Outlook

The Lehigh Prison Project

By Ross Rozanski  

It was a Thursday and, like many of my afternoons, I was volunteering and making an effort to help out my community. My student and I were at a small wooden table looking at sentences from a workbook, identifying grammar mistakes.

“This is a run on sentence,” he said.  “Correct!” I applauded.

“That word needs to be capitalized,” he went on. “And you could put a comma there.”

But this is where similarities between my normal tutoring sessions and this particular experience end. You see, I wasn’t in the classroom of a middle school or some hall in the local YMCA. There were no windows. My student was wearing a brown jumpsuit. There was a police officer standing by the door. I was in a prison.

Last fall, at the university I attended before transferring to USC, I joined the Lehigh Prison Project. Completely new, this program took ten students each week to Northampton County Prison in Easton, Pennsylvania to assist prisoners who were working towards obtaining their GED. But not just anybody could join. Before joining the ranks of prison tutors, I had to have my fingerprints taken, go through various security checks, and have my name looked up against national security databases. The head of the education program within the prison made it clear we would only be working with the prisoners in brown uniforms, and specifically only with prisoners that wanted to be in this particular educational program.

All prisoners at Northampton County Prison are assigned one of three colors for their jumpsuit, dependent on the severity of their crime. Brown was for the lowest offenders, and represented minor crimes associated with finances or contract infringement. The next level was orange, followed by red. In the five months I tutored in the prison, I only caught a few glimpses of red uniformed prisoners, but that was enough for me; the prisoners wearing red were murderers.

Continue reading The Lehigh Prison Project →

Outlook, Travel, USC

Career Fairs are about Seeing Your Skills in a New Light

By Diya Dwarakanath

With the USC Career Fair coming up this week, I know many students will be trying to find internships or full-time jobs for the upcoming semester. This can be daunting for all students but international students have the added burden of finding companies who will accept student visas. Sometimes, it might seem like being an international student only has disadvantages. However, it all depends on your point of view and how well you can sell yourself to an industry recruiter. Try using your international student status as a positive! If you think about it, the fact that you’re here and adjusting to a brand new way of life is telling of your strength in adaptation.

For instance, every time I visit India (every two years or so), it takes me a couple of days to once again become comfortable amidst the order in the chaos that defines Mumbai. But once I do, it all sinks in at a rapid pace. I begin to remember the Indian languages I hear around me. I combat the humidity and sandy roads with cotton clothes and sturdy sandals. I find myself speaking Kannada, a South Indian language, with my grandmother and then quicking turning around and conversing with my cousin in Hindi as we ride an autorickshaw (a three-wheeled taxi) around town. We might enter a beauty salon, where I speak fragmented Marathi (the state language) with the owner, knowing I will get better service. Later that night, I call my dad (who is back in the states) and we talk about my day in English. Finally, In the Mumbai airport, as I’m waiting to fly home, I overhear and understand fragments of a French couple’s conversation.

Then, once I return home to Oregon, I am grateful for hot water that flows out of the sink just by turning on the faucet. I appreciate the high pressure of the water and the fresh, natural air I breathe. I don’t have to turn on a water boiler and wait for it to heat up the water when I want to shower anymore. I also don’t have to wear a scarf to cover my mouth and nose to avoid breathing smog-filled air every time I step outside. But of course, within a couple days, I forget about the physical comforts of being home and take it all for granted. Once again, I’ve re-adapted to the lifestyle in the United States.

All this is something I do naturally so I’ve never thought about it until I had to write about my international experiences for a scholarship opportunity. That’s when I realized that every international student has had this similar experience and that every one of them can use this experience to their advantage.

The ability to quickly understand and successfully adapt to a new environment is CRITICAL in the job market.  A successful new hire or intern will be observant, paying attention to how people do things in their departments so they know what the process is. In addition, they must learn the lingo (or the terms used specific to that company or department) of their new job quickly so that they can integrate into the team. This means listening to others, reading resources available through the company website, and asking their mentors or peers. If they have to work with international clients or colleagues, they must be aware of different work cultures and the time difference. You can’t call your client when it is in the middle of the night for her or him!

Guess what? An international student does all of these things naturally! When they move to the U.S., they learn American colloquialisms by listening and being observant. They plan their Skype sessions with family and friends back home, just like you might plan a web conference with colleagues at work. An international student is already well-equipped to be a successful intern or new hire. Now, it’s up to you to help an industry recruiter understand just how valuable you truly are.

Read up about the Career Fair here: https://careers.usc.edu/students/info/careerfair

Featured image from DynamicPickaxe

Diya is a second-year graduate student doing her Master’s in Biomedical Engineering. She also did her undergraduate degree from USC so she knows her way around campus, including some of the best study spots! Diya is from Oregon originally, but was born in India and moved to the U.S. when she was young so she knows what it is like to be in a new country. After graduating, she worked for two years at a medical device start-up and at a large technology company. In her free time, you’ll find Diya writing, dancing (she’s a trained Indian classical dancer but loves any style), going shopping, or watching TV/movies.

Outlook, Travel

Leaving a Global Footprint

By Jackie Kim

Coupling my global cultural background and my passion in finance, I got the opportunity to travel to Honduras this past spring break with an international group called Global Brigades. My fellow brigadiers and I were paired up with a rural community in Honduras to rebuild a community bank. Because it was a seven-day brigade, we had to work under a strict time limit to deliver a high impact solution. Ultimately, we opted for innovative solutions that taught basic concepts such as saving and borrowing and even introduced advanced topics such as keeping track of interest rates and accumulated dividends through general ledger accounting. We accomplished this by adapting a segmented approach, where we targeted both children and adults in the community so that there would be awareness among different age groups. We used interactive models and colorful graphics as our communication strategy, and established a community bank with a clear set of regulations.

However, the most memorable part of the trip was not the planning process nor the actual implementation of our solution. Instead, I was most affected by the values that the community bank stood for and how the community members reflected them in their daily actions. Unlike a commercial bank, a community bank is not for profit, and exists to better the community. The community bank can only run with the volunteerism of dedicated community members who are not afraid to trust the community and the bank as an institution, and consequently, are willing to ask for the same trust from other community members. In a rural village, it proved to be difficult to convince many community members to save their money, especially because they were living on a day-to-day basis to sustain their families.

Even with the difficulty of communication to the rest of the community, the faith that the community bank members showed in the system inspired me. As a foreigner, I had felt rude when introducing and implementing a strange system of banking into such a tight-knit community, but the fact that various members opened their homes and minds up for us helped me understand the human trust and connection in its raw form. It was eye opening to not only build up a bank in a rural village with no prior knowledge of basic finance, but also to experience feelings and interactions that are so uniquely human.

Photo is author’s own

Ultimately, this experience strengthened my desire to serve the global community. The beauty of the intercultural exchange that I observed was so positively overwhelming that I was determined to still be involved with Global Brigades even after the trip. I’m so honored to be leading Global Brigades at Marshall (the USC Chapter of Global Brigades—you don’t need to be in Marshall to be a part of it!) this upcoming school year! I found a way to leave my global footprint while also getting inspired to seek more personal interactions in an intercultural context, and I invite all of you to do the same!

Featured image by Stuart Herbert on Flickr

Jackie is a Junior majoring in Business Administration, with potential minors in Computer Science or East Asian Studies. She has lived all over the world, from Korea to Singapore, to various parts of America. She is fascinated by cultural diversity, and her goal in life is to become a diplomat for the United Nations. She is a big fan of learning languages, and she is hoping to learn her sixth one soon. Jackie is involved in various international campus organizations such Model United Nations, as well as community service groups, and the residential government, and would love to introduce you to cool leaders on campus if you want to get more involved! She loves playing ice hockey, playing traditional Korean music and, and socializing with people in her free time! She can’t wait you meet you and get to know you! She also has a lot of school spirit because she absolutely LOVES USC