Sheer Coincidence or Serendipity?

Written by Niklas Gamble (University of Minnesota), Student Correspondent for CET Taiwan, Summer 2024

Throughout the years, the world has become so much more interconnected than it used to be. I am prone to comparing this experience to the last longer-term international stay I had many years ago in Japan. Technology wasn’t exactly at the level that it is now. While the internet was certainly there, the ways in which different societies utilized it differed greatly.

Here in Taiwan, other students on the CET program have gone to meet friends they met through pen pal programs and later connected with through social media. Some have friends from online games, streaming platforms, or online communities, who they’re now able to go and meet face-to-face. This is a convenience I hope nobody takes for granted—as my time in Japan years ago was far less interconnected.

But, I don’t want to just talk about technology and convenience here. I want to talk about coincidence. Not totally random coincidence, but happenstance which is still so improbable that it feels like serendipity. We move about in different spheres of interest, and at some point, there’s a chance we’ll meet someone who exists within many of those spheres simultaneously.

I went back to college at a later age, finally feeling empowered enough to study what I wanted straight out of the gates from high school. A very happy coincidence surfaced my very first semester. I was taking a class on Chinese Literature with an instructor who would eventually be the one to recommend that I study abroad in Taiwan.

At that time, my girlfriend (now my fiancé) mentioned that someone who works with her in a fairly small non-profit organization is married to a professor at my school. The first name of this coworker’s husband was the same fairly common first name as my Chinese Literature professor. The couple don’t share a last name, and my fiancé never got around to asking what his last name was, but it made me wonder whether there was some sort of interesting intersection there. Eventually, I asked my professor if he was familiar with the organization. He looked surprised, then confirmed that his wife was indeed my fiancé’s coworker.

Fast forward to now. I had a bumpy start finding language partners who had enough availability to meet now and then, so I went to CET to ask to find another. They found two new language partners, one of whom goes to school in the States right now and has just returned for the summer to be with family. It turns out, the school she goes to is my home university. When I asked CET if they knew that she and I went to the same university in the US, they were genuinely surprised. They told me they had no idea and that it was indeed sheer coincidence.

One of my new language partners, Hsin-yi (not the language partner that attends my school in the states). We went on a long day trip to Yehliu together. It was impossibly hot that day, but we had a very fun day. A-bao, her friend, also came with, and had a lot of knowledge to share about the Taiwanese language.

So, about three days before writing up this blog post, I met her for the first time, and we got to talking and getting to know one another. It turns out, she knows that aforementioned professor, though we don’t at all share a major. Our respective majors do have some intersections though, clearly! As she told me how she got to know this professor, she mentioned that he was offering a new elective class this coming fall. It turns out, that’s a class I registered for a month ago and will also be taking in the fall. So, we have a class together!

Just a cozy shot of the coffee and cheesecake I shared with Pan, my language partner who attends the same American university as me. The photo we snapped together was lost, but this one remained! At the end of our first meetup, we accidentally did a Minnesota Long Goodbye. We learned a lot about one another. We were so absorbed in conversation that getting multiple photographs became a forgettable afterthought.

The world is a big place, so it will never cease to amaze me when I run into coincidences like this. After years of floundering and struggling to find my place in this world, there is something about amazing coincidence that reassures me I’m on the right path—the one I was supposed to be on from the start—even if that coincidence is something as simple as meeting someone who already knows someone I know.

CET’s strength, in my opinion, is facilitating establishing connections between people. I have met so many friendly and interesting people on this program—not just my language partners and fellow CET student body, but other local and international students, craftsmen, cultural guides, educators, and musicians. I am constantly inspired and in awe of the stories they all shared with me.

While not directly relevant to the rest of what I’ve written about here, the friends I am making during my time abroad are a very profound part of this experience. The people I’ve met are not only with CET, but are also other people from all over the world who have come to NTU to study Chinese. My classmates come from Russia, Japan, Scotland, and England, and we all get along very well!