Student Profile: James Kim '11

James Kim ‘11 – James majored in Astronomy and Physics during his time at Yale. As a Light Fellow, James studied intensive Chinese at the Duke Program in the summer of 2008. He is currently a MBA Candidate at Stanford Graduate School of Business

(Excerpts from an address to outgoing Light Fellows, April 16, 2016)

I am humbled and grateful to be one of over 1500 Yale students over the past twenty years who have been supported by the Light Fellowship in various language study programs across China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. And I want to congratulate all of you for embarking on this journey. Your selection as Light Fellows is a testament to not only your language ability, but also your commitment to cultural immersion and cross-cultural dialogue.

In preparation for today, Alan sent me the transcripts of remarks that were delivered at this event in past years. They contain lines like “Having completed my Light Fellowship studies a decade ago…” and “When I traveled to Beijing in the summer of 2005…” When I read these, my first thought was, “Wow, my predecessors were so much older (and more experienced) than I am.” But then I realized: I received the Light Fellowship eight years ago, which for many of you feels like ancient history. I guess sometimes you don’t notice time flying by. More to the point, sometimes you don’t notice the subtle ways in which experiences like those afforded by the Light Fellowship can shape your life—at least not until you reflect back on the years that have passed. I’d like to share some of those ways with you.

The first and most obvious is my ability to speak Mandarin Chinese. If you couldn’t tell from my last name, I’m Korean. I didn’t speak a lick of Chinese until my first semester at Yale, when my Austrian suitemate and I decided to take L1 on a whim. We weren’t the greatest students, to be honest; our ability was barely passable at the end of that year. Well, let me tell you—the language pledge remedied that rather quickly. At the end of two months in Beijing, I was having conversations in Chinese I never in my wildest dreams imagined I would be able to have at the start of the summer. Here’s an excerpt from my Light Fellowship blog, dated August 7th, 2008: “[My taxi driver and I] started out talking about what I was doing in China, and ended up discussing anything and everything under the Beijing sun, from his wife's recent pregnancy to Olympics ticket scalpers to underground Christianity.” Yes, this conversation really happened!

Perhaps more remarkably, the language acquisition stuck. I can’t pretend I still know all my characters or remember the word for “ticket scalper,” but my listening and speaking are decent enough that just last summer, I was able to help an old Chinese lady in Uptown Manhattan find her way to Flushing. The best part was that when she complimented my Chinese, I remembered how to respond because of one of the first lessons in L1 Chinese: “Na li, nin guo jiang le!” Encounters like these have not been uncommon in my personal and professional life since leaving Yale.

The second way the Light Fellowship shaped my life is the courage it gave me to step out of my comfort zone. Yes, freshman year at Yale was technically my first time living independently; but as you all know, the Yale experience is highly structured from start to finish. China was different. China was where I set off to buy towels at the local market and ended up chatting with the old men playing majiang on the sidewalk for half an hour, straining to make out what they were saying through their thick Beijing accents. China was where, on a whim, I took a cab to the street market and bought myself a guitar that I managed to haggle down from $60 to $38. China was where I took three buses and got lost twice trying to get to my language partner’s apartment in the suburbs, though in the end it was worth it because her mom made us incredible dumplings.

The worldly, curious, almost brazen person I became in China was worlds apart from the timid freshman I started out as, and it’s still the person I am today. Whether hitchhiking up the Andes the following summer, or spontaneously running three half-marathons in the last two years, or joining a non-profit start-up with zero financial stability, the most interesting experiences of my life so far have been the direct consequence of the adventuresome spirit I acquired in China.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Light Fellowship broadened my worldview. My summer in Beijing was not only my first time living in a foreign country, but also my first time being surrounded by people whose beliefs and upbringings were radically different from my own. One of the first Beijing locals I spoke to as part of our weekly language practicum told me in no uncertain terms that she felt Americans were slaves to time constraints and schedules. My language partner insisted that societal harmony should always trump individual liberty. A friend’s language partner expressed disbelief that I could study science and still be religious. Through these conversations and others, I came to realize that my value system is a product of my specific—and in many ways, privileged—circumstances, and that it is my responsibility to critically evaluate value systems I disagree with rather than dismiss them out of hand. Many of you have already had this realization in your own lives and appreciate how important it is. I would know; that’s why I admitted some of you. Speaking personally, it’s hard to overstate how influential this realization has been for me. Most of my career in education has consisted of engaging with communities vastly different from my own, and I could not have gotten to where I am today without the ability to listen, to empathize, to appreciate nuance and be comfortable in the gray areas. The seeds of that ability were planted during my summer in China.

So there you go. Without realizing it, I’ve managed to live eight years of my life under the influence of a remarkable experience that was made possible only by the Light Fellowship. I fully expect it’ll happen to you too. As you wrap up the semester and prepare for the exciting adventure ahead, I wish you the best of luck and encourage you take full advantage of it. Study hard. Explore unknown places. Listen and engage. I promise you won’t regret it.