They dressed up. Some wore ties. Some, suits. It was a big deal.
The international students who had spent the summer at UNMC as part of the Asia Pacific Rim Development Program Summer Research Program and Clinical Exchange were putting on a mini symposium, to share what they had learned.
Nearly two dozen students had spent eight to 12 weeks on campus either working in an assigned lab or doing such clinical rotations as surgery, radiology, orthopaedics and ophthalmology. They came from China’s Shandong, Shanghai Jiao Tong and Tongji universities.
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From left, Fan Chen, Ya Zhang, Shuo Zhou, Jingwei Liu and Bin Liu. |
And this was their shot. A symposium. They dressed up and made official presentations. They took pictures of each other doing so. It was a big deal.
They called it a mini symposium because there were mini time limits. But they couldn’t keep to them. Despite a teacher’s hectoring to stay on schedule, you can’t sum up a summer’s worth of research in five minutes or less.
But when they were done with the hypotheses and the findings and the PowerPoints, they did something else: a presentation on their personal experiences at UNMC.
“I really fell in love with this place,” said Jingwei Liu, as the group from Shandong University gathered around him. “It was quite different.”
They showed pictures as he said these things: Of them gathered at a Saddle Creek pizza place; a guy in a fluorescent green T-shirt rocking out to air guitar; a trip to the Henry Doorly Zoo.
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They attended an open-air concert: “We laughed and jumped high.” Apparently, it is something Americans do, and they were trying it out.
They learned, they said, how to do everything themselves. Even haircuts. (They all laughed.)
When they got here, almost none of them could cook. “Now,” Liu said proudly, “all of us can cook.”
His team grinned.
“I feel really warm here,” the group spokesman said. “Like I have a big family. I don’t feel lonely.”
When it came time for questions from the audience, there was only one. A guy from one of the other universities raised his hand: “What do you think of the Jiao Tong guys in your house?”
Another young man from Shandong University stepped forward to take the mic. With his accent, it would be tough to pick out the exact wording. But what he was saying was this: “We had no idea that guys from Shanghai could be so cool.”