SuperCamp Graduate Duncan’s True Story

Duncan grew up according to the traditions and culture of his Chinese family. They were the same values taught at his conventional Chinese school in Hong Kong and everywhere else. Those values taught that the best way for a person to exist in a culture is conformity. Don’t stick out of the crowd. Do what everyone else does and accept it as your life.

Duncan wanted to break out of the mold. When he was fourteen, he would crouch in his middle school stairway and scribble weird drawings of my “new inventions.” Now and then, he would look up to see if his classmates were giving him odd looks. They didn’t, but it didn’t matter. They didn’t like him because he wasn’t playing by the rules anyway. He wasn’t conforming. When the other children talked of music, Duncan talked of invention. In a society that bred answers, Duncan asked questions. It got to the point that teachers asked him to stop raising his hand because he would ask questions that had nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Friends laughed at his constant need to question. He felt discouraged from talking to other people because they never seemed to understand him. Slowly, he became timid about expressing his thoughts and questions. He started to doubt his logic and decisions. He kept his views to myself and forced himself to conform to the norm. The more he conformed, the less he liked himself.

After two years of disliking himself more and more, his parents heard about an American camp held in their city that helped children with Duncan’s type of issues. They heard that the camp did amazing things with children’s grades and their self-esteem. Luckily, they lived in Hong Kong. Duncan was going to SuperCamp.

Like most campers, his transformation from insecure to confident happened gradually. At first, he was awed by the dynamic curriculum and diverse cultural backgrounds of the participants. His training in a traditional Chinese middle school taught him to find and follow the norm, but he couldn’t find it at this camp. The longer he stayed at camp, the more he became aware that people and education could be different and that the norm was nonexistent. Through the camp’s techniques and programs, he realized the importance of diversity in thought and culture. He became more confident in his decision-making abilities. He began to realize that he possessed the power to become his own person.

No more would Duncan let certain social convictions hold him back in having a great life. He transferred to an international school in Hong Kong to continue his exposure to diversity. He made academic goals, found a summer internship and started to embark upon pathways few have traveled.

Six years later, he is majoring in environmental studies, Chinese and dance at Tufts University. One day, he told his mother he planned to skip a year of college to pursue a different, short-term dream. He said he wanted to work in China in the environmental field to understand Chinese culture and how he could use this culture to improve their connection to nature and the environment. Reluctantly, she agreed.

Duncan went to China, where he is working to teach rural Chinese how to live prosperous lives without damaging the environment. Today, he feels comfortable following unusual beliefs as long as he has a clear purpose and reason for them.

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http://www.iqln.com/Worldwide/QLN_Worldwide_07.asp