Janssen Kong Peng Hang Log 1

Congratulation fellow! You deserve it, its amazing, rewarding, exhausting, challenging, and enlightening. In the past months, I have felt every aspect of this, but what is a journey that does not include the mix feeling and anxiety that rushes through your body, trying to balance your personal and professional obligation, all the while living up to the expectation of executing every tactics you had plan to achieve during your fellowship. But the truth of the matter is, its all part of the journey.

During the past months, I have come to realize that being a fellow is not to overwhelm yourself with expected unexpected dilemma, but embrace the opportunity to be your authentic self, challenge yourself to execute over due agenda of who you want to be, explore and embrace new learning opportunity that will ground the start of a new chapter. While I had anticipated that I would have completed all the tasked planned to date; grow my network, collect data and stories of culture, tradition and practices, I have worked myself into an unhealthy situation where “I” didn’t matter and what matter is how other perceived me. Yet, I learned that true growth is giving yourself grace, “go slow to go fast”, then the path becomes clearer and more direct than it was before.

Instead of going abroad and traveling to other states to capture cultural knowledge, explore the challenges and opportunities community members faced, I transition to individual in my close surrounding to ground me and in fact, it challenged me to think differently in my agenda and I feel I have a better approach to tackle the next iteration of my fellowship.

I was told that a journey it not determine by what you have accomplished, but it is what you have captured along the way. In every aspect, I have learned to rest, reflect and respond, which builds strength and resiliency and I encourage you to do the same.