Looking back, it was actually a very difficult experience for me. I guess you could say I had extreme culture shock. Kyoto in June was (and usually is) incredibly hot and humid, I did not like most of the food, I am very tall and it was constantly remarked upon and fewer people spoke English than I had expected. This was also before the Internet era, so there was no email, and overseas phone calls were very expensive.

But I was there with IC faculty and with other students who I knew were looking out for me, and the Ritsumeikan students and faculty were utterly welcoming and kind. So, in retrospect, it was the ideal introduction to an experience like this. Although this trip was now almost 30 years ago, the memories are still vivid and kind of sweet to me. To be young and exploring a new and very different culture for the first time with trusted friends and teachers – what an opportunity!

After the Ritsumeikan program, I returned to the U.S. for one month, and then in early August embarked on my year teaching in Japan through the JET Program. I was placed in Iwate Prefecture, a rural area in northern Japan, where I co-taught with Japanese English teachers at four high schools. After a year with the JET Program, I moved to Sendai (near where the massive earthquake and tsunami struck in 2012) for three years, where I taught English in various capacities and continued my quest to master the Japanese language and to understand Japanese culture as much as possible.

On one of my visits home from Japan, I clearly remember having lunch in Jacksonville with Dr. Robert Koepp and Dr. Eric Springsted. I was considering graduate school but felt that perhaps it was not realistic, for a number of reasons. They encouraged me to pursue my interest and to apply to some top schools, which worked out well. I also recall Dr. Karen Dean’s enthusiasm for learning and broadening one’s horizons influenced me greatly.

Even before visiting Japan, as a student at IC, I recall being able to take classes in whatever interested me. I chose to have a combined major in English and religion, but I also took classes, beyond what was required, in computer science, biology and political science, among other things. I remember being amazed that in some ways several of my classes seemed to be talking about the same thing, from different perspectives. This is true to what I have found “life” to be like even after college: the world is not really made up of distinct, separate fields and disciplines. Learning to see these connections and view things from a broader perspective through the liberal arts was an invaluable lesson.

Since my early travels, my career has been inextricably intertwined with Japan. I earned a Ph.D. from Yale in religious studies, with a focus on Japanese religion. I have taught courses on the study of East Asian religions and culture at the University of Colorado Boulder, Macalester College, Sarah Lawrence College and Stanford. I am currently employed by the Soto Zen Headquarters in Tokyo (although I live in the U.S.), and I translate medieval Zen Buddhist texts to English.

It is hard to enunciate all that I learned through these experiences, many for which Illinois College was the catalyst. Perhaps first and foremost, I learned perseverance. Even though things were so hard for me at first, I stuck with it, and grew to love Japan. Kyoto has become like a second home to me. I have spent two years there as a visiting researcher, once during graduate school and once for a sabbatical year.

Ultimately, education at its best is about becoming a critical thinker. Everything else stems from this: career, community involvement, friendships and so on. For me, visiting Japan and then living there for years forced me to reexamine all my assumptions about how the world works. I cannot overemphasize how the experiences I had at Illinois College and through the RU-IC partnership shaped me as a student and a person.