The 5TH Annual Third Culture Kid (TCK)/ Global Nomads Conference was held at Clark University this past weekend (25th of February 2017). For those who aren’t aware what a TCK is, these are kids that have spent the majority of their lives outside both their parents' home country. While the definition can be complex, this is the most commonly accepted one. The conference was started in 2013 by Maisha McCormick, a Clark Alumnae who was herself a TCK, and has since been carried on and grown year on year.
This year, over 90 TCKs arrived on campus to tackle this year’s theme, “Navigating the World with Evolving Identities”. I had the privilege of co presenting with Conference Co-Chair Kaiomi Inniss in the first session. The presentation The Beauty in the Madness: The Advantages of a Complex Identity explored what benefits being a TCK brought to us both personally and professionally. However, the question of where TCKs stand in this recent wave of racial tension started the most discussion. Two other talks occurred during the first session, the first by Melina Toscani who presented part of her capstone research in Constructing Transnational Identities: International Mobility and the Imagined Community of Nation-States. The second was headed by Santiago Deambrosi and was titled How to Start a TCK Group at Your Institution.
In the second session, I attended Storytelling as a Tool for Creating Home and Identity by Sylvie Scholvin. The session detailed the story of a Sicilian man who travelled the world without a job but managed through his stories to make friends and connections worldwide. Other presentations included: Does Bilingualism Make Me a Different Person? By Simon Escapa of WPI and Visualizing Your Social Self: Culturegrams by Conference Co-Chair Farah Weannara and Francisco Borges-Rivera.
Over lunch, the Keynote speaker Anh Vu Sawyer of the Southeast Asian Coalition gave a powerful talk on how the journey and life of a TCK equips one with certain tools that would be difficult for others to obtain, skills that we must use to our advantage. She spoke of her experience as a refugee and how that has kept her motivated to continue to help others and equip others with the skills to survive and be successful especially refugees, immigrants and TCKs .
The session Finding the Line between Discrimination, Humor and Lifestyle by Jonathan Tai (JT) of WPI was again discussion filled as we explored how stereotypes and humor play into the life of a TCK. JT who is himself in a comedy group at WPI used himself as an example of where the line between humor and discrimination lie. Professor Teja Arboleda who is a Clark Alumna and now professor but who is himself a TCK and a comedian who had to battle with this same problem also contributed to how to handle insulting stereotypes and taking a joke. The session also included a talk by Leyla Gentil on Repatriation While in a Long-Term Relationship.
The day ended with the much anticipated Alumnae and Faculty Panel. The Alumnae panelists were Teja Arboleda ’85, Simon Escapa Otani ’16 (WPI) Maisha McCormick ’13 as well as Sakshi Khurana ’16 (WPI) and Michino Hisabayashi ’15 who joined us via Skype from Baltimore and Japan respectively. The questions asked of the panel varied form questions about romance as a TCK to transitions into the work force and life after college as a TCK.
Overall, the event was a tremendous learning opportunity that afforded me the space and time to connect with fellow TCKs. For many of the participants, this conference is a time where we don’t have to answer “Where do you come from” nor do we have to explain our backgrounds but simply connect with like-minded students and future leaders. A take away from the conference were the words by Teja Arboleda that TCK’s will always have to explain why we have authority over so many cultures or identities and that it was okay because at the end of the day we know who we are and where we have come from.
To read more detailed information about the various sessions help please use the following link:
