ISALC, Lewis and Clark College

Piia Rautio: An Introduction

Wanting to live closer to my dear boyfriend Brandon who goes to Lewis and Clark, I came to study here from Finland. Fortunately, that was not the only reason, but I was also attracted by the experience of living in a different culture than my own and improving my English. I find Lewis & Clark a very good college, and the small class sizes wonderful, something that I wouldn't find in big universities in Finland. I do not regret the decision to come. I genuinely enjoy the classes I am taking and so far I feel I have gotten everything I expected from L&C and more, except for the presence of the stupid boyfriend who left to Kenya.

I ended up applying to L& C accidentally when I was visiting Brandon here last spring. My family ,who naturally are paying for this year, decided this opportunity with the scholarship I got was too good a one to leave unused. Four years would be too much money to pay considering that the education in Finland is free and good. I am really grateful for this opportunity and love to be at L& C. Part of my heart in Kenya and part of it with my loved ones in Finland, I try to get adjusted to American culture and college life. Besides four loud and noisy basketball players next door, I am very content. I believe the year will be challenging in terms of education, and also very rewarding. I already wish I could stay more than one year.

Piia Rautio: The Writer

I don't consider myself too good a writer. I wish my writing would be fluent and communicative always, but I have to admit that in many cases it is not like that. On many tasks, I find myself in serious trouble trying to gather my ideas together to make them communicate and cooperate in the same context. That is why I see my writing as a pack of wild wolves. The key to survival is cooperation and communication. The connectedness between the individuals in a pack is evident, and all the individual wolves together form a working unit in their own environment.

The environment is the main reason to describe my writing with the wolves, the fact that the wild wolves are never willing to leave the wilderness. If they had to leave the their own land and try to adjust to the human-made artificial context of a city, they would be too restless and too confused to stay loyal to the pack. That is what happens to my writing when I need to work on a task that doesn't please me. The ideas stop working together and the sense of whole disappears. As furious, scared wolves randomly running around, my thoughts become impossible to draw back together to be one fluent and understandable unit. Without my heart in the task I am working on, the environment for my writing is never natural to me.

I suppose I should train myself to be more flexible and tolerant of the tasks I don't find fascinating and lovely. Thinking of wolves, they must also adapt themselves to a variety of changes in their environment and to cooperation with the pack. I miss my own little wolf at home. I don't think I can stay another year apart from her without causing bad effects to my cooperation with her. This writing class will definitely be good for me, learning to orientate myself in discipline with all kinds of writing assignments and learning how to express myself in English fluently.

Please EMail me!

Click here to see the writing assignment.

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Created by: krauss@lclark.edu
Updated: 9/16/99