{"342771":{"#nid":"342771","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Candice Cheung: The Re-Americanization of a Third Culture Kid","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe pointy things that most of us try to avoid hold a strange attraction for Candice Cheung who isn\u2019t afraid of getting shots or giving blood. In fact, these experiences are almost like a field trip for the third-year student in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME).\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cI\u2019ve always been super fascinated by that stuff,\u201d says Cheung, a third year student in the BME. \u201cReally, I\u2019m oddly fascinated with the interaction of devices with the body. Things like pacemakers blow my mind, the fact that there\u2019s a little machine controlling the electrical impulses in your heart, and that\u2019s keeping you alive. It\u2019s still amazing to me.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECheung hopes to turn her fascination into a career some day. After she\u2019s through at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and wherever she decides to go for grad school, she wants to work in industry, developing medical devices. But she\u2019s targeting a specific patient group.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cI want to get into veterinary medical devices. I think there\u2019s a real need that isn\u2019t being met,\u201d says Cheung, 21, who was born in the U.S. but moved to Hong Kong when she was a month old. Growing up there, she had two dogs and a chinchilla. Now she lives with her older brother (Brian Cheung, who graduated with an electrical engineering degree from Tech in 2012), and they care for a dog, cat, tortoise, and tropical fish. In her spare time, Candice works in animal hospital in Alpharetta.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cI\u2019ve always loved animals, so that definitely plays a part in my interest. And animals offer such a wide range of possibilities,\u201d says Cheung, who doesn\u2019t have the slightest trace of a Cantonese accent because she attended international schools in Hong Kong where most of her teachers were Americans or Australians. Also, her parents, both college professors, spent many years in the U.S. earning their degrees. \u201cSo they\u2019re very fluent in English, too. You know, it\u2019s quite a bit of pressure when both of your parents have doctorates.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECheung also is fluent in Cantonese, the dominant language in Hong Kong. Multi-lingual with U.S. citizenship, she learned quickly what it was like to be a third culture kid in a pulsing international city that made a historic transition from British to Chinese rule in 1997. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cIt was very interesting growing up there. Even though it\u2019s obvious that I\u2019m Chinese, and I lived there all my life, there was a real stigma attached to being an international student,\u201d Cheung says. \u201cOn the train, I\u2019d be speaking fluent English with a friend, and I could hear the people around me speaking in Cantonese, saying things like, \u2018hmmf, she\u2019s another one of those third culture kids.\u2019 Like, they treated me as if I wasn\u2019t in tune with their language or their culture.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESometimes, though, she\u2019d turn the tables on the gossip, saying something to the other riders in perfect Cantonese. \u201cThat would freak them out,\u201d says Cheung, who plans on keeping her American citizenship but worries over current events in Hong Kong, where student-led pro-Democracy demonstrations (the \u0027Umbrella Movement\u0027) have divided the region and her family.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u0022I try hard not to get involved in politics with my family, because my family is huge,\u0022 she says. \u0022My cousins, the younger members of the family, are very enthusiastic about the demonstrations. But my older relatives, uncles and aunts and whatnot, don\u0027t like it.\u0022\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn spite of the long distance between her and her large family, Cheung says the transition from Hong Kong to Atlanta was a relatively painless one. \u201cThe biggest change is I can\u2019t get used to how huge the food portions are here.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EShe\u2019s well used to the pace, though. Cheung says she was always one of those kids who did everything in school: gymnastics, track and field, volleyball, national honor society, student council, volunteered at an animal clinic. At Georgia Tech, in addition to maintaining a busy course load and holding down her job at the animal clinic, she is part of the student leadership team that recently launched the BME Learning Commons.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe process for that started a year ago and culminated with the opening of the Learning Commons in September. Cheung is now the \u2018product owner\u2019 of the podcast studio, which basically means that she\u2019s the team leader for that quadrant of the BME Learning Commons universe, headquartered on the fourth floor of the U.A. Whitaker Bioengineering Building. As she formulates programming for BME podcasts, she\u2019s considering examples (and drawing inspiration) from her personal interests.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cEvery day, when my brother drives me to work we listen to a podcast on Magic: The Gathering, the card game. Yes,\u201d she says, momentarily interrupting her story, \u201cI am proud to be a game nerd. So, we listen to the guy who founded the company that created Magic: The Gathering. And it is so nerdy, but so fantastic, because the guy really knows his audience and it feels like he\u2019s reaching out to me personally. I think that\u2019s the secret to a good podcast \u2013 know your audience and speak directly to them. So that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to try and do for BME.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECandice Cheung\u0027s \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pub\/candice-cheung\/8a\/5ab\/505\/\u0022\u003ELinkedIn Page \u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"BME undergrad making easy transition from Hong Kong to Atlanta"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EBME undergrad making easy transition from Hong Kong to Atlanta\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"BME undergrad making easy transition from Hong Kong to Atlanta"}],"uid":"28153","created_gmt":"2014-11-07 10:59:29","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:17:26","author":"Jerry Grillo","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-11-07T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2014-11-07T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"342761":{"id":"342761","type":"image","title":"Candice Cheung, BME undergrad, at the mic","body":null,"created":"1449245639","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:13:59","changed":"1475895062","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:02","alt":"Candice Cheung, BME undergrad, at the mic","file":{"fid":"200819","name":"candice_c.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/candice_c_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/candice_c_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1431615,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/candice_c_0.jpg?itok=a2_hPaCj"}}},"media_ids":["342761"],"related_links":[{"url":"https:\/\/bme.gatech.edu\/bme\/learning-commons-now-open","title":"BME Learning Commons"}],"groups":[{"id":"1254","name":"Wallace H. Coulter Dept. of Biomedical Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"8862","name":"Student Research"}],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}