SUMMER INTERN CAROLINE Jiao is a
Middlebury College student from Beijing, China.

Summer intern Caroline Jiao is a Middlebury College student from Beijing, China.

This election year, 2024, also marks the end of my four years studying abroad in a U.S. college (well, not technically, since I wouldn’t graduate until February 2025). Four years at Middlebury was four years under the Biden administration as a noncitizen, a student from China.

The color blue sort of tinted my time here, I guess.

To push it back a little, four years ago, the current president was running against a strong opponent (Trump) whose administration had caused many ripple effects, one of which, on an extreme micro level dare I say, was the complete halt of the U.S. embassy issuing student visas during early periods of the pandemic, mine included (ask me why I became a Feb. at Middlebury College).

So, what does a U.S. election mean to me?

If this question was asked of me a decade ago, I’d say it doesn’t mean anything. At that point, a kid such as myself feels quite distant from any political nitty-gritty. Perhaps an average citizen back home is intentionally kept that way: I don’t feel I have a say in those matters. The closest I came to “politics” is that my middle school math teacher is a standing committee member at the City People’s Congress in our district.

I was not sensitive to any news either. I remember watching China Central Television reporting Trump’s triumph, and that was about it. People were talking about how his presidency would change everything, but it didn’t seem concrete. It would be years later when I became more conscious of the trade wars, the raised foreign taxes, the skyrocketing inflation with the influx of U.S. dollars in the global market due to changes in fiscal policies, the violence against Asians in the U.S. amidst COVID, and a peculiar rising fanbase for Trump in the Chinese internet among many other phenomena I had begun to try wrapping my head around.

I was among the lucky ones who was spared from experiencing extraneous shutdowns in either country. By the time I arrived in the U.S. in Sept. 2021, the conditions in Beijing and Middlebury were relatively under control.

The relief I felt through my safety eventually became a plaguing sense of guilt.

I couldn’t have imagined being in Shanghai during the spring of 2022 when another COVID outbreak triggered another forceful lockdown and series of tragedies across the city (apartments were barged in, certain pets were slaughtered for “sanitary reasons,” people who needed emergency healthcare did not have access, etc.). In comparison, my two years of homesickness seemed less than minor.

Thinking back on the Biden admini­stration’s first years, the pandemic seems, ironically, already a distant memory. In the global scene, the U.S. has had more to worry about, given the eruption of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the winter of 2022 as well as the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

I remember hearing people back home say Biden had been a safe option for voters to stay away from Trump, and it was unclear what his presidency could substantially achieve during the short span of four years.

In retrospect, their scopes were so limited given the multiple wars afoot around the world that are now on the nation’s plate. If the political scientist John Mearsheimer’s prediction about a pending US-China war is accurate, I have about a handful of years on my clock to figure out where I’ll physically be.

Wars. Such an unimaginable thing at the beginning of the century, at least for a privileged kid like me. In 2001, coincidentally on the date of my birth, the next Olympics was announced to be held in Beijing; the same year, China joined the WTO. Six years later, I sure did witness athletes and audiences arriving from around the world in Beijing. The vision of a global village seemed so reachable. Possibilities seemed endless. Countries working together toward a brighter future — the kind of promise you’d see in a national leader’s address on TV.

I had to grow older to learn about the 2008 global financial crisis, which came side by side with the Olympics, that overshadowed the following decade. It would be even later that I learned about Mearsheimer’s opinion, or political theories along those lines: the regional hegemons — the “they” and the “us.”

Facing the current election, I could try to think from my country’s perspective as to which candidate would benefit the prospect of our foreign policies and global relations. I could analyze my country’s reaction or anticipation for either a more friendly, or “iron fist” leadership.

I could also try to weigh the options of going back home or staying in the U.S. for further studies.

But I just feel tired. I remain opinionless and powerless. It feels hard to end on a hopeful note, reminiscing about a world promised with possibilities.