I encounter some difficulty. I think I learned many things from them since I come here. And I think I will continue to make progress if I stay here. (September 3, 2002)
At the beginning of my study, Paul was already well on his way to continuing in the graduate program, having completed three of the four required qualifying exams for PhD students. However, within a few months after the start of my study—halfway through the second year of his master’s program—Paul had begun to lose interest in continuing his graduate education. He saw his own strengths and interests as more aligned with the type of work he could do in industry than with that done in academe:
. . . I think I am not an academic people. Doing research for me is difficult. Not difficult- I know how to work on the project, but the research needs more patience [laughing] and lots of time you cannot come up with any conclusions. For the purpose of writing paper, the research is good because you can read some corrections you cannot answer now. You present some work currently you have. But I think I more like to come up with very completed conclusions and a solution to put it into industry. That’s what I’m interested in. So [laughing] I think that I will not go on to PhD. (December 12, 2002)
Paul reiterated this sentiment repeatedly throughout my study.
An additional reason for completing his education at the master’s level was that Paul’s research interests no longer seemed to fit with those of his advisor. He was hesitant, however, to change advisors in order to work with someone in another area:
Also, I think that, to say the truth, I don’t very like the area I’m currently in. I think, I don’t know, maybe it’s difficult or- I don’t know. [laughing] So, I will not go on for the PhD. And I haven’t think about looking for another advisor, I haven’t think about it. I just want to finish my master’s degree. (December 12, 2002)
With or without a PhD, Paul described his long-term goal as working as a programmer for a computer game company. His true love was program analysis and experimental work.
Whether or not Paul decided to continue for a PhD, the major requirement for completing his master’s degree was to write a master’s thesis. During the first half of my research, the requirements for the thesis still seemed rather mysterious and vague to Paul, though he believed that his advisor would be playing a prominent role in terms of giving feedback. By the sixth month of my study, though, Paul had started becoming nervous about his thesis. He had hoped to conduct research on the area of inter-network security, but without any promising results in his experiments, he was unable to focus on a specific topic. Five months later, when his thesis had been completed, Paul had an increased sense of confidence in writing in English and a sense that he would be able to tackle whatever future writing tasks he encountered.
Prior to coming to the U.S., Paul had written papers in English courses, a bachelor’s thesis in Chinese, and some internal company documents in Chinese. He had also translated into English the abstract of his thesis and a peer’s short master’s thesis. The summer before my research began and at school breaks during the study, Paul worked as an intern at a local computer software company. In this position, he wrote regular progress reports and memos to document his work. At the start of WCGS, Paul described most of his English-language writing as email communication with friends. He explained that he had written homework assignments for classes, but these consisted primarily of algorithms.
Though he wrote a great deal of email—both in English and Chinese—Paul initially told me that he did not like writing very much:
Because I think reason is I was forced to do so. Writing letters is different. Letters, you are willing to write letters to your friends. Letters is, I think fine, but some formal document is not. (September 3, 2002)
He also described feeling more comfortable with workplace writing than academic writing. He particularly preferred programming documentation (a common form of writing at work), which he described as “very natural” and following a basic format.
After two years of graduate school, Paul felt that his writing had changed, though he found it difficult to identify what the changes were beyond increased confidence. He felt his English-language writing had had been influenced by readings, homework assignments, instructors, collaborative writing, and oral interactions. Despite these influences, however, Paul felt a strong ownership of his writing, and credited his very early days of literacy as contributing most significantly to his current writing style.
Paul’s enrollment in WCGS was recommended by his advisor, but Paul felt that it would be helpful to him, especially when writing his thesis. Within the first few weeks of the semester, he explained that he was more accustomed to informal writing than academic writing, and he described his goals for WCGS as learning to format papers and writing them in a way that was “comfortable” for academics.
John
In his rapid, American-style speech, John, a second-year master’s student with black hair and small, rectangular glasses, described to me his unique linguistic identity during our first meeting. Twenty-five years of age at the start of my research, John was born in the United States, where he spent his first several years and one year of graduate school. He had spent the rest of his life in South Korea, his parents’ home country, where he attended middle school, high school, and undergraduate schooling:
I think I have two first languages, so basically when I was born and for the first years before preschool, Korean was predominant language, because I would also speak in Korean with my parents. And then after preschool, I spent more time with my peers and spend more time speaking English, so I basically forgot all of my Korean. And then I moved back to Korea. When I moved back to Korea, I didn’t have any command of the Korean language. (September 4, 2002)
Out of necessity, John learned Korean quickly. Even after several years living in South Korea, John still felt most comfortable communicating in English. The chance to use English, paired with his feeling that the top electrical engineering schools were located in the U.S., led John to apply to several U.S. graduate programs to continue his education.
John had always been interested in science, but engineering was not in fact his first love:
Well, I was interested in physics. Because when I was a little boy, my, like, dream was to get a Nobel Prize . . . in physics. Because I always loved reading science-related books, or science fiction, fantasy book, even just non-fiction books about science. So, I was just fascinated with physics. And then, after moving to Korea—it’s a pretty funny reason—but the college that I wanted to apply to didn’t have a physics course separately, but they just lumped all the sciences together. I didn’t really like that idea so I chose a different field, which is the closest to physics that I could find, and that was electrical engineering. (September 4, 2002)
Like Paul, John’s father was in the field that John himself eventually entered. From the time he began studying in the field of electrical engineering, John’s interests had changed from robotics to semi-conductor devices to his current interest in biomedical engineering—more specifically, bio-micro-electrical-mechanical systems, or “bioMEMS.” John spoke about his work with passion and intensity:
I really enjoy helping people. I mean helping people in a direct way. Like, for example, if I were to earn money and become somebody like Bill Gates and then finance all of these things, I probably wouldn’t be that happy because that’d be too indirect for me. But if I developed a robotic leg—which I was very interested in robotic prosthesis when I applied to Midwest University—so that I could change somebody’s life, even if I didn’t know that person personally, I know that the research I did would directly affect somebody in a good way. (September 4, 2002)
At the start of my study, John’s goal was to enter a PhD program after completing of his master’s
