Liberal Education Stories: Lani Nelson ’13 (Asian Studies)

Lani Nelson ’13 (Asian Studies) grew up valuing Asian art, music and culture. Her grandparents taught music at Seoul National University in the 1960s. Her grandmother was an opera singer and pianist, her grandfather, a pianist. Her mother, who’d spent a few of her formative years living in South Korea, exposed Nelson to Japanese food and films.

Her unusual upbringing made Nelson feel like an outsider among her friends, who were much more interested in American pop music and television. “No one could quite relate to it, but I had these interests that came very naturally,” she said.

Nelson enrolled in a Chinese language class during her freshman year at the State University of New York at New Paltz and, to her surprise, felt at home. “I could tell that it was a musical language, and if you had an understanding of music or art, you could apply that to Chinese,” said Nelson. “It matched my personality in a way I didn’t expect.”

After taking a Chinese history class under Professor Kristine Harris, Nelson declared as an Asian Studies major. She studied Japanese and Chinese art, learned about the powerful influence Asia has had on the U.S., and even discovered that she’d held some common misperceptions about Asian culture and life. “I learned a lot about myself. It was great to get some perspective on who I am, where I come from and where I’d like to go,” she said.

Nelson sharpened her Chinese language skills by serving as a Chinese conversation partner and studying abroad at Nanjing University in China her junior year. Upon her arrival in China, a lodging mix-up forced Nelson to apply the skills she’d learned at New Paltz and assert herself in a way she had not before.

“I had to immediately start negotiating my feelings and use what I knew to convey the problem,” recalled Nelson. “I was never assertive, even in English. I feel like that was the best thing that happened when I got there.”

In the summer, Nelson participated in a combined internship/study abroad program in Korea and continued to challenge herself, even when it made her uncomfortable.

“I learned a lot about myself. It was great to get some perspective on who I am, where I come from and where I’d like to go.”

When by chance, an acquaintance she’d met in Korea emailed her professor about a Chinese speech competition hosted in New York City, Nelson entered the contest. She won fourth place and an opportunity to interview with SinoVision English Channel. The channel, which features reporting on Chinese arts and culture, was looking for news reporters.

At New Paltz, Nelson had decided on a major and minor (in linguistics) based purely on her personal interests. After graduating, she made the practical choice to begin earning her English as a Second Language certification at the Teaching House in New York City.

Though she had never considered a job as a reporter, Nelson impressed her SinoVision interviewers and began working for the channel in January 2014 as a reporter. She researches stories, conducts on-air interviews, writes voice-over narration, directs b-roll footage and edits it all together to make a news report – all skills that she learned on the job.

The job at SinoVision included a week-long training in Adobe Premiere software, which taught Nelson the tricks of a trade she has now come to love. “I have an artistic side and to me, flow really matters, to match the content and flow,” she said. “It’s kind of awesome. I never thought I could apply my interest in art to this.”

Nelson’s biggest project to date has been a three-part travel special filmed on location in Anhui, China. The special focuses on the architecture, food and cultural heritage of Anhui, including the production of local delicacies like “hairy” and “stinky” tofu, and the rich tradition of Chinese writing.

Though her career path has elements of the unexpected, Nelson can trace her career success to the skills she gained by pursuing a liberal arts education.

“Obtaining a liberal arts degree meant that I needed to be flexible, and develop a variety of skills in several areas of knowledge,” said Nelson. “Studying Chinese language made me improve my people-to-people skills and cultural/linguistic sensitivity. Studying Asian history made me into a strong researcher and writer, and my linguistics major gave me the opportunity to act as a real field researcher, learning to observe data, defend my hypothesis, and present it in a conference format. And of course, studying abroad was the most intensive education of all, making me more independent, decisive, and assertive in ways I don’t think I could have achieved had I never left my American college bubble.”

For Nelson, an Asian Studies degree indicates “open-mindedness, flexibility and adaptability, both as a student and continuing into the professional world.”