The three weeks in Academic Connections was one of the best parts in my life. It was my first time to live in the dorm, to study in a university; to make friends with people from many different places, to play beach volleyball. I tried so many new stuffs in these three weeks, but the most memorable thing was my writing class.

Sam, the coolest teacher I have never seen in my life. The first day I saw her, I thought she must be a harsh teacher; she has a really short golden hair, very skinny; wearing a T-shirt, blue jeans. Erin, the other teacher, seems a lot nicer than her. But after the first class, I knew I was totally wrong.

In the first class, Sam led us to the grassland and sit down in a circle. She told us to say our name and one thing about ourselves. We have to memorize what the people said before us and to repeat what they said. She told us that to be a reporter, must focusing on everything that your subject told you.”

“I am wearing a striped underpants,” that’s the first thing Sam told us, and it blown me away. How would a teacher told this thing to her student? After this game, I changed my mind; Sam was the craziest teacher in the world.

Sam was very nice and kind. The first time I wrote in this class, I wrote about Samah, one of my classmates. But when Sam told us to read our best sentence in our paragraph, I couldn’t find one. She walked to me, sat on the seat beside me, looked my paragraph, and said, “Keep working.” I knew I screw it up, but she didn’t say any thing bad to me, any thing, only “Keep working”.

While we were in the lab, we working on our essay, a watching video, see Sam dancing and singing. When there was music, most of the time she would start dancing, even dancing on a chair! But sometime she distracted me so I could hardly hand in my work on time.

Sometimes Sam would go crazy, and it seems like Erin was the only one who could stop her. Unlike Sam, my first impression to Erin have not changed after this three weeks, she was always nice, and always smiling.

Erin has a short hair too, but not as short as Sam. She has a rose tattoo on her left arm, always wearing jeans, and sometimes with a red boots. She always has a smile on her face; it made her looked very kind.

Erin helped me a lot when I was writing my essays. She walked beside be and looked at my essay, and correct my mistakes in the paragraphs, made the sentence became better. I really thank her for helping me to improve my writing; even my writing was so immature.

Sam and Erin were very good friends. They would make jokes of each other, but they never got mad. At the beginning of each class, they told us about some interesting things happened to them, or some news happened this morning.

There were eight people in the class, and only have two guys. That guy has became my good friHis name was Nicolas. The first time we met, he was quiet, but after few minutes he started to chat with the girls. When he was talking to me, he kept telling me how he liked Chinese food and something about his family.

Samah, Keana, Kirsten and Stephanie were just like a group. They eat together, walk together; work together, hang out together. They were really talkative, always chatting during the class. But because of them, I had so much fun in the class.

Isabel and Courtney were another group. They were both very quiet in the class, and sometimes they seemed had been separated from the class. We had two rows of computers in the lab, six of us sat in a row, Isabel and Courtney always sat in another row. Although there were three groups in our class, we still have a good relationship with each other.

In these three weeks, although the only subject I was studying was writing, I haven’t got bored, because I was studying with the coolest teacher Sam, the nicest teacher Erin and the best classmates Keana, Samah, Isabel, Kirsten, Courtney, Stephanie and Nicolas.

I would miss them a lot after I got back to China, because I was not able to see them again. Although they have Face book in America, Chinese government has banned it. I had so many first times in this program; I would have nostalgia for this campus life.


Charles Yang