Blog (Second Side)

Covering the various aspects of I-Club was a lot of fun. I’m genuinely interested in the lives of international students. It makes you wonder how someone can travel half way around the world to a place completely unknown to him or her. Forget going to a new school and the problems associated with that think of the problems you’ll encounter if you move to a totally new continent. Culture shock, immigration issues, language barriers are just some of the problems faced by international students. As soon as I see someone international it makes me wonder, what is there story? How did they end up here? Why here – how did they find out about Knox? It’s just all really interesting to me.

I’ve also always wanted to learn about the history of I-Club. Who started it? How did they manage to start it? What were some of the initial activities they had? Despite all these questions, I failed to reach enough sources of information. The archives consisted of two miserable, flimsy folders that consisted of a few balance sheets. Cathy Walters was perhaps my biggest aid as she told me about a couple more folders stacked in the basement of the I-house. Although those folders weren’t of much help either they got me thinking of a new topic. I-club and its long-forgotten history – basically how I-club has changed over the years.

But there were times where things just got too frustrating. From the interviews to the stories, sometimes things just didn’t go your way. One of the major problems I had was scheduling interviews with the international students. Perhaps it’s the whole “International Student Grading System”. I mean I understand how important studies are to international students especially. Getting anything less than an A is considered a disappointment. I had to literally chase most of these students down. Constantly harassing them by calling and texting them. I guess one of the reasons I actually got this project done was due to the fact that most of these international students were my friends and felt obligated to answer the questions that I asked them.

I had a lot of fun making the videos. I loved using the software – it was pretty amazing. Cathy’s personality profile was a lot of fun to write too. I learnt a lot about her past and got to know her better. It was a lot of fun to cover this topic, as it is one that piques my interest.