Let's get to know Willow...

 

Hometown: Dongguan, China

Major/Minor: Sociology (Honors) Major; Quantitative Methods for the Social Sciences Minor

 

What inspired you to major in Sociology?

Growing up, I noticed that some individuals experience emotional mistreatment and cognitive inhibition in family, school, and close relationships more often than others. I couldn’t elucidate the matter, but I knew something was questionable with how and why we identify certain things as problems and the rest as normalcy. Moreover, the similitude of life trajectories and dilemmas that people “run into” clearly demonstrate a paradox with the taken-for-granted narrative which tends to ascribe life outcomes to absolute personal choices. To me, it appeared evident that the so-called personal is undeniably social, but people rarely talk about the latter! A sense of indignation haunted me…so I resorted to online communities for more available explanations. There, I found many people who viewed the world through lenses similar to mine. Oftentimes, they included “sociologist” in their bio.

I entered college with a major that possesses very different approaches to social issues compared to sociology. I thought about switching but wasn’t determined. Nearly concurrent to the time when I submitted my transfer application to Michigan, Dr. Yun Zhou, whose writings had greatly inspired me, also came to work here. A right nudge at a right time made all the difference. I went on to find out about the renowned faculty team and exhaustive interdisciplinary courses that the Department of Sociology at Michigan encompassed — a whole new world was beckoning, and it was agony to not go for it! I soon decided to double major in sociology. After taking sociology courses for one semester, I knew that it’s really my thing, so I made it my only major.

 

What classes have you most enjoyed?

SOC251: Intro to Computational Social Sciences

SOC430: World Population Dynamics

SOC495: Gender and Family in East Asia

 

Have you participated in undergraduate research, fieldwork, or an internship experience?

I interned as a business reporter in 2020 and a public relations executive in 2021. Exposure to different sectors of society and connecting with people from diverse backgrounds didn’t impair me academically but rather substantially enriched my sociological imagination.

Throughout the past two years, I participated in the LSA Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) and the Sociology Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (SURO) and conducted several studies under the guidance of PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows. With Anna Wozny, I coded news articles from English sources over the last decades to capture the representation of Japan’s sexuality, marriage, and fertility in Western popular discourse. We paid special attention to the implicit relationship between the transformation of media representation and the perceived rise and decline of Japan as an economic superpower. With Corey Moss-Pech, I analyzed interview data collected from respondents who newly graduated college and entered the workforce to look for underlying motives behind their job transitions. Our findings are meant to bridge the research gap in how early college and workplace experiences might contribute to gender inequality in lifelong career outcomes.

Currently, I am working on my honors thesis on how Chinese international students in the U.S. navigate the incompatibility between immigration decisions and filial responsibilities for aging parents. Specifically, I will compare patterns based on respondents’ gender and sibling status (number, gender, and birth order). I hope that my investigation will provide insights into the changing gender and family landscape in contemporary China and add evidence to the ongoing debate about how globalization and migration are enhancing and/or restricting individuals’ life chances.

 

How has Sociology helped you to understand the pandemics the U.S. is currently facing: COVID-19 and/or systemic racism?

Sociology has equipped me with the empathetic awareness and scientific methodology that are critical in understanding social phenomena and human experiences. Because rearrangement of information is a necessary part of mass communication, distortion to a certain degree becomes almost inevitable in the abundant information we receive daily. This makes it impossible to make a precise sense of the world without knowing how data should be collected, how biases should be minimized, and how evidence should be evaluated. Sociology teaches me this.

Quantitative research tracking COVID-19 cases and deaths as well as the movement of fortune during the pandemic by race and economic class manifests the stark fact that wealth reproduces itself and privilege reasserts itself. This more than ever reminds me of the falsehood of the trickle-down ideology. Qualitative research takes a step forward and reveals the more personal and nuanced side of the story: Across those who are in statistically comparable financial and health conditions, certain minority groups bear disproportionate emotional and cognitive costs such as sense of loneliness and fear of job loss. In my opinion, the question to be debated is not whether economic development boosts standards of living for all individuals, but that among all the individuals who benefit, whether everyone gets a fair share. Fairness means taking invisible advantages and structural obstacles into account when calculating “who deserves what” and “who has lost and/or gotten what”. Fairness also requires large-scale interventions by administrative authority but, sadly, this is far from the reality in the U.S.

 

What do you hope to do after graduating from the University of Michigan?

For now, I hope to take a gap year after getting my Bachelor’s degree and join one of the NGOs in the Pearl River Delta, China. I grew up in this region which continues to draw scholarly attention with its markedly rapid urbanization process and huge rural-to-urban migrant population since the launch of China’s reform and opening-up in the 1980s. I plan to work with K-12 teachers and students there and gain hands-on experience in designing sex education and promoting gender-inclusive classroom environment.

After that, I look forward to moving on to a Master’s degree in a product-related field and starting a career in UX or PM. I reserve the possibility that I pursue a PhD in social sciences one day when I feel ready. 

 

Do you have advice for prospective Soc majors in this moment?

“Not all those who wander are lost.”(J.R.R. Tolkien )

Don’t be afraid to take some detours and explore the various branches of sociology including those you feel unacquainted with and distant from. Let it be a journey full of pleasant surprises. Also, because the economy worldwide seems a little gloomy now, while you have fun with college, don’t forget to keep an eye on the job market, either academia, industry, or any other of your interest. Give thought to the person you want to be, the life you want to live, and the impact you want to make, then hone your skills towards it. It is normal that your goal changes over time. Luckily, Michigan is an extraordinarily comprehensive university and offers plenty of resources that accommodate a wide breadth of curiosities. Make use of them, and enjoy!