Menial jobs help students become adults

On a flight from Beijing to Washington in mid-June, my colleague met several Chinese college students. Enrolled in a summer work/travel program, they were excited about the chance to live and work in the United States for a few months.

According to the US State Department, the program provides foreign students with an opportunity "to experience and to be exposed to the people and way of life" in the US. Since the program opened to Chinese college students in 2007, a few hundred of them have worked and traveled in the US.

I met one of these students on a flight from San Francisco to Washington this week. She had just finished a brief internship at a seafood processing plant in Kodiak, Alaska. She did not have a lot to say about her job, except that the work was boring. Worse, she didn't have much chance to practice her English, since many of her co-workers were Filipinos.