Takeaways through comparing Japan and the U.S. academic culture

To succeed as an international graduate student, I found that I have to actively get involved and consider myself as an effective scholar. In my study in the graduate pathway program, I learned the academic writing convention in my discipline, critical thinking, reflective thinking. Through these study, I found some similarities and differences with Japanese education, where I finished my bachelors’ degree. These similarities and differences tell me that I have to be an active participant in the academic life.

First, the similarity is that critical thinking is an important concept both in Japan and the U.S. When I was an undergraduate student in Japan, I had a debate and group project. For the debate and group project, we have to prepare our evidence and handout. In this process, we use critical thinking because we have to provide our position with unique angle for the reading assignment. In the U.S., most class have the debate and group project. this makes the students more active because the students have to use critical thinking unlike the lecture. It helps me both in the academic field and in the career. In particular, in the academic field, it is necessary to write papers with the own position such as the research question, and the thesis.

However, I found that the U.S. academic culture entails knowing many norms and conventions for writing, comparing with Japanese academic culture. For example, I learned the academic writing convention such as a citation style. In Japan, I paid attention how to write references. However, in the U.S., the citation style contains the language rule such as the verb tense, formal or informal style, imperative form. Knowing these conventions help us become an effective scholar, and vice versa. Moreover, in the U.S. academic culture, it is really common to give the feedback and revise our thesis. As an undergraduate student, I got the feedback only for my undergraduate thesis, but the most class gives me the feedback even though it is an essay. this can be assumed that the graduate students are expected to provide higher quality products as a scholar to contribute in the field of study. Therefore, the works studying in the pathway program enable me to know the writing convention, to get the writing skill and to raise our consciousness as graduate students.

The most useful thing that I learned in my pathway program is the academic norm in the U.S. I think I could not know if I did not enroll the pathway program. Besides pathway program taught me the academic norm, it told me at the same time we have to chose our way to succeed our academic goal because it let us to prepare how to get involved by ourselves. For example, I interviewed my classmate in my major class about our discipline for EAP506. At first, I was nervous to talk with American students in the major class because of my English language proficiency. However, I found that they are really friendly and taking to the American students is not so hard than I expected. In fact, the interviewee provided a lot of information, which was very useful.  It seems that the professor assigned us to do this interview, but actually it gave us an opportunity to experience how to interact with the other students because we have to continue it after we finish our pathway program. Interacting with American students or classmate in the major class is an important for international students to get information and a high grade. This can mean that being active is an important for the international students to success the academic goal. Thus, the pathway program gave us the opportunities to be an active scholar in the U.S. academic culture.

For covering these findings in the pathway program, reflective thinking is helpful concept for our academic success. Socrates, who is the classic Greek philosopher, said that “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” I can recognize what I know and what I do not know by reflecting. This ability of reflective thinking can adapt both to succeed academic goals and to write my thesis. As I mentioned in earlier discussion, we have not to follow what professor said but chose what we want to accomplish. Thus, reflective thinking is useful for international graduate students because it can light up our way to success the goal.

John Stuart Mill, who is an English philosopher, said that “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.” This quotes tells me that activeness and aspiration is necessary to be an effective scholar. I think studying in the U.S. graduate school is likely to entail to be “Socrates dissatisfied” because we have to explore our academic life by ourselves. Sometimes, the differences of academic culture surprised international students, but I believe I can succeed my academic goal, which is to get the GPA average above 3.5, by actively getting involved and considering myself as an effective scholar.