I groaned.
She laughed.
And we kept practicing.
By the end of my second year, I could navigate daily life comfortably in Mandarin.
By the third, I was discussing research and technical contracts with growing confidence.
My vocabulary still developed unevenly.
I occasionally needed clarification.
Specialized legal language required particular care.
But I could follow a complex conversation without someone translating every sentence.
I also learned that Mandarin used in Taiwan had its own pronunciation patterns, expressions, and written conventions.
Professor Lin encouraged me to read Taiwanese technical publications and practice discussing my research with local colleagues rather than relying only on English-language materials.
That experience changed the way I thought.
I learned new ways to explain familiar concepts.
I became more careful about assuming a translation conveyed exactly the same legal or technical meaning.
And I developed an appreciation for the precision required when two parties negotiated across languages.
Years later, that attention to language would save my patent.
But first, it helped me make friends.
Professor Lin Yu-ting was forty-nine when I joined her laboratory.
She was small, quick-moving, and capable of becoming terrifyingly quiet whenever someone presented results they hadn't checked carefully.
She didn't shout.
She simply asked questions until the person standing in front of her realized exactly which assumptions they'd failed to examine.
My first meeting with her lasted ninety minutes.
I expected her to discuss my academic background.
Instead, she asked why I was interested in passive thermal systems.
I explained the hospital equipment my father maintained.
The heat-related reliability problems.
And my desire to create systems that could operate with less dependence on powered cooling.
She listened.
Then asked, “Why medical devices?”