Jinsheng turned in a nearly blank exam after being given a paper version- he'd practiced on and requested electronic versions.)
4. 46岁李金生：今年全国唯一一名盲人考生 June 11, 2014 article, headline is 46 year old Li Jinsheng: The only blind person in the country to take the college entrance exams this year.
5. 盲人高考白卷亦是一种公平与进步 June 16, 2014 article, headline is that the blind person's blank test paper is also/still a sort of progress for fairness.
6. 交白卷无损盲人高考破冰意义 June 9, 2014 article reprinted from the Nanjing Daily. The headline says that turning in a blank test paper does not diminish the "break ice" meaning of a blind man taking the college entrance exams. Break ice here is figurative language for breaking down barriers in general.
7. 盲人高考交白卷“破冰”还是浪费？ June 11, 2014 article, headline asks if the blind person turning in a blank test paper is breaking the ice or wasting resources. The article goes for the ice breaking meaning.
8. 李金生的高考，不是一个人的战斗 June 9, 2014 article, headline says that Li Jinsheng's participation in the entrance exam isn't just one person's battle. 
9. 教育部发文部署2014年普通高校招生工作, a ministry of education release from March 28, 2014. I'm really only looking at one paragraph from this release from the 教育部, and it's the second to last one. That's where they changed from their old decision of not letting Blind people take the regular exam to allowing it and stating some available options. 

This is a lot of articles, so this is probably going to be multi-part. Ah well, suc

So, here's the quote from the department of education: 

《通知》指出，要以考生为本，要做好招生服务和宣传工作。教育部要求各级教育行政部门、招生考试机构和高校要加强作风建设和职能转变，着力解决考生和社会关心、反映强烈的突出问题。为考生提供更加专业化的招生政策咨询服务、更加人性化的考试服务，热情关爱弱势群体考生。特别是要积极采取措施，为残疾人平等报名参加考试提供便利。有盲人参加考试时，为盲人考生提供盲文试卷、电子试卷或者由专门的工作人员予以协助。

As for what that means?
We've got what reads to me like fluff about how students and fairness are important, test structure needing to suit students, professionally serving the students who are taking the test, caring for test takers from "vulnerable groups." Then the second half of the second last sentence and the whole last sentence look more like meat, like actual statements. They're talking about "working for disabled people's equal participation in the test" and then the last sentence specifically addresses Blind people. "When Blind people are taking the test, they should be provided with a Braille test, an electronic test, or assistance from a worker." I'm guessing the assistance from a worker would be having the test read aloud, but I'm not sure.

That's actually a decent thing to be saying, I think. My issue is that saying this is a reversal of the old policy, and that it was done really close to the test date, which seems unfair to a lot of people- Li not knowing how or if he was really going to get to take the test and the test-writers not getting a whole lot of notice (though given that the legal right was already extant and it was just policy makers ignoring this, I don't have all that much sympathy for them.) This should have been the re-iteration of an old policy, not a change in policy, especially considering that other already extant laws guaranteed the right to take the exam and all. But since it's a new policy, hey, at least there's progress?

Now to start on stuff that's not ministry of education legalese. Happily, the news coverage I'm seeing is talking about how the opportunity to take the test is more important than how well Li Jinsheng did, which is something Li himself has been saying since well before the test. It's mostly commenters who seem to be calling it a waste of resources to have let him take it at all, and according to the one article with numbers, even that's a minority. Loud minority, but minority.

And now it's time for sleep for me, given that I have an oral proficiency exam in the morning. They generally ask about news, so I'm totally going to be talking about Li Jinsheng and how he is awesome and such. Next bit about him is probably going to be me finding words he said to journalists from the various articles and translating them into English, because they actually have a lot of words from him! There's some history stuff, too, and some of his words are about that- he did a similar thing with the version of the exam for students who did independent study about 10 years ago, so he's got a history of being activisty around higher education for blind folks.

Disability, China, College

Folks who've been around for a while probably know I'm studying abroad at Tianjin Normal University this year. That's in Tianjin, China. Folks who read so much as my sidebar or header know I'm autistic. So far as I can tell (as in, it's relayed second-hand but it's pretty much coming from the admins) I am the first openly autistic student they've had. Ever.

I'm not the first disabled student they've ever had- there's apparently a student missing some fingers in the physics department, though I've never met him. I've never seen a wheelchair on campus, and I'm not convinced that many of the buildings and classrooms are actually accessible. I know the bathrooms generally aren't.

But, you know, the not accessible thing isn't unique to China or anything. Psuedoaccess, where there's a ramp theoretically there, or abled folk are claiming a place is accessible but you never see disabled people using it because the supposed access doesn't actually work? That happens all the time in the USA too.

So what I am writing tonight is really only about China in that the particular examples I'm talking about happened here. My personal experience as an autistic college student in China (a combination that apparently no one's ever heard of, my attempts at searching for other autistic college students via news articles found me nothing in mainland China and one autistic woman in Taiwan whose mother went to all her classes with her, and the article was more about the mom than the autistic woman who did college) has been pretty good. There's been icky stuff, but my residence and academic directors for the program I'm on have dealt with it for me and I haven't had to do any of it directly, which has been nice. I still know about some of it: before I arrived, there were administrators who said people like me shouldn't go to college, and they tried to get the program to un-accept me, and they tried to have me sent home.

But to my face people have been pretty good. I use AAC in class sometimes- specifically, when speech isn't working for me I'll type instead. If it's something I want the rest of the class to hear, I'll get a classmate to read it for me (they know I do this) because my laptop speakers aren't that great and my iPad's AAC is all English-based in addition to not being that loud. If it's something where I just wanted to make sure the teacher knew I understood how to use the language construction or how to use the word in question, I don't get it read out and just email it to the teacher after class. They'll count this for me instead of talking in class for class participation. Getting in and staying in was the hard part, day-to-day... well, I think that 面子, or face, is relevant? Directly insulting a person to their face isn't so much a thing. Makes it hard to know what people are really thinking of me, but it also helps shield me from the worst of the discrimination stuff- my residence director got to deal with it instead.

And what brought these thoughts up today? Well, I've been seeing articles about a Chinese man who took the 高考, the college entrance exams. He's blind, and he'd prepared on electronic versions, but in the end they gave him paper versions, using Chinese Braille. He wound up handing in nearly blank tests (On the test paper he apparently did write in a request for an electronic version) because electronic stuff is faster for him than Braille, both reading and writing. Didn't happen. Folks react. There's English coverage here and here, you can probably find more if you look. I'm not going to analyze the English articles, just point out where they are so you can look if you want. But tomorrow my plan is analyzing some of the Chinese coverage. 

Things to Do

I have a lot of things that need doing. I'm hoping that if I write them down I will actually get them done.

First off, I need to caption this Youtube video and write a transcript for it, and soon. Because that's my presentation for Society for Disability Studies, and that means it needs to be accessible and that means captions and transcript. Probably transcript first, then caption. Right now you can't search Youtube to find the video, but I'll make it public (as opposed to unlisted) after it's captioned and SDS is over. So, you know. I totally want it shared all over the place, just not for another day or two.

I also need to write my math final- it's Differential Geometry, it's in Chinese, and it's takehome. It's also due in 9 hours. Erm. Better get writing.

I feel like I should get back into blogging more, so that's kind of what this is. I'm putting a thing on my blog, even if it's not super-relevant to autism or disability. But that's OK, because this is actually my personal blog and not an autism-specific blog or a disability-specific blog. (I have posting privileges on some blogs like that, such as We Are Like Your Child, this just isn't actually a blog like that.)

I'm apparently getting interviewed tomorrow related to activism and Autistic Pride Day. That'll be cool. I'll find a link once that exists, because yay things.

I've got a final paper about nanotechnology and society and China to write. In Chinese. I don't really want to write the paper that I'm supposed to be writing, though there's a paper kind of like it that I totally do want to write. We'll see which one actually comes out, depending on how well I manage to care what my teacher thinks of the paper. (Ehhh... considering that a C and an A transfer back to my home institution the same way, I'm probably not going to be able to make myself care that much. Which isn't great, but I'll live. And pass. And all that other good stuff. I have gotten really tired of this teacher telling me that I always speak and write too informally, especially since I am opposed to the idea that formal speech is inherently better. Technical terms are great because they're useful, big words for the sake of sounding smart annoy me, being told that I should use big words for the sake of sounding smart will just make me angry.)

I'm reading stuff about cross-cultural communication and disability, written by 王莉皓 and 李志远 (Wang Lihao and Li Zhiyuan.) There's two shorter journal articles, about 3 pages each, that are in Chinese, one of which I essentially liveblogged except it's not on my blog yet (if I put it up that goes towards the blogging thing so I probably will. There's also 李志远's masters thesis, which is in English. It's very Chinese-style English (No, I don't mean the accent that people like to make fun of; this is written work anyways. I mean a style of speaking and writing that I don't really know how to describe, but that you'll be familiar with if you spend time in China speaking English, or if you've read a lot of things written by Chinese people who've learned English mostly from other Chinese people. It's about word choice and sentence structure and the ideas that are being communicated and paragraph structure and just the whole thing.) Anyone who wants any of the articles can poke me, I do have PDFs.

In terms of people wanting the things: The title of the thesis (the only English article) is Intercultural Nonverbal Communication Between the Group of Disabled Co-Culture and the Group of Dominant Nondisabled Culture in China. The Chinese title is 中国残疾人共文化群体与主流非残疾人文化群体的跨文化非语言交际 (Zhongguo canjiren gongwenhua qunti yu zhuliu feicanjiren wenhua qunti de kuawenhua feiyuyan jiaoji.)

The Chinese articles, neither of which have English titles or abstracts (this is actually kind of unusual, but the fact that this is unusual is a sign of problems I'm not going to talk about right now,) are: 残疾人共文化群体求学过程中的交际障碍及应对策略 (Canjiren gongwenhua qunti qiuxue guochengzhong de jiaoji zhangai jiying dui celue; Disabled people co-cultural group [study results? in study? I'll fix it after I read the article for context] communication barriers and challenges) by 李志远 and 王莉皓 and 中国残疾人问题研究现状及应对策略——基于跨文化交际视角 (Zhongguo canjiren wenti yanjiu xiankuang jiying dui celue——jiyu kuawenhua jiaoji zhijiao; Chinese disability research problems, status, and challenges: The angle of cross-cultural communication) by 栾岚 and王莉皓.

I was able to track down 王莉皓's email address, and since one of the problems she mentioned in her work was that disability research is consistently done from the standpoint of nondisabled people, I figure there's at least a shot that she'd be willing to talk to a disabled disability scholar. Fingers crossed, though I want to read and liveblog-type respond to all three relevant articles (she was 李志远's advisor, so his thesis is relevant to her too) before I talk to her. I do my research!

Oh, and I probably could be convinced to translate the Chinese articles into English, but it'd probably need to be paid. But that's not really likely to happen, is it? /sigh.

Thinking in Patterns

Got the brain-seed to write this from Autistic Thinking, a new tumblr that I think is important.

No, I don't think all autistic people think in patterns. I'm writing, tonight, specifically about the way that I think.
Not what I think. How I think.

I think in patterns. It's usually through language of some sort (yes I consider mathematics to have a language, flavored by but not the same as whatever language is being used to define and describe it, no I can't describe it better than that because every description that's intelligible to anyone besides me would be communicated in one of the languages used to define and describe it.) It's not always through a language, just usually.

Sometimes it's through visual stuff, but this requires the visual stuff be physically in front of me. I can sort of manipulate an image in my head, at least along certain patterns (rotations, reflections, translations, stretching and shrinking, often moving parts.) But I can't create a mental-only visual representation, generally. (So I don't have pictures in my head.) So I can create cool geometric pattern-based art, as long as I'm actually creating it on paper or on a computer screen or drawing lines in the sand or any other medium where I get an image in front of me, and I can say if something looks right/not right in terms of matching a prior pattern, but I can't pull up the image of the prior pattern and I can't create a design in my head to draw later. In terms of the rotations, reflections, stretching and shrinking this means I am calculating where each piece goes after the transformation and then drawing it, but unless I actually draw it or match it to an already drawn one someone offered as a choice, I don't have a picture in my head.

The visual version of my pattern thinking is probably responsible for my pile of four-, five-, and six-leaf clovers. I see the patterns in how three-leaf clovers are, and then I see breaks in the pattern, and oh hey that's probably a clover with extra leaves.

Sometimes it's through pitches and timing, like with music. I can't recreate everything playing my head, not by a long shot, but if you could? A lot of times, I have essentially an audio recording of something in my head [only if I remember at all, which is really iffy. I have good pattern recognition thanks to my thinking in/through patterns, but this does not mean good, consciously accessible memory.] This relates to me and music, but it also relates to me and language.

And now that's language. That's where a lot of my thinking happens, though switching languages mid-thought is totally a thing. (Like even when I'm using English I kind of want to call things 委婉 (wei wan), which is a lot like subtle/indirect. I'm generally complaining when I want to call things 委婉, by the way.) My language is very pattern-based. If I'm writing a sentence that I've heard a friend say before, I'm very likely to be "hearing" that recording in my head as I write it. When I'm writing a story or a poem or an essay, I pull out sentence patterns and idea patterns that I've seen before. Not like the five-paragraph essay sort of pattern, that's one that my mind never seemed to get along with that well though I did know how to do it, but in terms of "these ideas fit together well" or "this word/sort of sentence goes well with that word/sort of sentence" or "this phrase and this idea work nicely."

Sometimes that turns into echolalia, and sometimes it's an echolalic style or echolalic language use without really being what most people mean behavior-wise by echolalia. (It's never what therapists mean, interpretation-wise. Never. Even when I am repeating the last word of a sentence or the subject of a sentence, it has meaning, and includes my having understood what was said.) Because sometimes it's a pattern of "I know how this kind of sentence works on that idea, and now I'm going to substitute my own idea in, with words to match." That's how I got the title for this post. That's how some of my poetry happens too. [Beware the choice! Beware refusing it!/You beware my choice. You should beware refusing it.] The first comes from Young Wizards, which is a series I love. The second? Those are my words. And the contexts, the meanings? I think they're different in pretty significant ways, but the word patterns are similar.

And then there's the actual repeating of words, shortly after the other person says them. If a person asks me, "Do you want X?" or "Do you X?" or one of many variations on that sort of question, it's not really a yes or no question for me. It's an X or no question for me. [Yes I call them X or no questions in my own head, pulling from one of the ways people talk about math, where X is a variable.] In terms of repeating the nouns from sentences in general, ones that aren't questions, it's more like how other people will say "yeah" or "uh-huh" or nod to show that they're listening. I'll noun.

Because I think in patterns like this, I tend to... think in patterns. Less so examples. I often need to be reminded to include those. [I just remembered that I should probably give an example of an X or no question, not just the models of how those questions are built.]  Sometimes I get asked if I want ice cream. I often answer  "冰淇淋！" (bingqilin) or "巧克力冰淇淋！" (qiaokeli bingqilin.) Those are "ice cream!" and "chocolate ice cream!" in Mandarin Chinese, respectively, though I'm leaving out tone marks here just like I did with 委婉 (wei wan) because I don't actually know how to type those. And also in terms of the examples thing: I will often have the pattern in parts of my memory that I can call up at will, but the examples can only be called up by very specific things, which usually aren't "being asked." Something that fits in the same pattern might call the memory up for me, even if I didn't know I remembered it, though.

The patterns get to be an issue in social situations, sometimes. Because I work in patterns, I tend to follow said patterns. Breaking a pattern takes effort. If I'm low on energy, I might not be able to, but that's also when I likely need to break script and push my own needs. This means learning new patterns is important, but that also takes energy. It's an interesting cycle, and I think I'm making progress. 

Travel, tiring but good this time

I had another travel thing with my class last weekend. It was to Beijing, for Thursday-Saturday, and it was tiring and also a break in my routine. BUT! It was a lot better than the one in November.
You can at least partially tell that it was better because I dropped off the face of blogging for less than a week straight over it, as opposed to missing a decent bit of a month and having NaNoWriMo fall apart. (NaPoWriMo, sadly, did get lost to the tired, but there's always next year.)

I know part of it was that this was a shorter routine break and I had fewer sensory overload issues on this trip. But there are also things that were different in how my teachers and I handled the transitions. Those are probably useful to talk about, considering that I figure most folks reading here have some sort of connection to autism. (Wasn't this supposed to be a personal blog? Oh yeah, it is, and then I went and perseverated on autism so like 2/3 of my posts or more are autism-related.)

Anyways, here's some stuff I did differently:

1. In November, once I got back I didn't realize just how off-balance I was so I tried to keep working like everything was normal. This time I knew that I was going to be off-balance and didn't really even try to speak out loud in class beyond really basic stuff for the first couple days. I typed instead, and I sent what I typed to my teachers in an email after, which they accept as an alternative to my speaking in class when speaking is an issue. 
2. In November, I didn't take a rest day until I'd actually melted down... multiple times. This time, I took the day that was meant to be used for social survey stuff and made it a rest day instead. 
3. This time around, I just went straight to sitting on the floor in a corner in class as soon as the chair started being not-good. 

Now here's some stuff my teachers did differently, both on the trip and after:

1. In November, they also changed up teaching methods and tutors between leaving for travel and coming back. That meant I wasn't even coming back to the same routine I left. They made no such change this time.
2. They planned a bit more down-time into the trip, in the form of "free" time that I spend recovering from people and routine breakage and people. Yes, I know I said people twice. In November, we were spending basically all waking hours with people and that was kind of terrible. 

Some Chinese stuff because yeah...

Have some stuff from Chinese.

First thing is a short essay about "So, culture changes with time and it can totally survive in the midst of some parts changing. This has actually been happening since forever." My examples were Ancient Greeks getting pissy about writing making it so people can read stories instead of having to listen to them but wait storytelling didn't actually die, USA people getting pissy about how newspapers mean you can read on the train instead of talking to people but hey people actually do sometimes talk to each other on trains, and modern Chinese young folks using the internet to send new years money to their friends as a thing that's happening in addition to the traditional way. 

有人说如果传统文化有改变，传统就不存在。不可否认的是，如果有改变，找跟以前完全一样的就会变难。但是，文化从旧一直在改变。（人们也一直在抱怨文化的降落。）拿古代的希腊来看：他们开始写字以前，人们都必须记住故事，不能读。他们开始写字后，很多专家抱怨，说人们都会忘记怎么讲故事，会忘记自己的文化。事实上，很多人开始读故事，也有很多人继续听别人讲故事。他们的文化在改变中还存在了。在拿报纸的例子来看。报纸变流行以前，人们在火车上都看窗户外的风景或者跟别人说话。报纸开始流行的时候，很多人抱怨：“人们都看报纸，停止跟别人说话！”事实上，在火车上看报纸的人不是从前说话的人，而是看风景的人。在火车文化在改变中存在了。最后，拿红包的例子来看。从前，人们送真正的红色的包，里面有钱。现在，父母送给孩子送的还是具体的包，而还有成年人送电子红包给朋友。文化改变了，而主要内容（父母送红包给孩子）存在。文化在改变中存在了。如果我们只看改变的部分，我们会以为文化就没了，而社会一直在改变，科技一直在进步，文化一直跟着社会和科技变化。如果我们说一点改变让我们的传统就没了，就是说谁都已经没有什么文化。

The second thing is me attempting to explain some confusion I was having with an assignment.

现在我要介绍一下我在什么方面糊涂了。（写的比较乱是因为思路也乱。如果我自己不糊涂，能写的清楚，就不需要帮助！）

周三是社会调查。（OK了，我知道是做跟社会调查由关系的。。。而根本是什么？-现在知道了，而知道真的是给我感知矛盾的答案不是解决矛盾。只告诉我“这一点不是解决矛盾的一点。”）这是因为：周三没有单班课，单班课的老师可以陪我们去问，所以去问的天不可能是星期三。而星期三是“社会调查”的天。矛盾。（感知矛盾是个问题。）

社会调查具体内容。背景调查：信息是从课的内容来的吗？就不算是调查。要搜索吗？不一定算是调查，而这样做过。为什么搜索已经写过的题目？是要在路上问别人？:( 如果这样的话，就面临下面的问题。我有三个不同的方式来明白这部分，三个方式都包括问题。

B。，C。部分明白了，就要记住这些问题，然后。。。去问别人。等一下，我应该在路上开始跟很多不认识的人开始谈自己介绍的题目，方式是开始问问题？！成绩的50%靠这个能力？！“囧”不够强。我就去桌子下躲起来。。。这部分是“我知道我要做什么，而不知道什么方式让我做得了。”

从自闭症走出来？无意义的概念。

Here, have a thing I wrote in Chinese. It came about partially from my thoughts still running around after my new tutor suggested that I'd "walked out of autism" (I think that's their equivalent of "emerged from autism") and partially from a new phrase we learned in class: 非此即彼=either/or, two choice.

(No, I have no clue how the tutor came up with the idea that I was somehow recovered or whatever, considering that I was not capable of speech at the time and therefore typing to him instead. But he didn't argue when I explained at the time why the idea made no sense and was a bad idea.)

I don't know if/when I'm going to translate this one into English, because I've said all the content before just maybe not in these exact words. If I do, I'll edit to link here. Title means "Walking out of autism? A meaningless concept."

我们为什么还在谈“从自闭症走出来”这样的话题？“自闭的”及“开心的”不是非此即彼的问题，自闭症者的开心不靠“从自闭症走出来”而需要了解自己的能力，对自己的能力和需要帮助的地方池接纳的态度。如果一个人是自闭地出生，让他像没有自闭症的一个人不是让他更开心，也不是让他更有成功，就是让他化居多能力做有悖于自然的事。而且，这些有悖于我们自然的事不一定有好处！为什么需要用口说出来？为什么不要打字？为什么要看着别人的眼睛？为什么不应该一边听，一边动来动去？

这样也不是说我们不需要教育，不是说我们不应该提高我们的能力。我谈的事教育的内容，也是态度。我是自闭症者。自闭症不是外壳，自闭症不是让我走不了的圈套。我不需要从（根本不存在的）“圈套”走出来，而要使用适合我自闭的大脑学新的事。我不需要改变自己的自然，而要使用我自然给出的优点做我要做的事。

在缺点呢？我肯定愿意承认自闭症有缺点。什么大脑（什么身体，什么人）的设计都有缺点，现代社会包括很多方式帮助大部分的人需要帮助的部分。我的区别不一定是更多地方需要帮助，而是不同的地方需要帮助。因为这些需要帮助的地方被称为“特殊”所以很多人认为不应该帮我，而应该“修”我。这就是我不同意的地方。人们都需要一些帮助。我需要帮助的事情跟很多别人的不一样，但是这不是好事或者坏事。这就是我的自然。我是自闭症者。就是这样。

Syllabus Standards (in English this time!)

I finally got around to it, here's the English version of my piece about syllabus standards that I wrote in Chinese. Between paragraphs I toss out some comments about "so... if I had the language to say this instead/in addition I totally would, remember that this is me trying to write quickly in a second language."

The whole world has been getting more global, and education needs to change to reflect that. The (dean? president? not sure which) of New York University said that students should be able to study at multiple places. He thinks the whole world's universities should adopt one set of course/curriculum standards.This is because all having one set of standards would let more students study at more places. No matter what major a student has, they'd be able to go to another university to study for a semester or a year.

Ok, so it's really just very privileged college students who have the opportunity to do study abroad/away most of the time. Just remember that. Making it available to more people is a thing that I like, but remember that this isn't the case. (Minor plug for the Gilman here, because while it's generally not going to pay for a program on it's own, it has making study abroad available to more people as a goal.)

Also, who's coming up with the one set of standards? If western colleges, hello more imperialism and hello more whitewashing of history. Who's deciding what majors are getting standards written for them?

But making all the colleges use the same set of course standards would hurt some students. Students with unusual majors. For example, not all mechanical engineering programs are identical.From professors to archtects, from mechatronics experts to nanotechnology researchers, mechanical engineers do different things. Even though these people can all be called mechanical engineers, their specialties are not the same. Since I do nanotechnology research, the curriculum that best suits me isn't the same as that of most of my fellow students. If all the course standards were the same, it would be very hard or impossible for students to study some of the more unusual/customized majors. Then all the mechanical engineers would be only prepared for the same things. But this isn't hard to solve: don't make the course standards the same, but make syllabus/course introduction standards. This way, all the colleges could have totally different classes, but students can still tell what they need to know using the syllabuses and course introductions. Some of the things students need to know are:

Yes, I used my major set as part of an example. Short time frame, during class, it's what I had. I have no illusions that mine is the hardest one to work with, and I think that engineers would probably actually get split up further to account for this. Nanotechnology is an extant undergraduate major at a couple places. Studying things related to activism and marginalized groups is probably in way more danger from this sort of thing than my majors are.

Along those lines: no, I should not be the sole person in charge of these standards for syllabi, I'm white and I'm from the USA. I also don't think those standards should be mandatory, but I do think they should exist so that schools that decide they want to be a part of this sort of idea can be. And finally, I don't know how to go about actually creating such standards without being oppressive in some way, probably imperialist. I can point out the things that I think would be useful though, which I will now do.

1) What will you learn by taking this course? Knowing the content helps a student figure out if the course is useful to them or not.
2) What majors can this course be taken for credit in. For unique majors, this might not be useful, but for common majors that most students are in, this is good to know.
3) What knowledge is needed before starting the class? Stating this might have the biggest change: right now, a lot of colleges use their own course numbers for that. This won't work: colleges would need to say what knowledge students need. Students could choose other classes or do independent study to prepare, they just need to know the prerequisite information and they should be fine.
4) What's the learning method? This part includes how the testing is done, homework, meeting days and times, if it's online or not, and more.

For #2, I figure a list of what majors it's been counted towards before would work. There might need to be some sort of standard about schools being consistent about counting stuff towards the same majors, but I don't know how to work that one out.

For #4 and online classes, the question of "do I need to get to campus for the final" is important, because if not, you might be able to take this class while physically at a different place depending on college policies. (I think they should be cool with this, logistics is another story.)

Writing syllabi this way, students could look at multiple universities courses and figure out what course program suits them best. They could plan out where to study when and go to multiple different schools: letting students do this is why he was saying to globalize. Different colleges having different courses isn't an obstacle, but rather a reason that a student would want to study at different schools. In my humble opinion, the best method for colleges isn't to make course standards the same, but to have syllabi written with the same methods/information.

So "in my humble opinion" was a language bit we were supposed to make sure to use in class.
I don't think there should be a requirement to translate the syllabus on the school or anything- it should probably be written in whatever language the class is being conducted in, because if you can't understand it in that language, you'd probably have an issue taking a class conducted in that language. But there also shouldn't be a rule against providing translations of the syllabus/course introduction/course description either. Up to the teacher if they want to make those.

My feelings on globalization are also kind of mixed. I see how some pieces of it could be really cool- more people knowing more languages means more opportunities for communication (but it shouldn't need to be an "everyone learns the same one," just a "more languages is useful.") But the way it actually seems to be turning out looks more like "international corporations have huge amounts of power" combined with "the folks who were already powerful got more powerful." I'd like to see a version of globalization that worked as an equalizing force, though.

A Language Thought From the Semester

I never thought I'd wind up going "oh god how do I say this in English." But it happened. Apparently that's what happens when I go in expecting to give a presentation in Chinese, my powerpoint is in Chinese, and then as I'm standing at the front of the room the teacher tells me I'm presenting in English.

The article I wrote was also in Chinese. I think that surprised the teacher a bit- I'd asked him if I could use articles written in English as sources and he'd said yes, but I never said else. He assumed I was using English, probably because that's my first language. Since he's the teacher, what he wanted won, and I gave the presentation in English. (Really, really conversational English.)

Anyways, the topic was quantum-dot sensitized solar cells. I've got my article that I wrote saved somewhere and yes, I will be putting it up here on the off chance anyone wants to try to read it.

But that's not actually the thing I want to talk about. I want to talk about the language thought. It was weird thinking "how do I say this in English?" I think it happened because I'd been listening in Chinese in class, and because two of the sources I used were in Chinese. (I used four sources: two English, two Chinese.) I especially think so because I've since had my final for Graph Theory and I had similar thoughts while I was studying, after the teacher told me I could write my answers in English if I wanted to. (I blanked on how to write a couple characters so I put in pinyin and English for those characters but I pretty much wrote the exam in Chinese.)

It was actually an even bigger "how do I say this in English?" issue for Graph Theory, because my textbook was also in Chinese. The thing I was studying from was in Chinese, and yes I understood it, but the characters I remember how to write is a smaller set than the characters I can read and understand. (This seems to be true of Chinese people as well, especially with the spread of typing. Watching my teachers forget how to write a character every so often makes me feel a little bit better about the fact that I forget kind of a lot.)

So I got to thinking, and maybe the way that foreign languages are working here is similar to the way that styles of language have worked for me in the past: whichever language (style) I used to learn the thing is the one that I will remember better and default to when talking about the thing. In this case, that means graph theory and quantum dot sensitized solar cells are both in Chinese. That's going to be fun when I get back to the United States, I bet. (Professor, how do I say 完美匹配 in English?) [Wan mei pi pei, perfect matching. I've forgotten this one before, but at the moment, I do know it.]

Oh, and here's a link to a post I wrote about language stuff earlier and then didn't manage to post it until Monday. :/

Language Relations

Written in December during my time of not really getting anything up here. I have since found out that my math teacher's English is not, in fact, good, and that he doesn't use it because he's not good with it.

Thinking about China stuff. I've got very different relationships with different people I've met here. I've got a couple classmates in my materials science (semiconductors, metals, and some applications) who I eat dinner with after class every Tuesday and Wednesday. My math teacher (graph theory) lives practically next door to me, and we both take the subway home after class on Tuesday nights, so we tend to walk/ride together and talk.

There wasn't even a big event that got me thinking about this. It was a small event. Really tiny. I was walking from dinner with my classmates from materials science, heading towards math. Math teacher sees me, I see him, I'm like "Hi!" I say that I'm like instead of I said because this is all happening in Chinese. I believe I actually said 老师好, which is a greeting for a teacher. Yay cultural and language differences.

He (teacher) talks to me at a pretty normal speed. He's going to get dinner, so he might get to the classroom a bit later than usual (he's usually there about half an hour early, no, really) and can I stick his bag in the room? I say sure, he hands me the bag, he keeps walking, and so do I.

My classmates from materials science spend a good two or three minutes testing me on what the teacher said because they have a hard time believing I actually understood. Apparently the teacher was talking fast? At which point they are impressed, because yes, I do in fact speak Chinese and I understood the conversation I just had with my teacher.

Since stuff related to my math teacher is already on-topic, I mention that we talk on the way to the subway and on the subway, since we're basically neighbors.
Here's the thing that made me think.

The initial reaction my classmates had to this? "Your teacher's English must be very good."
I mean, I assume my teacher's English is, in fact, pretty good. He says that this is the first time he's used our current text to teach graph theory, and the one he used to use is in English. It's also the first time the class has been for undergrads. I think those two statements are related. So at the very least, I know he can read English stuff in his specialty. I may have tried to say major there, since the same word in Chinese works for both- 专业. But here's the thing: I've never actually heard him speak English. If I don't understand a word, he'll explain in Chinese. My materials science classmates explain in English. Often they need to pull out their phones and look up the word to do it, but they tell me in English.

I just thought that was interesting. It seems to be a bit of a pattern: Everyone requires proof that I do, in fact, understand Chinese so long as they realize I'm not Chinese (mixed results with the folks who think I'm half Han, yes, that's happened.) Young folks are quicker to speak English when I don't get something, and they probably want to practice their English anyways. So they don't see me handling everything in Chinese the same way most older folks do. Older folks tend to be glad I speak Chinese, and since they're not trying to English at me they get a quicker idea of how much Chinese I can actually use.

In this specific case of math teacher vs materials science classmates, it might also make a difference that my math teacher occasionally asks the class a question and I tend to be willing and able to answer. Yes, in Chinese. There's actually a decent number of math terms where I know the concepts and I know the words to explain the concepts in Chinese, but I don't know the English. Considering that my first language is English, this is really weird for me.

（匹配，最大匹配，最优匹配，交错路，可扩路 are all words where I don't actually know the English. I may have partially forgotten 边 as well, which is awkward because that's a really basic part of a graph. It's the thing connecting the vertices.)

New Years In China

Today was the start of the Chinese new year. That's on a lunar calendar, for anyone who's interested in that sort of thing. Main point of today's post is pretty much a description of how I spent the day, though, which is ending for me as it's starting for you. Time zones are cool like that.

I had a slow morning. I had food in the fridge, which I heated up and ate for breakfast. I hung out in the morning, attempting to get Skype to work so I could get in contact with someone from my home university. They wanted me to do that because the residence director is back in the USA over break and the academic director is in Beijing, so they wanted someone to check in with me. (I totally get that, I had fairly major meltdowns a couple times during the semester where I actually needed help getting food. They don't have enough experience with my particular set of issues to get why I'd be in much better shape over break, and I didn't really expect them to. With the level of understanding they had, I think they expected break to be an utter nightmare, honestly.)

But it was telephone (Skype) tag again today. It's been that for a few days actually. Fail. I go do other stuff, mostly puttering around my room, figuring if she tries to call me I'll hear it. Apparently not, because I had some missed calls on my Skype that I found checking in the evening.

Morning passes, I go out to find lunch. Since it's new years, most things are closed, but the western brand restaurants are still open and there's a KFC in walking distance. I go there, I eat, then I take the subway to the local park. I could walk there, but I didn't really feel like it at the time. It was impressively quiet, like everything was deserted or close to it. Everyone who doesn't have to work is with family, and the subways were the quietest I'd ever seen them here. I walk around the park for a while, but there's really nothing going on so I walk home. (It is walking distance, after all! It's also almost exactly two subway stops, or one from the KFC to the main entrance. There's another entrance that uses the same stop as the KFC, close to a "dumpling" place they took us to near the start of the year. SO MANY different things get translated to dumpling...)

At 5pm, almost exactly, it's like a switch flipped. There are now all of the fireworks/firecrackers going off. I think this is what my residence director was worried about, because she'd seen my reactions to random firecrackers during the semester. Thing is, there's a difference between an unexpected single loud noise (what drove me up a wall during the semester and was the final straw on one of the meltdowns) and a constant nearly omnidirectional thing that almost sounds like thunder. That's how many firecrackers there are tonight, and that's something I'm... actually totally OK with. Thunder is fine, I sleep through thunderstorms and everything. I didn't when I was really little (and people were very confused by the fact that I understood the science of why it was the lightning that was dangerous and was still very clear that it was the thunder I didn't like,) but I've been able to for a while.

I went down to the park again at this point. It's not what I'd been imagining when I said I wanted to spend the new year in China, but it was still really cool. I sat by the lake starting a bit after sundown and just watched. I was surrounded by this thunder-type sound, and I could see the sky lighting up from all the fireworks and firecrackers, and I was positioned so that I could see a lot of the (presumably illicit, definitely unofficial) displays over the lake. Most of the ones I could see were pretty short, but the fireworks used were really nice.

Eventually I got cold and took the subway back home. Then I wrote this. Now I'm tired and thinking that I'm going to have some tea and go to sleep. It was a good day. Definitely an atypical way to spend the Chinese new year, but a good one. It worked well with how my brain works, and I enjoyed it. 

Backish

This is me pretending I'm back. Maybe if I pretend hard enough I'll actually be back.

It was a tough semester. It was also a longer semester than I'm used to, since China ended at mid-January, not mid-December. I've got a nice long break now- I've been on break for about a week and a half, and I've got a bit more than a month left. So that's something.

Anyways.

There's a survey for parents to help create some sort of community support thing. I think it's meant to be an alternative to the Autism Speaks First 100 Days thing, except actually autistic-friendly, accepting, not fearmongering... you know, all the things that are going to make life miserable because you're being told that if your kid stays autistic then life will be, and thus you make yourself miserable trying to change your kid's neurology. Which doesn't work, and oh hey this looks like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Realize that "good life" and "autistic" can go together, and it looks a lot less bleak. At least, I think that's the idea. So you should go take that survey if you've got an autistic kid and you're able to survey. Sharing it all over the place is also a good idea. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8C7XZZY is the link.

Also, the T-21 blog hop is on. It's already open for putting posts in, theme is social justice, and the runner says all disabilities are welcome. The link to the hop is here. As part of my pretending to be back, I will try and get a thing in for that tomorrow. Woo writing. http://downwitdat.blogspot.ca/p/t-21-blog-hop.html if you want to share that link, too.

I went to Beijing with some people from my university, since they ran a winter China trip for mostly sophomores and they spent the last two days in Beijing. That's really close to Tianjin, so I hung out with them for a couple days. We went to the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Temple of Heaven. We also ate food that's more varied than what I usually eat. I'll happily eat the same thing for days, them not so much.

That's pretty much my story.