Michino Hiyabashi.
How many of us don’t know this name? Probably only a few. At Clark, Michino was the president of the International Students’ Association (ISA), the chair of the 2014 international student orientation, your saviour at the Geography office when you can’t finish that GIS lab due tomorrow, the coordinator of our Things That Matter blog, the SLP intern...the list goes on, but one thing we cannot fail to mention is that she is ultimately an incredibly kind and welcoming friend. Over the past weekend, I got the chance to catch up with Michino, who left Clark last summer after completing the fifth year program and achieving a master’s degree in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). She’s now working in Tokyo, Japan as an engineer at Kokusai Kogyo. How did she get where she is now, and how is life really like after graduation? Here’s our interview:
Charis: So tell us, how’s the post-grad life?! Michino: (laughs) Let’s see...it’s very different. There are a lot of big changes in my life. One is that I am, for the first time, living on my own. Two is that I started working, so I’ve changed from a student to an employee. With living on my own, it’s so different because at Clark, you walk around campus and - it was more during my senior year - you can walk around campus and have a good conversation with somebody that you just bump on campus. And, even at home, I used to live in the dorms or with people off-campus, so I feel like I was never on my own as much. C: Does it get lonely? M: In the beginning...I have to make a more conscious effort to meet people and to get to know people. Even at work, you meet people but it’s work so it’s not like you’re supposed to be chatting.
Cultural changes...I haven’t lived in Japan for 11 years. I have been back almost every summer and some winters, so I don’t know...everything is familiar. In the beginning, the food was amazing and I can go anywhere on the public transportation... But with honeymoon phase being over, I’m starting to get tired of trains being crowded all the time and, I don’t know, sometimes I think at Clark, in the US or maybe especially at Clark, everyone speaks their mind, but here everyone’s more reserved. Think twice before saying something.
Another cultural difference is also that in Japan, when you enter company is very important, how many years you have been working... so it’s a huge culture in respecting the elders and all that. This person, I thought he was scolding me, complimented me that I’m good at talking to people even when they’re much older in a friendly way.
As for becoming an employee...it’s good! I like having the weekend to myself. I don’t have to think about tomorrow being Sunday. (laughs)
C: So as a senior, I often just feel... sick of school. Did you get that feeling and was it a relief to start working? M: I do enjoy doing things that have a real-life end goal. Things that I am doing are being used for specific purposes, instead of writing a paper and getting a grade on it or doing a class presentation. But I know that in the near future, I’ll start to miss reading or being able to choose what you’re doing to study or write a paper on... And, as other Clark alums have told me, you’ll start to miss the intellectual stimulation. Because, at work sometimes, you do the same thing for a week. (laughs)
C: What’s your day work like?
M: It depends, but these days, I get to work at 8:45 and start working at 9. This past month or so, I’ve been working on this one project on river levies in Hokkaido rivers. It’s a lot of manageable tasks, going from point cloud data. A lot of data management.
C: So tell us more about your time as a senior. How did you decide to do a master’s in GIS?
M: I only took Intro to GIS at the end of spring semester sophomore year, and I became a Geography major. Even after that, I did a qualitative undergraduate thesis and so I felt like I needed an extra year to feel comfortable saying I studied GIS and remote sensing.
C: And how did you decide to go to Japan for work?
M: I didn’t know for the longest time, but I’ve talked to a lot of different people...Professional and personal reasons. Professionally, people have told me that if you’re interested in GIS and disaster management, Japan is probably a really great place to learn. I also already had a Japanese passport. And, I guess I also thought that learning the professional and technical Japanese language is probably important if I wanted to be a person who can work internationally and in my own passport country. Personally, I have a brother who I haven’t lived in the same country since sixth grade so I thought it would be nice to hangout with him. C: That’s amazing. I’m struggling with that decision myself, deciding between staying in the US and going back home where I miss my family... so we’ve learned a lot about what you’re doing now and how you got to where you are. Now for the unavoidable questions: What do you miss about Clark, and what advice would you give us Clarkies?
M: (laughs) Aw! I miss the people, and I think in general, everyone being able to chat with people and being ready to challenge or be challenged. At Clark, we all live there so that’s life/living environment and our academic environment. At work, you have to be more careful about switching between being professional and friendly. That switch was less drastic at Clark.
In terms of advice... I was told this too by older people: really take advantage of the fact that you can meet and actually be friends with so many people who are your own age and who live closer to you. (laughs) You know, it’s so easy to make friends! But sometimes you get stuck with the same group, and forget that you can have a totally new, whole conversation with somebody who blows your mind. So you should take advantage of that!
---------- Hope you learned a thing or two from this interview. Heed her advice, and be sure to take advantage of the community you get to be in, the friendships you can still make, and the conversations you can still have :)
(Michino Hiyabashi, '15)
