From organizing a Thanksgiving in Japan potluck to wandering around Tokyo by myself, studying at Okayama University for 10 months was a wild ride. Somehow along the way I ended up with many friends in the UK and three different host families, one of which I visited multiple times and am still in contact with. I visited Kagawa, Kobe, Hiroshima, Nagoya, Kyoto and Tokyo and I can say without a doubt that karaoke, conbini, and shrines are three of Japan’s gifts to the world.
While at Okayama University, one of the coolest experiences I had was working on a Global Resolution. I enrolled in a special four week course titled “Thinking & Communication Skills for a Global University” in which international and Japanese students brainstormed ideas and discussed cultural differences. Our major project was coming up with ideas to put in a Global Resolution that would then be presented to the President of Okayama University. The class was organized because Okayama University had just been named a “Super Global University” by the Japanese government and was going to be awarded a large grant toward making the University more “global.” In Japan, Universities don’t really have student government and students are almost never asked to add input on important University-wide decisions. The goal of the class was not only to foster global communication skills, but to showcase student ideas on how to improve the University to those in charge of allocating the grant money.
Our first stumbling block was defining “Global.” It may seem obvious to some what global means, but we quickly realized that many people had different definitions of the word that were equally valid. Before we came up with ideas on how to make Okayama University “more global” we had to decide what “global” meant to us. Our final definition was this: “Global: Meaning communication and collaboration with diverse nationalities; worldwide interconnected communities with a willingness to understand, accept, and celebrate differences of culture, expression, and thinking.” Working through a shared document on Google Drive, the class was then encouraged to upload ideas, which we discussed and voted on in class.
Four meetings was not enough to finish and polish up the Resolution, so I stayed on for several weeks with a team of about five other students after the class was over. In this smaller group, guided by the faculty, we further refined and categorized the student ideas and pared it down to twenty-one items. Another American international student and I were responsible for editing the English version, while the Japanese students in our group worked with faculty to translate the document into Japanese. Once our editing was complete, we met with the President of the University and presented both versions to him, taking the opportunity to both explain the Resolution and discuss why we had created it.
I was actually the one to officially present the Resolution to the President and explain it in English. I was so nervous! I think I spoke a little too fast, but luckily everybody pitched in with their opinions and helped explain things that I might have missed. It was truly a great experience, and the class, editing team, and faculty were all excellent. I was proud to be working towards student led change in Okayama; I feel that I benefited personally. Being part of the class, I really came to better understand the Japanese student perspective and accept more diverse viewpoints.