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Academic exchanges at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (4)

author: Xie Yiming Date: 2023-11-03 View:

Among the courses of this program, I am most impressed by metaphysics, political philosophy and the third academic English workshop.


Metaphysics course is the first professional course in this trip. Contrary to everyone's expectation, this course is not so difficult to understand. On the contrary, this metaphysics course taught in a strange language is profound and easy to understand. During this period, I was introduced different conjectures and proved them false one by one, and everyone's thinking was guided vividly through the human hand hypothesis, which enabled me to quickly get familiar with the English classroom environment and devote myself to the subsequent learning.


The content of the political philosophy course is to some extent related to ethics, but more focused on politics. In the course, the professor introduces different political systems and leads you to think about how to evaluate different political systems. Although the whole course is more based on the American system, and the professor's evaluation is also based on the American idea of the separation of powers system and democracy and equality, many ideas are very new to me and trigger my thinking.


The third academic English workshop mainly involved the reading of poems. Under the guidance of the professor, we read four poems in Elizabeth Acevedo's poetic novel The Poet X, and deeply experienced the living conditions and cultural atmosphere of Latino Americans. In this process, we used Elizabeth's poem Names as a starting point to introduce the meanings and origins of their Chinese names and English names, and in this process, we got to know each other more deeply. At the same time, the professor also discussed the use of native language names with us. Simple names imply the recognition of culture and identity, and different role perspectives will bring different viewpoints and stances. The discussion on whether to use native language names is not trivial, which triggered my thinking on how individuals with different cultural backgrounds can merge into a collective and interact with each other.


In addition to the course content, the visit to Princeton University in this program also left me a deep memory. Its beautiful campus environment and special teaching mode have left me an indelible memory. During the two weekends, I visited places of interest, museums and art galleries in Philadelphia and New York, which made me know more about American culture.