An Unexpected Summer: Rebuilding What I’ve Missed This Past Year
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As I set foot in America for the first time last August, I’d thought of all the possibilities that lay in front of me. Still, I could never guess that my first academic year would diverge so abruptly from normal college freshman experiences. Amidst the challenges of the pandemic, I hung on, studied hard, fought loneliness, and tried to stay positive. All the while, I held out hope for a better sophomore year or at least a better summer experience.
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Summer is in full swing as I am writing this. I sit in front of College Union Building, perched on a lawn chair, waiting for my friends before we grab lunch together. You might be wondering why I am telling you such trivial details. Well, before I answer, let me tell you more about my last academic year. About three weeks into the semester, in Fall 2020, positive COVID cases were on the rise. The college acted quickly, immediately sending everyone home. Everyone, that is, except the first years. As a first year with so few things happening on campus, it was hard to talk to people, hard to make friends. Although I began to get to know a few people, those people eventually went home because of uncertainty on campus. Without that socialization, my days were filled with quiet, dorm room based online classes and occasional walks to the dining center. Even my extracurricular activities were remote leaving me with hardly any human-to-human contact. I sorely missed hanging out with friends.
When spring came, everything seemed unchanged. This semester, the school had welcomed upperclassmen back to campus, saying farewell to the first-years. Therefore, the few people I knew back in the Fall did not return, leading me to see new faces on campus. Still, my spring semester was much like that of fall. Then, I applied to do a summer fellowship on campus, and I got it. My life changed dramatically. Fast forward to now and I am currently doing a Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship with the Musselman Library on campus.
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The program lasts for eight weeks, during which, each fellow uses their individual research to complete a digital project. Besides that, the cohort also collaborates in a digital humanities project. This year, we are creating a storytelling website based on the Albert Chance Collection of Gettysburg College’s special collection. Our project focuses on the wartime experience of Albert Chance, an American soldier during World War II who served in Italy and North Africa. For the past four weeks, I have learnt a lot about digital tools that are essential to interactive storytelling and digital humanity projects.
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For my individual project, I am researching the Cambodian Refugees’ early resettlement experience in the U.S. After the Cambodian civil war followed by a genocide led by an oppressive government, Cambodia suffered greatly for about a decade, causing hundreds of thousands of people to flee the country. They typically traveled to the Thailand border, before finally settling in either Europe or the United States. Between 1975 and 1990, more than 150,000 Cambodian people had arrived to resettle in the U.S. My project, therefore, is aimed at looking at the Cambodian-American experience as a whole, as well as individual experiences through storytelling.
This fellowship, with the project that I am doing, has helped reconnect with my identity as a Cambodian. Through researching and reading, I am revisiting the recent history of Cambodia and connecting with many Cambodian-Americans in the U.S. Through interviews, I have learnt of the challenges refugees faced then and the stories they carry with themselves. This whole project has allowed me to do the things that I value most, giving me joy and excitement at the thought of what comes next. The fellowship is the highlight of my summer.
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That being said, this summer would not be as good as it is without the group of friends I met while working. Of the six fellows in the same program, there are three of us on campus including myself. In the first week of the fellowship, the two other girls and I started hanging out together. I discovered that we had a lot in common, being interested in each other and working well together. It has been really nice spending time with not only them, but also Srey Nich, who is another SHE-CAN scholar at Gettysburg College. It is a blessed summer. We do many things together: baking night, movie night, an afternoon of reading, fun talks over the meals, and mornings of tennis and swimming .
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What I missed through the whole academic year, I am able to rebuild through my fellowship program. Half of the summer may be over, but I am looking forward to the other half of this wonderful journey. I’ve learned that no matter what is in the way, it’s best to keep calm and be positive, because eventually you, and I, will get there.
