My name is Dereck Chapman (夏德瑞) and I am graduating with a double major in Chinese and Government with the class of 2013. I started studying Chinese at William and Mary in the fall of 2010. At the time, I was desperately trying to decide whether to study Arabic or Chinese. However, given my personal interests, Chinese seemed like the best fit. Since then, I haven’t looked back. My Chinese major has afforded me several opportunities that made my William and Mary experience as great as it has been. I’ve lived and studied abroad in Beijing for close to a year, interned at William and Mary’s Confucius Institute, and even got to organize the Chinese department’s second Chinese Language Competition. Most valuable, however, has been the relationships I have formed with the Chinese department faculty. One of William and Mary’s most appealing features is the small student to teacher ratio and the opportunity to form strong relationships with professors. For me, this has been on of the most memorable aspects of our Chinese department and essentially what makes it as great as it is. After graduation, I will be heading back to Beijing to attend the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (IUP) at Tsinghua University. While it is surreal to be leaving William and Mary, I am very excited to increase my Chinese language capabilities and continue living in China.
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