Stories in Diversity
HKUST is a diverse community with students and staff from all around the world. Each of us may have our own set of differences, whether it be our cultural background, majors, or values, but what connects us is that we are all part of one big family: HKUST. Despite the diversity on our campus, a lot of us may feel somewhat disconnected from one another, which is especially prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic when the majority of the population was off-campus, with some even being stuck in their home countries. Because of this, today, we’d like to introduce a few of our students, all with their own unique stories to share. We hope that you will realize despite our differences, we all have some form of commonality between us, and that we are all just one conversation away from hearing a treasure trove of interesting experiences.
Irene is a Year 3 student doing an Individualized Interdisciplinary Major at HKUST with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction. She is a local student who loves music (she plays the guitar and drums!) and playing football on the side as a part of the HKUST Women’s Soccer Team. Here, she is able to meet tons of different people all from diverse backgrounds, making new friends and learning about different cultures at the same time. This isn’t something she had initially expected as she simply decided to go to HKUST because of her good time at a summer camp held by the school, but she is grateful to have made “good friends who are cool!”. Despite coming from different backgrounds, she realized all of us have so much more in common than we think if only we try to learn more about each other even with our differences and cultural barriers. By doing so, we also inadvertently learn more about ourselves in the process.
Kiki is a year 3 Global Business student from Taiwan. In HKUST, she has been incredibly active in exploring her passion and gaining new soft and hard skills by joining quite a few different student societies such as Be Our Guest, 180 Degrees Consulting, and UniGreenEats. Although she definitely has gained a lot of useful knowledge from her past experiences, what she values the most are all the different interactions and meaningful relationships she has with fellow students.
She finds it interesting to be able to observe and learn different aspects of the diversity of cultures she meets on a day-to-day basis on and off-campus. She shared one instance wherein she had met a friend in the hallway and got introduced to her friend who is from an African country. It was the first time they both heard about each other’s hometown, but as it turned out, their education systems were unexpectedly very similar which drove them to organize a group study after that. Similarly, she notices that Taiwan, although generally having a similar culture with Hong Kong, the latter definitely has a much harder and fast-paced culture than Taiwan. This is especially true in HKUST where she acknowledges that she is surrounded by a huge group of talented peers. Here, she embraces with open arms all the opportunities provided to her and spends more time than ever to really reflect on her experiences such as moving to Hong Kong for university. It was definitely challenging for her, but it also brought her many great fruits and internal growth due to her being open-minded towards everything she faces.
Sharna is a Year 3 Economics and Marketing student at HKUST. Her fun fact is that although she is ethnically Bangladeshi, she is a born and bred Hongkonger who is technically Chinese!
During her interview, she talked about some of the challenges as an ethnic minority in Hong Kong, especially studying in a local school, but she is happy to say that she has come out of that experience stronger and armed to help those who are in the same position as her. She is a part of a local NGO that supports ethnic minorities in Hong Kong called Unison where she is able to interact with people in need, especially students who seek advice on further education.
In HKUST, she is an active student who has participated in various student societies and internships where she is able to make an impact on the world around her, all the way from her work at Dawn Advisory, a consulting group directed towards early-stage start-ups, to LEAP@HKUST, an initiative promoting Gender Diversity and Inclusiveness at HKUST. As the interim Vice President of LEAP, she was able to organize a Girl’s STEM Summer Camp where they try to boost the confidence of underprivileged high school girls and open their eyes to the possibility of pursuing their STEM interests. Finally, as a HKUST student, she feels extremely lucky to have had the exposure to meet and collaborate with a diverse set of people, coming from different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds for example. She understands the challenges of having somewhat differing mindsets and perspectives, but also embraces them as a way to critique her own judgment of the world around her and develop more well-rounded approaches to such.
