Western Kentucky University sits on the top of a hill, overlooking the downtown of Bowling Green, where the famed National Corvette Museum is located. Its campus is ranked as one of the most beautiful campuses in the South, with its Greek architecture buildings, a soaring pylon and an expansive arboretum .
When I arrived in late August, 1994, the summer heat gradually ceded to evening breeze. The campus was turning into a post card. The red-brick Pearce Ford Tower, the tallest residence hall in Kentucky was where I started my student life in the United States. From the window, I watched squirrels roaming around the trees on the checkered lawns before they sprinted to grab wild nuts that just dropped from the trees. You could sense the fall in the air as maple and birch trees slowly turned from lush green to bright red or yellow.
For me, nothing was like a breeze. The initial excitement about my new life had long be subdued by the harsh reality: academic challenges, financial hardship and emotional roller coaster until I reached the breaking point. The question “Am I supposed to be here” rang in my head before I received a call from Mr. Chen, my former boss in China. He rolled out the welcome mat if I decided to give up my study and return to China.
In the weeks that followed, I took a long look at how I got to this point. I had gone too far to just fold and return to the original place. I had jumped so many hoops and overcome so many roadblocks. It would amount to a humiliating capitulation if I stopped pushing through unfounded self-doubt and seemingly insurmountable challenges. I told myself: “This is your destiny now!”. This was the path that God intentionally put me on when I turned on the radio and caught on the English by Radio in that fateful summer afternoon fifteen years earlier. The people who came into my life ever since: Liang, Pat & Wallace, and my financial sponsor in New York to make this possible were watching me and would help me get over the finishing line. I just could not fail them. I had to put one foot ahead of the other no matter how hard it had become.
The immediate concern was my tuition payment for which I was $800 short. I called Pat and she said that a check was on the way. The most daunting challenge was from the academics. The Master of Professional Accountancy Program was to give graduating accounting students the theoretical depth and professional polishing to become future financial executives. Unlike all my classmates, I had never taken undergraduate courses in US accounting theory and practices. It would be impossible for me to meaningly participate in classroom discussions and group projects or to write quality term papers and deliver professional presentations without reading undergraduate textbooks. I had to drop one of the two accounting classes unless I set myself up for a total failure.
I voiced my grave concerns to Dr. Aldridge. A few days later, he came back with the following suggestions: Keep Accounting Information System class with Dr. White. Postpone Financial Accounting class to be taken with the next cohort. To meet my visa requirement as a full-time student, create an independent study in financial accounting for me. The Independent Study class would give me the flexibility to pick a undergraduate class that was the most beneficial to my progress. I would have to write two term papers on subjects of my choosing in addition to meeting the requirements for the undergraduate class.
I picked the undergraduate class with Dr. Smith, for whom I also worked as a teaching assistant. The other two professors I was supposed to work for, did not bother me much with assignments to facilitate their research or teaching. Dr. Smith used me as a working horse and got the worth of my stipend. I sat in every one of his class, proctored and graded his exams. He required his students to read Wall Street Journal, the top business and financial journal that most business executives read on a daily basis. He asked me to grade the weekly quiz he gave on the Journal to ensure his students read it. I did not have the money to subscribe to the Journal. But, by grading the weekly quiz, I did not miss much big news about what was going on in the business community. If some of the news interested me, I would go to the library to read the entire article.
I started meeting students from China in the hallways, the libraries and the International Student Office. They were primarily science majors in biology, chemistry or engineering. Nonetheless, the new connections opened a support network I could tap into for the help I needed to make the adjustments to my new life in America. They shared with me where to get groceries at the best price and how to buy the MCI calling card to cut international calls by more than half. Some of them had cars and took me to the Walmart store that was just opened. I also could join them on Fridays for Bible study, hosted by Dr. Troutman. This was really a nice surprise as I recalled joining Pat and Wallace for Bible studies in their apartment when I was in graduate school in China. But, we were always in fear of running roughshod over school officials who issued stern warnings to us. Now, I could freely read the Scriptures and appreciate the simple and beautiful language of the New Testaments.
Dr. Troutman was the retired Chair of the History Department at Western. He and his wife Marlene were the first people to think of when Chinese students needed help. He started Bible studies years ago when the first few Chinese students arrived on campus. It was the most soothing two hours every Friday for spiritual growth and friendship. We also exchanged practical tips on learning and life in this small city in the South.
Donna, the international student counselor told me that I could apply F2 visa, the type of visa for the spouse of international students so that Nora could join me. It was fairly quick and easy without additional financial sponsorship. I also planned on moving out of the dorm to an apartment off campus. I had something to look forward to and a plan to work on.
As the jet lag dissipated, I got better sleep. But, the annoying bunch of grey hair still hung over my forehead. During a trip to Nashville for grocery shopping, we stopped by the only East Asian grocery store in the area. I saw black sesame oil on its shelf. I quickly grabbed one bottle as if I was snatching it from somebody. In Chinese therapeutics, black sesame is known for shining black hair. I started drinking it as soon as I got back to my dorm. It soothed my nerves immediately and I dozed off. From then on, I drank it every night before bed. Very shortly, I completely recovered from months-long insomnia. I also noticed that the bunch of grey hair was getting smaller until it completely disappeared.
Bowling Green, Kentucky is a small town with southern hospitality. The residents are very friendly on the street, in the stores, and later in church. When they saw me, they always greeted me with gentle smiles and confirmed with me that I was a Western student. If they had been to, or knew something about China, they would tell me. I like the people I met. They genuinely care about people and try to help if needed. I gradually had the feeling of home thousands of miles away from home.
After I decided to stay the course, I pushed myself out of the comfort zone to dive deep into American culture and campus life. While I am very proud of my Chinese heritage, I wanted to have a full American experience. I wanted to blend into American culture while keeping my Chinese identity.
When I first started learning English by the radio, the teachers both had British accents. When I listened to Voice of America, I acquired some American accents. Now, I am in America. I should go all American. But, when you start learning a language as an adult, you most likely will still have some accents. Some of my friends joke that I have an Alabama accent even though I have never lived in that state. Other friends say it is cool to sound a little exotic. For better or worse, this is how much I could do.
I also immersed myself in an all-English environment. When I took the driver license tests, I chose to take it in English even though the test was offered in Chinese. I always spoke English with my Chinese friends, especially when American friends were in the mix. I never missed ABC Evening News with Peter Jennings to keep updated with what was happening here in the US and around the world. I also watched programs that analysed political, economic and social events to help me connect the dots and shape my views. For entertainment, I watched the soap operas, such as “Step by Step” and “All My children”. They not only help me better understand American society, but enable me to learn the slang and the subtleties of the English language.
After reshuffling my classes to a manageable level with Dr. Aldridge, I breathed a big sigh of relief. The two non-accounting courses: Economics and Statistics were relatively easier and much less time-consuming. I just needed to preview the textbooks, show up for classes, participate in class discussions and two group projects and write a few term papers.
The Accounting Information system class with Dr. White gave me the most bang for my tuition bucks, and took up most of my time, too.
First, his class was hands-on learning. He divided the class of 12 of us into two groups and assigned each group a case study. Each group was charged with running the accounting department of a fictitious company. Each group worked on its own schedule, designed its own work flow, did its own researches on the accounting and reporting issues in its case. At the end of the semester, we presented the financial statements to him for grade.
I benefited the most from this project. It gave me a complete view and a real-world experience of how to function as an accounting manager. I learned a lot from my team members since they were much more familiar with the accounting principles and practices that were applied in this case. My independent study in financial accounting was timely and helpful, too.
It was Dr, White’s singular focus on business ethics in classroom teaching and discussions that caught me by surprise. He started with the class by saying:"Everybody can crunch numbers, but we accountants sell ethics." Then, he handed each of us the book on business ethics for accountants.
The story that begins the first chapter was memorable, if not riveting. It reads: "Once upon a time, a very rich man knew he would soon die. So, he called his priest, his lawyer and his accountant to his death bed. He said to them: I am a rich man. I can't die poor. Here is $1000 to each of you. I want you to put the money into my casket before burial. Soon, the man died and was buried afterwards. One week later, his spirit came back and called the three individuals into his old office. He first asked the priest if he had put the $1000 in his casket. The priest honestly replied: "No. Our church has too many poor people to feed. So, I spent the $1000 to buy more food." He then asked the lawyer if he had put the money in his casket. The lawyer said: :"No, I did not. I have worked for you for over twenty years. I feel you never paid me the fair amount I deserved. So, I kept the money to make up for the shortage." The man then turned to the accountant and asked him if he put the $1000 in the casket. The accountant said "Yes, absolutely, I put a $1000 check into the casket." While he might sound funny and wily, he definitely isn’t the kind of accountant we should look up to.
To put us in real-world situations where ethical decisions had to be made, he gathered a long list of “ethical dilemma”, cases in each of which there are multiple courses of actions with different ethical implications and consequences for the people involved. We debated what ethical decision we would made, and what consequences we would face. Often time, we found out that the prices for ethical decisions could be as high as losses of clients for your firms or even loss of job for yourself. He also played tape recordings of former auditors or business executives who had been convicted of white collar crimes. They all expressed regrets and confessed they would have made different decisions if they could had gone back in time.
The intensive ethics education drew my lifelong attention to the business ethics and their fallouts. I followed all the major accounting scandals, from Arthur Andersen with Enron, WorldCom, to some Chinese companies that listed on US stock exchanges. During my entire career, I always sound the alarm to my staff and co-workers about possible violations of ethical standards that will surely ruin careers and possibly put people in prison.
In the spring of 2013, a $54 million embezzlement of public funds in the small town of Dixon, Illinois caught my attention. Rita Crundwell, the City Controller, brazenly stole the money over a 22-year period and lived like a queen, while leaving a trail of destruction to the town with layoffs of public safety employees and unrepaired streets. She was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. What made my blood boil was her early release from prison to home confinement after serving only 8 years by the Biden Justice Department and the final pardon by Biden himself right before he left office. To pardon for such a heinous crime is a slap on my face.
Dr. White also brought academic rigor to his class. The most challenging part of his class for me was the writing assignments and the professional presentation. The graduate program was designed to train future CPA firm partners and corporate financial executives. We were required to be very polished in everything we did. The writing assignments were graded in such a way that a slight oversight to punctuation would cost me points. The professional presentation was even more demanding both financially and intellectually. First, we must dress up to perfection. After I spent over $150, not a shabby amount to me, to buy the suit, the tie and the shoes, I was told that the color of my socks had to match too. The presentation should be impeccable not only in content, but also in delivery. It was followed by Q & A, and graded by the audience and Dr. White himself. I did not remember that I ever did such a presentation even in Chinese. In hindsight, he pushed me so hard that my times in other accounting classes was made easier.
I actually appreciate that Dr. White and my other professors who followed, held me to the same academic standards they set for the whole class even though my circumstance was totally different from my classmates’. It they had given me any special treatment, that would have been tantamount to thinking that I was weak and inferior. I did not make excuses for myself either. I admit that life would have be easier if the professors cut me some slacks. But, that was not what I signed up. From the moment I stepped on the flight from Hong Kong, the road was not meant to be easy.
My classmates had helped me tremendously, too. Michelle took me to our libraries to show me how to search for books and materials. When I wrote my term papers, I needed a few journal articles that were not available on our campus. Jason offered to check the library in Vanderbilt University in Nashville. When he got back, he handed me the photo copy of these articles. When I insisted to pay him for copying them, he wouldn’t tell me how much and said “never mind”. This was in the middle 1990s, electronic services did not come cheap.
Dr. White’s class was also an open book for me to learn about the tidal changes in American society of the late 1980s and early 1990s. He painted a pretty dark picture about America due to the rising racial tensions, unchecked illegal immigrations at the southern border, disintegration of traditional families, and moral decays of public servants, etc. That was not what attracted me to the United States. Nonetheless, what he talked about gave me a reality check.
Dr. White brought up the McDonald’s Coffee Case, a highly publicized product liability lawsuit in 1994. Two years earlier, a 79-year-old woman in Albuquerque, New Mexico, purchased a 49 cent cup of hot coffee from a McDonald's restaurant, accidentally spilled it in her lap, and suffered third-degree burns. She was hospitalized for eight days while undergoing skin grafting, followed by two years of medical treatment. She sought to settle with McDonald's for $20,000 to cover her medical expenses. McDonald offered only $800. After her lawyer mounted an aggressive lawsuit, the jury finally awarded her a $160,000 compensatory damage and a whopping $2.7 million in punitive damage.
The verdict became a flashpoint in the national debate as one side called it the “poster child of frivolous lawsuit”, while the other heralded it as a brand new layer of protection for consumer rights. It served as a stark reminder for accounting professionals of the current environment in which businesses operate. In the following decade, when risk management became a hot issue in corporate America, accounting profession had developed the awareness and some responses to it. It was probably because of the people like Dr. White who stayed ahead of the curve. I personally benefited from the exposures to such legal cases because of the constant awareness of and sensitivity to business risks.
In another high-profile case, the People of the State of California v.s. O. J. Simpson, Dr. White riled against the trial that allowed cameras into the courtroom. The case dominate d cable news for months not to inform the public, but to create tensions between white America and black America. As an outsider, I just watched the twists and turns of the case as a way to learn about the judicial system in the United States. It gave me some ideas about what a jury trial looks like, and how the constitutional rights of individuals, even the accused, are protected. Every defendant is assumed innocent until proven guilty. This reminded me of many tragedies during the cultural revolution in China when millions of people were thrown to prison without concrete charges and due process, but only based on their own forced confessions.
I learned a lot from Dr. White’s class and enjoyed it very much until his repeated talks about illegal immigration made me uncomfortable in his class. He said he had lived in three states that start with the letter A: Alabama, Arkansas and Arizona. Probably it was his experience in Arizona that he felt so strongly about what was happening at the southern border. He denounced the lack of border controls by Clinton Administration that let tens of thousands illegal immigrants pouring into the country. He never revealed his view on legal immigration and often called himself a "narrow-minded" republican. Gradually, I felt like that he was pointing fingers at me since I was the only international student in his class. Even though I came to this country legally, I wished that he would stop talking about it. For the next 12 years, he was the face of the Republican Party to me on a whole host of issues.
As I got a little acclimated, I began to meet more professors. Dr Hays was the professor I very much wanted to meet. Barbara always said in our office that he was a genius. He got a PhD in physics before he switched to accounting. He was an income tax professor. I was supposed to take his class. Since I took the Independent Study class that was created only for me, I could drop one of the classes my classmates took. Dr. Aldridge recommended that I dropped US Income Tax class because If I returned to China after graduation, US income taxes would be the most irrelevant to me. When I finally met Dr. Hays, I explained to him that I would not take his class. To ensure that my decision was not personal, I told him that " I like taxes!" He replied, jokingly: " You like taxes?" I quickly added "I like tax accounting, not paying taxes!"
Occupationally, accountants are mostly fiscal conservatives, believing in spending discipline and lowering taxes. Some people with different ideological bent think that are not patriotic. What is at play is the philosophical difference. We believe individuals care more about the causes they believe in, and can better manage and deploy financial resources than government bureaucrats do. Four years after I left a Western Kentucky University, an alumnus made a $10 million donation to its business school. The donation provides a solid foundation for its continued excellence in business education. Had the $10 million been paid in taxes during his life, he would not have been able to accumulate so much personal wealth to make such a generous donation.
When Dr. Smith asked me if I had voted in early November, 1994, I suddenly realized there was an election. I said to him that I wished. I had never cast a ballot in my life by then. We fought so hard in the student democratic movement half dozen years ago for the right to vote in an fair and free election in China. He should know that I was not eligible to vote in US election. Nonetheless he asked, and probably expected me to ask some follow-up questions so he could release his frustrations that drove him to the polls. Having been drowned in assignments, papers and projects, my daily goal was to survive them, except replenishing groceries in the little fridge in my dorm room. US election was as remote as some random event on anther planet to me.
Nobody ever talked to me about what turned out to be a historic election after Dr. Smith. But his question did draw my attention to the election analyses by pundits and political strategists on TV when I watched them in the following weeks. I said to myself that even though I could not vote, it did not hurt to know how US party politics plays out, how democratic elections were held, what issues drive voters to the polls, etc. From then on, US elections that are always filled with gossips, conspiracies, scandals, betrayals and even back-stabbings, are as entertaining and intriguing as another soap opera to me. I watch them for amusements and for opportunities to learn something new about America until I have the solemn responsibility to cast my votes.
Student business clubs on college campuses are vital part of business education. It was an experience I could not miss. When, Barbara, my classmate and the Vice President of the local chapter told me about the membership of Beta Alpha Psi, I immediately signed up. It is an international honor society for accounting and finance students. Beta Alpha Psi organized a ton of activities: panel discussions with experts in the profession, networking with past members on career opportunities, workshops on resume writing and interview preparations, etc. What surprised me was the level of details a business etiquette discussion went into: how to handle napkins, how to hold utensils and other table manners.
Without a car, I was confined to campus for the entire semester. But, I did manage to have some fun. I had never been to a homecoming before. The series of dizzy events in the fall uplifted my spirits. I also stepped into Diddle Area to watch the Hilltoppers playing home games. Football was not the kind of sports I grew up with. When I followed the crowd to find my seat in LT Smith Stadium, I knew nothing about its rules. It was the cheerleaders that attracted my attention. Their endless energy, dazzling spirit, and their flashing stunts were the reasons I watched football games for a long time.
The holiday season near the end of year was the first time that I could finally slow down and get relaxed. I joined my friends to see the holiday decorations at the town square in Bowling Green. It was less than 2 miles away from campus. It was my first time to tour the rectangle garden with a fountain in the middle, surrounded by boutique stores, insurance or lawyers' offices and a Chinese restaurant.
The dorm was closed for the 1994 Thanksgiving break. I had to find a place to stay for the holiday weekend. I stayed with a couple of visiting scholars from China on campus.
I took advantage of the break to start looking for an apartment. With a tight budget, I did not have many good choices before I bought a car. But for now, I had to live near campus so I could walk to classes and libraries.
It seems that in every town where there is a railroad running through, people want to avoid the other side of it. The other side of a railroad near campus was my only option. Richard, the landlord, was pretty well known among Chinese students on campus. He owned five two-story apartment buildings. They were within walking distance from campus. Due to the location of the apartments, he always had a few units vacant. I picked the cheapest available: an efficiency unit on the second floor.
The winter break was not worry-free for me. Dr. Magner who would teach us Governmental and nonprofit accounting, gave me an undergraduate textbook to study. It was a very thoughtful thing for him to do. He must have learned from Dr. Aldridge that I had not taken many undergraduate accounting classes.
The first semester ended on a fruitful note for me. I survived the brutal onslaughters of cultural shocks, financial hardship, and seemingly insurmountable academic challenges. I finally came to be proud of the profession I had chosen. It strongly advocates for serving public interests, puts ethics at the heart of the profession.
发表于 2025-2-13 10:11:22