Creative Communication III · Homework 4
A true story about a hard problem from outside — and how it changed me inside.
A true, personal story
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The rule
“An external challenge changes the inner life of the hero.”
In simple words: something hard happens from outside, and it changes who the person is inside.
The hero
My name is Fan Jiaping. I am from Wuhan, China. I am a second-year student in Budapest. I study Communication and Media Studies. All of my classes are in English.
In class, I fit in.
The classes, the books, the homework, the group talks — all in English, and they went fine. I could follow the teacher. I could speak. I could pass. On paper, I was doing well.
Please keep this picture of me in mind. It is the last time I felt truly comfortable here.
The outside problem
Outside campus, everything was in Hungarian. My landlord only spoke Hungarian. The doctor, the shop, the tram announcements — all Hungarian. I could pass my classes, but I could not live in this city.
I could not really speak anywhere in the place where I lived.
In class, everyone spoke English as their first language. My Chinese accent never went away. I was always the outsider. People kept asking me where I was from, how China was, and why I came.
In English I could get by, but I never fully disappeared.
In class I was “fine” in English. Outside I was silent in Hungarian. And everywhere I was marked as a foreigner. I did not belong anywhere at all.
Why it mattered
This was not a problem I could fix by working harder.
I could improve my grades. I could meet my deadlines. But this was a different question: was I allowed to be here, just as I am? No amount of hard work could answer that.
It was not about how well I performed. It was about who I was.
I felt that I had not paid for the right to belong. I thought I had to earn it by hiding the very thing that made me different.
In short: this problem was about my right to be myself, not about how well I worked.
The turning point
The change was quiet. Nothing dramatic happened. I just realised something.
I realised I was using all my energy to become a different person. In English, so no one would notice I was different. In Hungarian, so I could get by. I was trying to earn a place that I should never have had to earn.
The wall I kept hitting was not the language. It was the idea that I had to hide myself to be allowed to stay.
The inner change
What changed was not my English or my Hungarian. It was the idea of who I thought I had to be to deserve a place.
The rule, applied
Living between two languages. I was shut out of the Hungarian world around me, and my accent always marked me as an outsider in the English-speaking world.
From “I must hide myself to belong” to “I belong as I am.” This changed how I think about belonging and how I value myself.
Nothing in my outside life changed. I did not learn a new language. I did not get any new title. What changed was who I thought I had to be.
A hard problem from outside changed who I became inside. That is my story.