“We Have to Survive, First”: Speculative Ethnographies of Chinese Student Experience During COVID-19

Our speculative ethnography of Chinese student experience in the United States during COVID-19 weds the tradition of speculative fiction (exemplified by the likes of Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler) and digital autoethnography. The study is two-pronged: First, we articulate/map the methodological merits of speculative and digital autoethnography as particularly conducive to the crisis context of COVID-19 and its accompanying social isolation; second, we deploy said methodology within a population of nine Chinese students “trapped” in the United States during the COVID-19 period.


A Note on the Text
Margaret Atwood (2012) wrote that speculative fiction contains details and contexts that "really could happen but just hadn't completely happened." Her novel The Handmaid's Tale famously incorporated disparate historical atrocities, separated by time and distance, into one dystopic vision of what humanity was capable of, given the right conditions. Each atrocity happened in "real life," just not necessarily all at once within a singular context.
Ethnographers cannot conjure characters, plots, and settings from thin air; ethnographers must ground narratives in realities that are observable. Tracy (2010) outlined criteria for "quality" qualitative work, including "credibility," "rich rigor," and "coherence." Creswell and Miller (2000) identified a series of "validation" practices, including triangulation, thick description, and prolonged engagement in the field. These methods might be accessible and feasible for ethnographers under "ordinary" circumstances (although these forms of validation are being increasingly challenged by the postqualitative and new materialist "turns"; Jackson, 2017;MacLure, 2013;Nordstrom, 2018;Rosiek & Snyder, 2020;Schulte, 2018;St. Pierre, 2013). But what can ethnographers do when conventional methods of inquiry are inaccessible or impossible? What can ethnographers do when crises emerge that restrict human movement and interaction? As COVID-19 spread, nations entered periods of isolation, social distancing, lockdowns, and closures. In the United States, education institutions shuttered and/or converted to digital/hybrid pedagogical contexts, forcing students into isolated educational and social experiences (Soria & Horgos, 2021). These conditions disproportionately burdened international student populations: Travel restrictions prevented some from returning to home countries and made visa procurement for family more challenging, and institutional closures prevented them from forming social networks or from receiving supplemental instructional resources (such as in-person writing center consultations, for example). American higher education seemed to overlook and/or misinterpret the specialized needs of international student populations during this crisis (as Suspitsyna & Shalka, 2019, note, this trend certainly did not start with COVID-19 and Leigh et al., 2021, articulate myriad preexisting challenges facing Asian American graduate students in higher education). We initiated ethnographic work to illuminate these specialized needs and to articulate some evidence-based practices for guiding international students through this crisis.
COVID-19 conditions dampened our ethnographic aspirations. Shelter-in-place orders (initiated in the United States in March 2020) prevented in-person fieldwork and restricted our ability to conduct interviews for much longer than expected (the Delta variant, for example, extended COVID-19 restrictions into the Fall 2021 semester). Other barriers were unexpected. For example, Yan, who is an international graduate student, was able to initially recruit through her social network(s), but as our work expanded, recruiting through social sampling became less feasible. She had to turn to digital communities, such as a Chinese graduate student Facebook group, for recruiting students, even if she was not acquainted with said students and even if she had no opportunity to "get to know" said students through inperson interactions and frequent observations. Yan's fieldwork had to move into digital contexts; where once she might have done classroom observations or attended Chinese student social events and campus programming, during COVID-19, the best "fieldwork" opportunities available were tuning into Zoom, conducting interviews on Zoom, and doing peer debriefing (with Benjamin) via Zoom, e-mail, and shared drives. We missed the opportunity to observe mannerism, body language, dress, and emotion, narrative elements that do not always translate digitally. Benjamin (2020) was particularly aggrieved at the loss of opportunity for studying dress and space, as his prior work, Queer Campus Climate: An Ethnographic Fantasia focused on fashion as a tool for queer students to locate agency, power, and positive self-esteem. In what ways might dress and gesture illuminate our understanding of the Chinese student experience (Yan does describe a friend who began wearing oversized shawls to the grocery store to disguise her Chinese identity and avoid harassment).
As we began analyzing data, we realized there were/are narrative gaps in our study, gaps which could not easily be filled under pandemic conditions. We turned to speculative inquiry for inspiration (De Freitas & Truman, 2021;MacLure, 2021;Mazzei, 2021). Speculative fiction (such as Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and Octavia Butler's, 1993, Parable of the Sower) grounds narratives in possible realities; possibilities are based on history, observation, imagination, and connection. We devised new approaches to data generation and analysis to build speculative reports on Chinese student experience in America during a time of crisis. These approaches were informed by emerging postqualitative methodology and digital ethnography (Kavanaugh & Maratea, 2020;Lester, 2020; we discuss these concepts later in more detail). We also borrowed from autoethnography (such as Holman Jones & Adams, 2010, autoethnographic "hinging"). Our work that follows applies these methodological trends via five speculative "microethnographies" featuring 10 Chinese graduate students (including Yan, herself) studying at a Southern research (R1) institution during COVID-19.

Prologue
Our initial questions guiding this study were (a) "How were Chinese students' higher educational experiences affected by  "How can qualitative methods be adapted/expanded during times of 'crisis,' when traditional methods become inaccessible/impossible?" We focused on Chinese students as Yan is an international student from China, capable of conducting interviews in Mandarin and English, and because Chinese students accounted for the largest community of international students at Persimmon University (our institution of study; Persimmon is an alias). The total population is 1,882 students at the start of the 2019-2020 school year (for comparison, the next largest international student community is from India, with a total of 210 students). Chinese students on our campus felt disproportionately burdened by pandemic conditions given the Trump administration's public statements blaming China for the "Kung Flu." According to Croucher et al. (2020), within 1 month of Trump's initial tweet using the phrase "Chinese Virus," more than 72,000 tweets using #WuhanVirus were posted; according to Macguire (2020), more than 10,000 tweets using #KungFlu were posted during the same period. The rhetoric of blame left Chinese students particularly vulnerable to harassment and shame, hence our focus on their experiences.
Our initial narratives included Chinese students who felt "trapped" in America and "targeted" by America (Endo, 2021;Lin, 2020). These narratives explore the racialized violence that targeted Asian/Americans during this period, which reached an apex with the Atlanta Spa Shootings of 2021. We began curating narratives along three recurring themes: (a) cultural and pedagogical barriers between American faculty and Chinese students, (b) difficulties encountered while trying to build social support in a digital context, and (c) experiences of "settling" into campus and community life. Prolonged research, and subsequent observations and narratives, complicated these themes. Narratives smudged clear trajectories and conclusions, and conventional validation techniques (such as triangulation, prolonged fieldwork, and routine interaction with participants) prohibited tidy methodological processes and interpretations.
We had to expand our ethnographic toolbox. Martin and Kamberelis (2013) gave us a start through their delineation of research mapping versus tracing: Reality is viewed as a continual process of flux or differentiation even though this fact is usually masked by powerful and pervasive illusory discourses of fixity, stability, and identity . . . A tracing is a copy and operates according to "genetic" principles of reproduction based on an a priori deep structure . . . Mapping alerts us to the need to look at discursive, social, and material formations in terms of their constitutive lines of force-their organization into lines of articulation and potential dissolution into lines of flight. (pp. 670-671) COVID-19 necessitated an ethnographic approach that (a) mapped emergent, understudied experiences; (b) mapped emergent methodological approaches to unusual research contexts; and (c) traced commonalities of experience to inform (urgent) educator praxis. We believed that singular experiences were worthy of study for their ability to chart new directions for study (mapping). We also believed that underserved, marginalized populations benefit from research that yields actional results; these results may generate "evidence-based" suggestions for improved praxis (tracing). To perform both acts, simultaneously, we composed "microethnographies" based on our digital interactions (observations and interviews) with nine students: Macy, Tina, Kate, Helen, Amber, Wendy, Lucy, Henry, and Peter.
Our "mapping and tracing" method is informed by, though often incompletely adhered to, postqualitative and digital ethnographic approaches. Social distancing and the collective exodus from in-person social engagement to digital classrooms and communities necessitated, first, a proliferation of "data" to include the "non-brute" (St. Pierre, 2013) blending observation notes and interview narratives with memory, sense, sound, silence (Mazzei, 2008(Mazzei, , 2013, and personal experience (Bochner & Ellis, 2016). Lester (2020) became personally meaningful for this "blending" process via her work on "netnographies" via a "disability studies" perspective. She illuminates the shortcomings of traditional ethnographic methods (built on "brute" texts) as these traditions assign "humanness" to "verbal" responses. Although rooted in a "disability studies" perspective, in which researchers "[orient] to the disabling effects of impairments as located in culture rather than solely being a natural consequence of impairments" (p. 416), Lester's (2020) approach can be adapted to international student experiences whose differing linguistic and cultural practices are often rendered invisible and unintelligible by Western researcher practice. They are thus "unhuman" to certain researchers and practitioners. Lester's work highlights the significance of "nonverbalness as an asset" (through her work with digital communities of autistic individuals). This notion became salient for us when we encountered students who felt more at ease communicating through digital filters wherein their physical characteristics could be rendered less salient and their communicative abilities could be demonstrated beyond the limits of verbal conversation. (Some participants, for example, preferred initial encounters take place without video. They articulated a preference for communicating with faculty in chat functions, as it alleviated the anxiety of impromptu, public communication in a nonnative language; that is, they could write out questions and comments in Mandarin, translate them to English, and then send their questions/comments to the instructor.) We connected these proliferated and nonbrute data to extant concepts to illustrate how pandemic conditions and digitized contexts exacerbated ongoing concerns for international students such as: microaggressions, language barriers, and social isolation (Bittencourt et al., 2021;Heng, 2018;Kim, 2020;Lee, 2021;Nadal et al., 2014;Sue, Capodilupo et al., 2007;Taliaferro et al., 2020).
Connections were formed and articulated via a series of speculative microethnographies. Gaps in narratives are filled via autoethnographic hinging (via Holman Jones & Adams, 2010) in which Yan and Benjamin fused personal experiences with participant experiences to provide fleshier, more nuanced ethnographic accounts and to provide speculative ethnographies with emotional thrust. MacLure (2021) informed the process of connection, hinging, and speculation through her articulation of "divination," calling for experimentation and disruption: If we are to have methods, they would need to be bespoke ones-crafted to follow the specific grain and contour of the problem in hand, with a chancy, yet unbreakable relation to the hoped-for outcome. We would need, on one hand, to pay careful and respectful attention to the complex forces in the event that is coming into existence, and, on the other hand, to be prepared to make the unwarranted leap toward an unpredictable landing. (p. 506) Furthermore, MacLure (2021) writes that we must engage with "material or incorporeal" signs for their "potential to enter into relations with other signs, and thereby rouse the mind to new connections. The interpretation of signs requires the skill of deciphering and divination" (p. 503). Disruptive and disparate signs, as interpretive tools, for us, included apparitions, imagined encounters, and collapsed experiential timelines (i.e., speculative realities) within our microethnographies. Benjamin also makes the link between Confederate culture (which dominated campus and community life) based on his background growing up nearby, which lent an understanding of how Confederate apologists are broadly racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and misogynistic. His "emic" knowledge of living white privilege helped illuminate the ideology of the dominant group to which the Chinese students had no access. Like Atwood's and Butler's works, our microethnographies take disparate signs, real but not simultaneously lived or observed; blend them together; and recast interpretive possibilities.
Benjamin, as a White, male American citizen, incorporates his narratives of relative privilege to contrast what is lived and felt by Chinese students living at the margins of the same academic/cultural context. The contrast demonstrates the stark differences in experiences for those in the center from those at the edge. Divination occurs via the apparition of a car salesman, based upon Benjamin's experiences buying a car in 2019, whose treatment of Benjamin contrasts Wendy's treatment by car salesmen. Divination also occurs via Benjamin's longitudinal memory of the institutional context, which includes his background as a privileged participant in the undergraduate social culture (hence his depth of knowledge about what goes on during Halloween and at fraternity parties).
Microethnographies, as a genre, were generated on a foundation informed by Langer's (2016) articulation of a "research vignette." Vignettes "entwine poetic and philosophical fragments with analytical and self-reflexive elements . . . reflexivity is to be understood as an expression of the subjective experience of doing research, in which the involvement of the researcher in the research process, manifested by the dynamics of interaction and relationship between the research and the researched, gains decisive meaning in and for the interpretation" (p. 736).
As Holman Jones and Adams (2010) write, autoethnographic hinges, beyond enhancing relational reflexivity, "create good stories: stories that report on recognizable experiences, that translate simply and specifically to an actionable result" (p. 211). Our microethnographies are written impressionistically (Van Maanen, 2011) across genres; impressionistic renderings "are not about what usually happens but about what rarely happens" (Van Maanen, 2011, p. 102) and, we add, impressionistic renderings enable vivid world building in confined space (i.e., article-appropriate length). Impressionistic renderings also invite reader participation in world building, yielding emotional involvement, as impressions demand that the reader fills in the blanks with their own autoethnographic hinging. Our microethnographies are written to satiate intellectual and emotional expectations. They make visible understudied experiences and point toward navigable approaches toward inclusion.

Jeepers Creepers
Benjamin and Yan sit at a local pizzeria with Wendy, Lucy, Tina, Helen, and Henry, each of whom is experiencing their first American Autumn. The group's chatter buzzes along with ambient noise of beer glasses clinking and clanking, oven doors slamming, and the traffic horns sounding on the street outside. Bits and pieces of conversation become audible over the hubbub and music.
Benjamin: Halloween turns a blind eye on debauchery.
The most buttoned-up college students will dress provocatively and get blackout drunk.

He did the monster mash
Tina: My motivation for integration is not so big. I did not think I must be like them or anything, such as Halloween when everyone is dressed up. I attend, but I do not wear makeup.

It was a graveyard smash
Benjamin: At Persimmon University, a local man dresses as the Headless Horseman and rides his black horse through the city streets.

He did the monster mash
Yan: When the football game falls on Halloween, the student section switches school colors for outlandish costumes.
The zombies were having fun The party had just begun

The guests included Wolfman, Dracula and his son
Benjamin: The Marching Band performs the Monster Mash, and the student section clears at halftime. Most go to frat parties or to costume contests at local bars.

The scene was rockin'
All were digging the sounds

Igor on chains backed by baying hounds
Helen: People are fake, you know? Fake. American courtesy. Chinese feel fake for their fake politeness. American girls are very bitchy. They pretend to be nice to me, but actually do not like me at all. Americans are polite, but this politeness makes a distance. Greetings end within ten sentences. There is no further friendship. Now, I usually meet them in online class, say hello, or maybe add a Facebook friend. But when the online class ends, there is no further communication.

House Hunters International
Today's House Hunters are Yan, a PhD student at Persimmon University, and Amber, another PhD student with whom Yan is acquainted through their social circle. Both women need an affordable apartment that's convenient to campus. They each need a one bedroom to ensure their safety in pandemic conditions. Yan sent the following message to me, her real estate agent, before our appointment today: There isn't much public transport, so I must pick up Amber with the car I bought for a few thousand dollars when I first arrived in America. Most Chinese students are reluctant to buy cars, as most of us will only be in America for a few years. Amber chose to endure the inconvenience of scant public transport rather than get cheated by used car salesmen.
If I wasn't able to drive Amber to the realty office, she would have to walk approximately 25 min from the nearest bus station. The realty office says that international students must pay for a whole year in advance instead of month-tomonth, like American students get to do. Benjamin said he thought that violated the Fair Housing Act, but I'm not in a position to negotiate. Persimmon is considered "rural." Although "rural," the town is disproportionately wealthy, thanks to the presence of the university and an influx of residents who migrated from the state's capitol, which is about a half-hour drive away. Apartments are mostly resort-style. They have fitness centers, pools, business centers, and even coffee shops. A one-bedroom apartment usually goes for around US$1,000. Houses are tough to find, as wealthy alumni began buying houses near campus to renovate and use as "Game Day" retreats. Amber originally had a roommate, but her roommate left America at the start of COVID-19, and now Amber cannot afford her apartment. She also cannot afford to live alone, but her social circle is relatively small, so she has not been able to find roommates.
Chinese students like us must have large chunks of cash on hand just to get started. We must pay the whole year's rent up front. Many of us are surprised that American apartments usually do not come furnished. We travel across the world to come here, and most of us only bring what we are allowed to carry on the plane. Amber and I arrived without furniture. In my case, I had to spend time living in a hotel. Then, I moved into my first apartment, but I spent a month sleeping on the floor because the apartment was not furnished. It didn't even have a washer and dryer. No Chinese student wants to buy a washer and dryer that they'll have to sell again in a couple of years.
Amber expressed fear of having to live with strangers during a pandemic, and now she was trapped in America. She told me, "I don't want to die in America." And we are expected to excel academically, especially as graduate students with research and teaching responsibilities.
Looks like our work is cut out for us. Let's see what we can find for Yan and Amber on this episode of House Hunters International.

Macy. Benjamin. Yan. White Noise
We need to survive first, Yan. Over the last year, in an unrelenting series of episodes with clear racial animus, people of Asian descent have been pushed, beaten, kicked, spit on and called slurs. Homes and businesses have been vandalized. The violence has known no boundaries, spanning generations, income brackets, and regions. The New York Times attempted to capture a sense of the rising tide of anti-Asian bias nationwide. Using media reports from across the country, the Times found more than 110 episodes since March 2020 in which there was clear evidence of race-based hate (Cai et al., 2021). Macy and I were in the customer service line at Wal-Mart. We both wore masks. In addition, Macy wore a large shawl. I laughed when I picked her up. It was April. Why was she all wrapped up? Now, I understand. A 200-pound, blonde, white lady in front of us looked back and asked the cashier, "Aren't they from China?" Americans have guns. We do not. If you were in fights with them, nobody is going to help us. NOBODY! The security camera video was shocking in its brutality. A 65-yearold Filipino immigrant was walking down a street near Times Square when a man, in broad daylight, suddenly kicked her in the stomach. She crumpled to the sidewalk. He kicked her once in the head. Then again. And again. He yelled an obscenity at her, according to a police official, and then said, "You don't belong here." As the violent scene unfolded in Manhattan, three men watched from the lobby of a nearby luxury apartment building. When the woman struggled to stand up, one of the men, a security guard, closed the front door to the building (Hong et al., 2021). I wear a mask and a shawl to hide my face and black hair. A few miles from Persimmon University, a billboard stands alongside the highway. Dixie General Store. Off Highway 431, near I-20. Confederate flags dominate the display. Anyone approaching the campus from the Northwest has no choice but to see it. The store has: "Confederate Battle Flags, regiment flags, sovereign state flags after secession. You can pick up a 12-foot by 18-foot battle flag for $275. You can even buy a rebel flag mask for the pandemic. . . There's also plenty of merchandise devoted to the 45 th president. Trump flags, Trump hats, and merchandise with Donald Trump's head photo-shopped onto the body of Sylvester Stallone from the Rambo movies." (Thornton, 2020) The tension between the United States and Chinese governments culminated in the U.S. ordering China to close its consulate in Houston. As Chinese students in the Southeast, we lost the nearest consulate to renew passports and get travel documents. Brilliant idea. Demand the Chinese "Go back where they came from." But then close down the consulate that would enable them to travel. Why are there so many Chinese here? We are from China. Why are there so many White people here? Are they all from America? Go back to your mother fucking country with the Virus. Bob Newhart once said, "I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'" Blood rushed to my head. Macy was right. The oversized shawl can cover our yellow skin and black hair. But we have nowhere to hide in the United States, nor can we get back home. I was at an Independence Day party, and another guest heard me mention getting the vaccine the previous week. He said, "We wouldn't have to poison ourselves if the 'Chinks' hadn't started this problem." I replied, "Go to the kids table and let the adults keep talking, you racist hick." The host overheard the conversation. He began playing a song over the speaker system. The lyrics were as follows: "There's a million pissed off rednecks just like me/And we're all sick and tired of this bullshit on TV/I guess you didn't know that you don't mess with General Lee/If you have a right to burn my flag/I have a right to kick your ass/You don't like our traditions/You say we've done you wrong/Why don't you pack up your bags/And take your ass back home." (Fisher, 2016) I am a doctoral student in educational psychology. I do not think I truly understood the meaning of anxiety, depression, and the sense of isolation until I experienced COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Chinese students are often perceived as "meek, quiet, or stand-offish and unwilling to integrate into the rest of campus life" (Chen & Ross, 2015, p. 177). Being misunderstood and marginalized, Chinese students become less involved and even refuse to be included; "the racialized will generally also racialize their racializers. They probably do so mostly with feelings of resentment and anger since overt action against racial dominants could be punitive" (Gans, 2017, p. 344). Henry seemed deflated. He said, "I do not have social phobia at all in China. I was a student leader before I went to graduate school in the U.S., and by then, I have known hundreds of people. There are a lot of people who know me in person or by names. I was very sociable, very outgoing, and popular. I was the monitor of our class, president of the student union, the vice president of the outreach department of the student union in my university in China." I immediately thought about how I am gregarious, outgoing, witty, and fun when I'm with my gay friends. But my Baptist parents think I'm some shy, brooding, depressive type because when I go with them to church or dinner . . . I say nothing to no one and wear all black.
Most Chinese students had a "honeymoon" period when they first arrived in the United States, seeing this new land through rose-colored glasses. Everything was new and good. I remember when Yan thought that her experiences and her friends' experiences would not make good research. How is this useful to higher education professionals? She asked. For one, I said, I now know that your initial quiet presence did not mean you were disengaged. It meant people like me had taught you to be afraid.

Tea Time
Speakers and headphones amplify the classroom noise. Forces me to notice what was once just ambient noise in face-to-face contexts. Candy wrappers, crunching granola, the snap/fizz of a Coke can opening. American students seem comfortable eating whole meals in college classrooms. The digital context did not alter this practice. In fact, it expanded. We can see peers making dinner, like the woman in my class who made macaroni and cheese for her children at the stove in full view of the camera. Bang.
Clang. Lid to pot. Spark of the gas burner igniting. Padding feet crowding round. Mommy. Mommy. A Cuban man once told me that Cubans express love through food. In American classroom culture, one should always bring something to share.

Blow Pop bag bursts open and a rat-a-tat-tat-tat of candy hitting the table drowns out my already hoarse voice.
Yan told me about Amber's refusal to eat on Zoom. Yan had logged in to see how Amber interacted with her peers and professor in a digital context. She saw Amber's face. Sometimes Amber squinted. Sometimes she looked disinterested. Sometimes Yan could tell Amber was writing notes, although the pen and paper were not visible. All the other students Crunched. Swallowed. Clinked glassware. Crinkled food packaging. Not Amber. Yan could see the rim of a tea cup in Amber's screen. Would she? Dared she? Yan told me Chinese culture frowns upon students eating in the classroom. It's disruptive and disrespectful. Would Amber? Dared Amber? If she sipped, what would finally make her feel comfortable. She better hurry. The tea will get cold. If she sips at the wrong moment, she may miss something important. Yan mentioned that Chinese students have to scrutinize lectures in the digital format because it's harder to hear professors and harder to understand them. Sometimes, Chinese students take note of the time something was missed so they can pinpoint at which point in the recording they will need to rewatch. The suspense just kills you. You do not want a good cup of tea to go to waste. You also do not want the anxiety of being caught drinking it to kill Amber. Pump. Pump. Beat. Beat. Heart be still. A lull in the discourse. The professor looks away. Amber sneaks a sip.

Epilogue
Within our microethnographies, readers see some cultural distinctions that often make social networking difficult for Chinese students in an American context. We were surprised that each of our participants, with the exception of Peter, expressed reluctance to assimilate into many (if not most) traditional American college activities. Peter, for example, said he would likely stay in America after graduation; he looked forward to seeing the seasons change and the leaves turn color. We initially assumed that international students wanted to "fit in"; however, the narratives we captured indicated that some students may be repelled by American collegiate culture and preferred to build social networks within the international student community(ies) with which they most identified. Wendy's narrative adds to the body of literature that illuminates how Asian women are assumed by Americans to be sexually available and submissive (see Endo, 2021;Kang, 2010). An American undergraduate visited her apartment intending to have sex, although they barely knew each other. Lucy's narrative indicated that American students may be inclusive only if (and when) the international student compromises some aspect of their being (such as becoming a "believer" in a protestant denominational tradition). Helen noted that Americans are "fake" nice while Henry noted that American students are somewhat spoiled and undisciplined, at least when it comes to academic achievement. These narratives raise some interesting questions: Is it possible to be inclusive without requiring that international students assimilate into dubious American customs? And given the characterization of Americans in these narratives, "Should the Americans be the ones assimilating, rather than the other way around?" More important for scholars of Higher Education, "Is the comprehensive, research-intensive, state university (with its large, influential undergraduate culture) even appropriate for graduate-level international students pursuing serious advanced studies?" In other words, "Would these Chinese students be better served at, say, a Claremont College or a Johns Hopkins where graduate students outnumber undergraduates and the burden to assimilate into dubious undergraduate culture is less pronounced?" Regardless of the answers to those questions, international students face challenges off campus (meaning that no matter the efficacy of a campus's inclusion strategies, international students face additional off-campus burdens that American students do not). Yan and Amber's apartment hunt illustrates off-campus challenges vividly, such as property managers offering differing lease terms to international students. Wendy also narrates an experience of an Uber driver blaming her (via her national origin) for COVID-19, as do Yan and Macy. Many students narrated feelings of being cheated or defrauded by American businesses (such as car dealerships) who took advantage of a language barrier. Most of these students also narrated intensely stressful experiences in the visa process. Visa acquisition and travel were particularly acute in the COVID-19 context, as friends and family from China could not visit the United States nor could these students return home during breaks.
The literature of international student experience is awash with narratives about language barriers, differing pedagogical expectations, and microaggressions. However, there is a dearth of literature that focuses on relocating, settling, and subsisting and connecting these struggles to academic/cognitive performance. Yan described having to have enormous amounts of ready money available upon arrival just to secure and furnish an apartment. We may have been misdiagnosing academic challenges as caused by, say, a language barrier. The reality may have more to do with exhaustion from sleeping on the floor while waiting to be able to buy furniture. How should our pedagogical and inclusion practices adapt to accommodate these oft-overlooked experiences?
These microethnographies illustrate the need for educators to broaden the scope of their inquiries and support strategies to better ascertain the holistic student experience, both on-campus and off. Administrators of Higher Education should, for example, reconsider the trend of assessing international student experience via student affairs engagement and/or via programming sponsored by campus diversity staff. These approaches, while not necessarily harmful, limit the scope of assessment to (a) students who seek campus engagement on their own (read: have buy-in to campus culture already) and/or (b) students' on-campus experiences (usually in connection to student activities and/or coursework). Academic assessment at Persimmon University, for example, focuses on faculty impact on the academic experience. But our students' narratives illustrate that off-campus life may have a disproportionately large impact on academic experience compared with American students.
Within the scope of on-campus, academic experiences, our microethnographies yield intriguing, if not always conclusive, insights. For example, digital pedagogy during COVID-19 was widely derided in the public conversation as depriving students (at the K-12 level and at higher education institutions) of social development. Generally, higher education inclusion surveys suggest that face-to-face interaction with faculty, staff, and peers breeds positive, inclusive experiences for all students (Goodman & Bowman, 2014;Mayhew et al., 2016). Regarding language barriers, in-person courses are presumed to be beneficial to nonnative English speakers because English language learners may pick up on facial expressions, mannerisms, and body language to help interpret communication(s).
Our group of students smudge these common beliefs. All of our participants indicated that digital formats made the language barrier easier to navigate. Zoom enabled students to record and rewatch lectures. The chat function enabled students to interact directly (and privately) with the instructor without disrupting the whole class. Zoom also provided students the opportunity to translate certain terms and phrases in real time without drawing attention to themselves. Peter said, "It's harder for Chinese students to ask questions; they feel too embarrassed to waste others' time." Lucy said, Teachers are very serious in every class in China, and you cannot be very active in class. Otherwise, the teacher will feel you disturb the classroom. American students, they answer the question. They may not have the right answer. They may not know what they are talking about. They start to chat and say how their dog is doing. We were forbidden to do that from an early age.
Digital coursework, for these students, relieved the burden of the language barrier. Wendy's narrative indicates, too, that digital coursework relieved the burden of cultural perceptions and stereotypes (i.e., not constantly being asked, "Where are you from?" or being blamed for the spread of COVID-19).
Although digital coursework had its benefits, some of our students complicated our evaluation of digital coursework's impact, for better or worse. One woman, Kate, had mixed feelings about digital coursework versus in-person coursework. Kate noted that the digital format saved her from "social embarrassment" and made her more comfortable wearing "casual dress." However, she also indicated that being a student who arrived during the COVID-19 context (i.e., digital format only) made her "slack" and "lonely." Kate also indicated that she was less willing to participate in digital classes and more likely to engage in distracting activities (such as scrolling through her phone), which she would never do in person. Peter indicated a preference for hybrid formats; he said, If the class starts online, with no initial in-person meeting, it is difficult to have any kind of personal connection, to talk about your family, your wife and husband and children, to process more in-depth communication. If everyone can get to know each other and establish a relationship with each other, before starting the online class, I think the participation rate of the group will increase. Peter, though, said that "recording is very useful" and that instructors seem "more available" in the digital context, especially when using chat functions.
On the whole, our students provided vivid, visceral, and complex accounts of multiple aspects of collegiate life in the COVID-19 context. The swath of experiences narrated and observed illuminate the benefits of ethnographic work, including digital ethnographic methods. The digital and socially distant context proved challenging to navigate, yet emergent speculative design provided the tools, and theoretical grounding, needed to effectively navigate said challenge.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.