Christina Cheadle '16

Hometown: Escondido, CA

Major: Anthropology and Art History

Minor: East Asian Studies (Japanese concentration)

Extracurricular Activities:

Cheerleading Captain
Pi Beta Phi Member/Event Planner
Japanese Tea Society Member
Campus Tour Guide
House Mountain Inn Employee

Other W&L Experiences:

Spring Term 2014 in Kanazawa, Japan
Summer intern at the Reeves Center

Post-Graduation Plans: I plan to pursue a Ph.D. in Japanese art and then continue on with a career in the art world.

Why did you apply for the Johnson Opportunity Grant? Without the grant I would not have been able to attend the conference. I felt that this conference was necessary in order to pursue a career in Japanese art. Not only would I be able to work with Japanese students for a month while learning about their culture, but I would also be able to network with important people in my field.

How does your work under the grant apply to your studies at W&L? This conference combined all my fields of study. I was part of the Art and Identity roundtable, where we spent a couple of hours each day preparing for a final presentation. Through this I learned more about Japanese art, as well as Japan-America relations.

What was the most unexpected aspect of your grant experience? The experience was much more stressful than I could have ever imagined. We were nonstop for 27 days and running on very little sleep. Emotions began to run high as the same people surrounded us day after day in these high-intensity situations. Overall it was an amazing experience, but when it was over I slept for 19 hours straight.

Favorite Classes: Anything with Professors Bent and Ikeda

Favorite Campus Landmark: The Japanese Tearoom

Why did you choose W&L? I was enticed by the close-knit community and small class sizes. The strong focus in academics and small-town location really sold me.

Why did you choose your major? I have always wanted to major in anthropology because I enjoy comparing non-Western cultures to the West. Art History is the medium through which I have chosen to pursue my interest in anthropology. Upon randomly taking Japanese Drama and Poetry for my LIT FDR, I found an interest in Japan that only intensified as I took more classes.

Advice for prospective or first-year students? Go abroad spring term all four years.

My Japanese roommate and I wake up at 7 a.m. in our dorm room at UC Berkeley and get dressed nicely in our business casual. Our entire group of 72 college students (half from America and half from Japan) meets in the lobby of the dorms for our daily morning announcements. We then head to breakfast at the Berkeley dining hall, which ends up being the best food of all the four sites at which we stayed. San Francisco was the second site, so at this point we had only been to Des Moines, Iowa. Afterwards, we would head to New York and Washington, D.C., each for a week, in order to complete the 4-week conference.

After breakfast, we separate into our roundtable groups in order to go to the first location of the day. The entire delegation was split up into small groups based on specific themes. I was part of Art and Identity, and at the end of the conference we made a presentation in front of the delegation and distinguished guests. We would meet and discuss for at least a couple of hours each day.

The first event of the day is a barbeque at Mr. Hiromitsu Ogawa's Atherton home. Mr. Ogawa is a prominent supporter of JASC. Because JASC has an 80-year history, we are able to meet many alumni and supporters. I met several ambassadors and CEOs, although I was particularly interested in the art historians. We enjoy the nice weather and network with Mr. Ogawa. I get to talk about his work on the board of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. After a couple of hours we board the busses once again and head to Google.

At the Google headquarters in Palo Alto, we attend a personalized workshop hosted by a JASC alum. We work in groups in order to solve problems the way that they are encouraged to do so at Google. Afterwards, we split up into tours and got to look all around the campus. It seems like a great place to work! By the end of this event, we are all pretty tired, but we still have another place to go.

Next, we drive to Hakone Gardens in San Francisco. Hakone Gardens is an authentic Japanese garden run by the Hakone Foundation. Here, an alum by the name of Allen Miner hosts a Japanese cultural night. The location is so beautiful. It reminds me of my spring term in Japan, and reminds the Japanese students of home. We begin the night with a 30-minute meditation session led by monks. We go into a traditional Japanese room and sit calmly for 30 minutes. If the monk feels that we are dozing off or losing focus, he gives us a whack on the shoulder with a wooden paddle. Luckily they go easy on us, so it doesn't hurt at all. We then play traditional Japanese games and eat traditional Japanese foods. We also get to play with Japanese fireworks and write calligraphy. By the time we leave it is around 11:45 and we still have an hour bus ride home. We all crawl into our beds, exhausted.