5.
Fish Out of Water:
idiom. a person who is in an unnatural environment; completely out of place.
When I was ten, my dad told me we were moving to somewhere called "Eely-noise." The screen flashed blue as he scrolled through 6000 miles of water on Google Earth to find our new home. Swipe, swipe, swipe, and there it was: Illinois, as I later learned.
Moving to America was like going from freshwater into saltwater. Not only did my mom complain that American food was too salty, but I was helplessly caught in an estuary of languages, swept by daunting tides of tenses, articles, and homonyms. It’s not a surprise that I developed an intense, breathless kind of thirst for what I now realize is my voice and self-expression.
This made sense because the only background I had in English was “Konglish”--an unhealthy hybrid of Korean and English--and broken phrases I picked up from SpongeBob. As soon as I stepped into my first class in America, I realized the gravity of the situation: I had to resort to clumsy pantomimes, or what I euphemistically called body language, to convey the simplest messages. School became an unending game of pictionary.
Amid the dizzying pool of vowels and phonemes and idioms (why does spilling beans end friendships?), the only thing that made sense was pictures and diagrams. Necessarily, I soon became interested in biology as its textbook had the highest picture-to-text ratio. Although I didn’t understand all the ant-like captions, the colorful diagrams were enough to catch my illiterate attention: a green ball of chyme rolling down the digestive tract, the rotor of the ATP synthase spinning like a waterwheel. Biology drew me with its ELL-friendliness and never let go.
I later learned in biology that when a freshwater fish goes in saltwater, it osmoregulates--it drinks a lot of water and urinates less. This used to hold true for my school day, when I constantly chugged water to fill awkward silences and lubricate my tongue to form better vowels. This habit in turn became a test of English-speaking and bladder control: I constantly missed the timing to go to the bathroom by worrying about how to ask. The only times I could express myself were through my fingers, between the pages of Debussy and under my pencil tip. To fulfill my need for self-expression and communication, I took up classical music, visual art, and later, creative writing. To this day, I will never forget the ineffable excitement when I delivered a concerto, finished a sculpture, and found beautiful words that I could not pronounce. If biology helped me understand, art helped me be understood.
There’s something human, empathetic, even redemptive about both art and biology. While they helped me reconcile with English and my new home, their power to connect and heal people is much bigger than my example alone. In college and beyond, I want to pay them forward, whether by dedicating myself to scientific research, performing in benefit concerts, or simply sharing the beauty of the arts. Sometimes, language feels slippery like fish on my tongue. But knowing that there are things that transcend language grounds and inspires me. English seeped into my tongue eventually, but I still pursue biology and arts with the same, perhaps universal, exigency and sincerity: to understand and to be understood.
Over the years, I have come to acknowledge and adore my inner fish, that confused, tongue-twisted and home-sick ELL kid from the other side of the world, which will forever coexist within me. And I’ve forgiven English, although I still can’t pronounce words like “rural,” because it gifted me with new passions to look forward to every day. Now, when I see kids with the same breathless look that I used to have gasping for home water, Don’t worry, I want to tell them.
You’ll find your water.
点评：
Michelle的文章为读者呈现了一段生动有趣、引人入胜的旅程，讲述了他们作为移民适应伊利诺伊州新生活的经历。
虽然有些移民经历文书可能显得平淡无奇，但Michelle巧妙地利用“鱼离开水”的习语，构建了一个延伸的隐喻，将他们对生物学和艺术的热爱与他们掌握英语的不断发展联系起来。
这篇文书的独特之处在于坦率而幽默地描述了Michelle每天与语言斗争的经历，从最初用“笨拙的哑剧”来表示想上厕所，到找到美丽的新词来表达自己时“难以言喻的兴奋”，展示了Michelle最终成长为一位完全掌握英语的能言善辩的作家。
这篇文书充分展示了Michelle对音乐、艺术、生物学等各种兴趣的热爱，但最令人印象深刻的是Michelle对适应美国生活和文化的细致入微和内省的记录。
显然，Michelle真的很喜欢写作，喜欢用合适的词语来表达自己的想法，展现出他们的坚韧和对学习的热爱。
Michelle对成长为作家和艺术家的真诚热情贯穿了整篇文书，温暖而幽默，极具感染力!
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