When I first started taking Chinese in seventh grade, I absolutely hated it. I remember sinking into my chair as my laoshi (teacher), Mr. Chao, scrawled a tidal wave of characters across the chalk board. The yellow chalk squeaked as he put the final dramatic stroke on the last character — then he turned to us.

“Bu ru hu xue, yan de hu zi!” he said, grinning, as if secretly entertained by the terrified looks on our faces. “If you never enter the tiger’s den, how can you catch any cubs?”

After more than 10 years of Chinese in the classroom, half a year in Beijing and countless Saturday sessions with my Chinese tutor, I am still astounded that my experience with Chinese lasted longer than that first challenging week of class in seventh grade. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I have Mr. Chao to thank for that. He took an incredibly difficult subject and inspired me to stick with it 12 years later.

Wednesday was Teacher Appreciation Day 2008, and tomorrow marks the end of Teacher Appreciation Week. Founded in 1984 by the National Parent Teacher Association, Teacher Appreciation Week is an opportunity to celebrate and thank educators across the United States.

There’s no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t be where I am today without the help of my teachers. I had the good fortune to learn from quite a few truly outstanding ones in elementary school, high school and college. They gave me a deep appreciation for Shakespeare, Asian history, sociology and international relations (to name a few) with attentiveness, humor, enthusiasm and passion.

I consider teaching to be one of the most challenging professions out there. For many teachers, the rewards come slowly, and the financial compensation can be low considering the amount of work put in. My dad, who happens to be quite a good teacher, has taught students in the Philippines and Samoa. He often says the job is as much about being an entertainer as anything else.

I’ve had several opportunities in the last year to “teach,” that is, speak to classes of students about my job, even though I’m quite new to the biz. A few weeks ago, I spoke to three separate classes of students at Ilima Intermediate for the school’s Career Day. After several hours of trying to keep their attention with relevant issues about while not losing my voice in the process, I came away with a new respect for their teacher and what she does in the classroom every day.

I constantly marvel at the patience and drive of my friends who are young teachers in their first or second years of instruction. They are working hard to make kids’ lives better at schools around the world — from New York to California to Japan, even here in Hawaii public schools. They work with a variety of students from ultra-hyper, easily-distracted elementary schoolers to more attentive but sometimes more unruly high schoolers; students who come from a range of income levels and ethnic backgrounds.

If there is someone who inspired you when you were in school, or who still inspires you to this day, take some time to look them up and send them a note. Or share your story about them here.

You may not recall exactly how to dissect a frog, label all the countries in Eastern Europe or conjugate a Latin verb, but hopefully there are other life lessons you still remember. I know I personally owe a whole heap of thanks to all the teachers in my life.

They’re the ones who taught me to catch tiger cubs.

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More on Teacher Appreciation Week:

Teacher Thank-You Card Project
Teacher Appreciation News
Teacher Appreciation Blog

As if there hasn’t been enough parental hand-wringing about co-ed dorms, now there’s a new college housing trend to get worked up about: co-ed rooms.

At least two dozen schools across the country, including Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, Clark University and the California Institute of Technology, now offer some or all students the option of sharing a room with any person they choose, even someone of the opposite sex, according to this Friday article on CNN.com. Stanford University appears to be the next to introduce co-ed rooms.

Some parents are horrified. Even if the couple sharing the room aren’t engaged in any kind of romantic relationship, why put yourself in an intimate living situation where all kinds of embarrassments and sexual tension could develop down the road?, they ask. Says CNN:

As shocking as it sounds to some parents, some students and schools say it’s not about sex.

Instead, they say the demand is mostly from heterosexual students who want to live with close friends who happen to be of the opposite sex. Some gay students who feel more comfortable rooming with someone of the opposite sex are also taking advantage of the option.

Certainly there are advantages to allowing students the choice of living with someone of the opposite sex. It’s sometimes a better arrangement for heterosexual couples who want to save themselves the effort of locating another roommate and who want to save money. And it seems unfair to deny heterosexual couples the option when school rules, ostensibly written to discourage romantic relationships from becoming distractions in dorms, allow same-sex couples to live together.

But it’s easy to see why some, especially Baby Boomers, are balking at the idea. My dad likes to remind me that in his day, you wouldn’t see people of the opposite sex interacting on the same campus, let alone the same hall or dorm room.

As much as I’d like to write the critics off as “old-fashioned,” men and women were kept separate for reasons that still pertain today — regardless of how progressive you are, or how platonic your friendship may be with your best guy friend or female friend, your relationship will be a little different when you start sleeping, studying and changing clothes in the same room.

Parents can take a breather — from the numbers, it appears not all students are signing up immediately. UPenn, for example, started offering the option in 2005, and only about 120 of the school’s 10,400 students took part this year, according to the article.

If I were offered the option, I’m not sure I would jump at the opportunity, either. It would be nice to have that choice if a boyfriend and I wanted to live together to save on rent. But just as I’m not sure I could stand even my closest guy friends’ personal living habits, so too would I not want to subject them to my clothes on the floor or my make-up strewn around the bathroom sink.

Some of my male friends have these hilarious visions of how perfect and neat girls are, and I’d like to be able to still revel in messiness without letting them catch on.

In college, I enjoyed living in co-ed dorms, even a co-ed suite with co-ed bathrooms, and I never felt uncomfortable. But living with a guy, even a close friend, in close quarters would be a much greater challenge. I don’t know. Call me old-fashioned.

photo: www.cnn.com

A friend is in town this week for a conference and is staying with me. So, for the first time I get to see what it’s like living with another person in my 420-sq.-ft. studio, which, up until Friday, was furnished only with a Queen-size aerobed, a TV, two Wal-mart folding tables and a weird-looking brown dresser.

It’s a situation likely experienced by anyone from Hawaii with close friends — and sometimes not-so-close friends — who come for a visit. You’ve noticed those longing looks in their eyes when you talk affectionately of 85-degree weather and pristine beaches. Everyone says yes, they’d LOVE to make the trip and, being full of the Aloha Spirit, you extend the invitation of a “someday” visit. And, of course, you offer your home as an alternative to a $300-per-night hotel.

But what happens when they take you up on the offer?

Any twenty-something who likes to travel has probably played the roles of both host and guest. I’ve hosted several college friends in Hawaii, offering a spare bed in my parents’ house (when I lived there) or a sleeping bag on the floor in my apartment. All have been great so far, cooking meals or giving me time alone when I needed it to work or study.

Other hosts I know haven’t been so lucky. I always prepare friends beforehand for the space-constraints of Hawaii living. With space being so tight, it’s often easy for guests to overstay their welcome. It’s tough when the host is on a 9-to-5 work schedule and the guest(s) are not. I’ve heard horror stories about vacationing “guests from hell” who stay out way past when their exhausted host has gone to bed and come stumbling in around 5 in the morning — sometimes with other people. Some hosting experiences go bad after just a few days and the guest winds up seeking out another place, getting a hotel, or booking an earlier flight.

There are various lists of rules compiled for being a good house guest. Most recommend the “three-day rule” for non-relatives. Here’s Rule Two of a ten-rule list supposedly posted by a New Yorker on Craig’s List:

Rule Two
All visitors planning to stay more than three days and nights are now required to show one of the following documents.
1. A valid airplane ticket from a different country (Texas not included)
2. An insurance claim proving that your house burnt down.
3. The birth certificate proving that I once lived in your (or your wife’s) womb for nine months (which is indeed way more than three days)
-Or-
4. Photo ID proving that you are Johnny Depp or Viggo Mortenson.

At 24, I long for the day when I will be able to offer a friend an actual “guest room” — not just a clean spot on the carpet. But I’m afraid that day is still far away. Until then, I suppose my guests will have to make do.

Plus, whenever I get an email from a friend coming to visit, I remember that I’ve slept on my fair share of other peoples’ floors and couches — in New York, Chicago, California and Japan, to name a few. I like to think of it as doing my part as one member of a community of globetrotters. It all somehow evens out in the wide world of traveling and random floor-crashing.

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Coincidentally (promise), there is an article in the NYT today about presidential campaign workers depending on the generosity of supporters for places to stay on the campaign trail.

There is quite an interesting discussion that has been growing since yesterday in the forum for this USA Today article on rising college tuition — and whether the costs translate into results.

A report by the Delta Cost Project, a Washington-based non-profit, says even as colleges and universities receive more revenue from tuition, that may not mean more is being spent on classroom instruction to prepare students for graduation.

Leaders in higher education typically argue that spending increases are necessary to maintain educational quality, but “what we see across a broad range of indicators is that states and institutions are spending money in areas that may not be in line with the public priority of preparing more graduates,” report author Jane Wellman says. The report is based on Department of Education data across 18 years from nearly 2,000 institutions representing 90% of students. The study examined only operating expenses, which include instructional costs — primarily faculty salaries and benefits. The fastest-growing operating expenses are related to research, public outreach and financial aid, the report says. Other examples are student services, maintenance and academic support.

For the current school year, the price of tuition at community colleges increased an average of 4.2 percent and 6.6 percent at public four-year institutions, according to College Board data.

Interestingly, as the article points out, the United States spends more per student than any other industrialized nation, but is at the bottom in regards to degree completion (54 percent), as reported by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in a 2007 study. The organization’s average was 71 percent, with Japan at the top with 91 percent.

Some who have left comments on the article disagree on just how important a college degree is in getting ahead, and how much going to a name-brand institution, like an Ivy League school, counts. Could one spend far less than the $125,000+ it would cost for four years at Harvard and get a fine education and a degree from a community college (and afford the first down payment on a house) instead? Does more money shelled out for college necessarily equal a better education? A bigger circle of connections? A higher-paying job?

A better life?

What I find intimidating is that more and more, it seems that a four-year, oftentimes terribly expensive college degree is not enough. Back in the day, those who finished high school were considered accomplished. Then it became those who completed some kind of secondary education. Now it seems you may need even more than that to succeed in this increasingly globalized world.

Many of my friends are discovering that their college degrees are not enough. But applying for graduate/law/med school while still paying off hundreds in college loans each month can be daunting.

Honestly, where does it stop?

I went back to the ol’ high school alma mater last night as part of the annual “Life Ater ‘Iolani” event. We divided into groups according to the regions where the seniors were headed to school, so I represented the East Coast with three other alums, who had attended MIT, Boston University and Cornell University. There were about 30 students in our classroom, which I consider a good number.

The 2-hour event gives students an opportunity to be in a room sans parents, teachers and other adults, with just their peers and some young(er) alumni. So, students can ask questions that might not have been asked in the presence of adults, for example, about drugs, alcohol and “hook-ups.” And alumni can give honest answers.

I was glad that in addition to the usual questions about how to stay in touch with friends and how often to call parents, we also had practical questions — how to purchase a good winter coat without breaking the bank, how to find a job during school to help with costs, how to sneak a rice cooker into the dorm without campus security or your RA catching you.

This is the second college info night I’ve participated in. Every year I leave feeling optimistic that I’ve offered at least some semi-useful advice to seniors about the challenges they will face getting on a plane, traveling 13 hours away from family and friends and familiar surroundings, and stepping into an environment that in many cases will be new and foreign in almost every way.

I also think: there is no way that I or anyone else can prepare a Hawaii high school senior fully for when he or she finally embarks on that experience.

Before I left for Massachusetts in August 2002, I talked to a lot of people. But I think there are some things that people tell you that you can never understand or appreciate until you get there; things you just have to learn for yourself.

For example: how can you begin to fathom what 20-below-zero feels like when you’ve enjoyed sunny 80-degree weather for your entire life?

Or, take long-distance relationships. Both years, alumni addressed the topic, basically saying that there is a 95 percent chance that long-distance relationships that carry over from high school to college are doomed. There’s always a nervous twitter among the seniors, many expressing confidence that “there’s still 5 percent.”

I guess it’s just something you have to learn for yourself.

Entering into an entirely different environment, an entirely different life, even, is what going from high school to college is all about. Whether it’s going up the street to the University of Hawaii or HPU or leaving for a rural town in upstate New York, college should be, at times, uncomfortable. It should jar you a bit. Who knows — it might change you from who you were in high school. It may change your friendships with people you thought you would be able to talk to forever. But that’s not always a bad thing.

I guess my advice to seniors would be: yes, ask questions, take some time to prepare yourself for school, for leaving Hawaii and your friends and family. But don’t be afraid to venture off without knowing everything. Don’t be afraid to embrace the unknown.

Teachers might want you to think otherwise, but college isn’t just about school — it’s 60 percent academic learning and 40 percent everything else.

I wish someone had told me that before I left for college.

photo: College graduation, June 2006.