Â鶹´«Ã½

Why Â鶹´«Ã½?

I was born and raised in San Francisco. I attended a small college-prep school with about 400 students. We had small discussion-based classes. A lot of the work we were doing was meant to prepare us for college. I took two honors classes per semester, which is the most that you can take. And my junior year was when Covid started, so I did most of my senior year online.

At my school, I started working in admission and I loved it. I’m passionate about working with youth. When I was maybe 11 or 12 years old, the parent of an incoming kindergartener asked me, how has the school has prepared me to change the world? The room kind of got silent, and everybody was like, oh, how is she going to answer this? I don’t even remember what I said, but I remember getting a fist bump from my teacher leader after that. She was like, you handled that like a champ. You were so cool under pressure.

My brother is currently a sophomore at the same school. He’s 15, and I’m 21. I have been trying to find ways to stay close to him, to stay close to my family. We’re Chinese American. Family and culture are important to me. I think a lot of the things I do are motivated by this idea of taking care of him, taking care of other people in my life.

My Leap of Faith

Because of Covid, it was a weird dystopian time to be graduating from high school and starting college. I wanted a school that was undergrad only because there are so many different research opportunities. And I didn’t want a school that was resting on their laurels. I wanted a school that was actively trying to improve and change with the students.

I figured that there are only so many times in one’s life when you can truly try something new for four years. Growing up in a big city like San Francisco my entire life, experiencing a small town in the Midwest really was trying that something new. In reading about the community of Â鶹´«Ã½ — the academic rigor and all the research opportunities open to any student — I started envisioning the type of person that I would become after four years at Â鶹´«Ã½.

I decided to take that leap of faith and applied Early Decision.

A lot of my first year had a lot of Covid undertones. I got Covid in the first week of school. And so, in my first semester, I didn’t do much. I wasn’t involved in a lot of things on campus. My Tutorial professor was teaching virtually from China because again, Covid.

But by the second semester of my first year, I was forging my own path.

At Â鶹´«Ã½, there’s a certain quirky charm. People come to Â鶹´«Ã½ for a reason — you don’t just randomly find yourself in Â鶹´«Ã½, Iowa. There’s an intentionality behind it.

I’m glad I found it!

Creating Community

If I had gone to school in a big city, I don’t think I’d be as involved on campus as I am. First year, I was part of Weekend, our student-run events committee. Later, I served as Chinese House coordinator. And I was president of the Friends of Bob’s Underground Café, a student organization hosting open mics and painting events.

Bob’s Underground Café had closed prior to Covid, and our student organization worked with student affairs to reopen it as a student space to host open mics and other events. We saw a need for community, creativity, and a non-academic student space.

At the open mic nights at Bob’s, people go up and perform, and even if they mess up people still cheer for them. And I think that’s a great sign of community — people caring about others just for the sake of caring about others.

Some of my best friends at Â鶹´«Ã½ have been people I’ve worked with at Bob’s. It’s given me an opportunity to give back to the community.

Student Government

In my third year, I ran for vice president of student affairs for the Student Government Association and won. I was the vice president of student affairs that year.

Oh boy, it was a wild year!

I was working on essentially everything that a student experiences outside of the classroom. I was trying to advocate for the student voice everywhere that I could. How can I meet their needs in the best way possible?

It was intense, but I think I’ve always been a person who thrives under stress. I’ve always tried to push myself hard in the things that I do. Leading my peers has by far been the hardest thing I’ve ever learned to do. I was trying to balance student government me with the me that they would see in the classroom, in the dining hall, on the weekends It was like a crash course in learning how to establish and maintain boundaries and work-life balance.

My parents have always told me that they’re investing in my education because they see it as an important thing. They see it as a way of being able to grow in the world, and I feel fortunate that they’re willing to support me. So, I want to put my best self into it, regardless of the time commitments or anything else.

Volunteering

Cantonese was the language I learned first, and I spoke it at home with my mom and my grandparents. I learned English in daycare at age 3. When I was in fifth grade, I started learning Mandarin.

Now, I volunteer with a nonprofit, a Cantonese culture and language advocacy group called Save Cantonese. I’m the director of volunteer management.

I’ve also worked with bilingual and early immigrant youth at the Chinatown YMCA in San Francisco since the beginning of high school because I know that with language transition comes a lot of anxiety for students. I think it’s important to show a little bit of love and care for those kids as they learn to be people in the world.

Research in China

As an anthropology major, I am passionate about my studies. Academically, my adviser and I — we have a close relationship. I describe us as academic partners.

With her encouragement, I wrote a senior thesis on Chinese transnational migration and the impact of transnational migration on the formation of Chinese American identity. I did some research in the Bay Area. I looked at my own family, where they come from in China and I took pictures of all the grave markers for my family that I could find. My adviser said, oh, let’s look at these together. We found the village that they’re from in China. I didn’t know what to do with that. She said, what about a senior thesis? What if we go to China?

It was incredible. We went to China together over spring break to do research for my senior thesis. It was just an amazing experience. We found my family’s village. My senior thesis is essentially putting together a family tree and looking at the ways that I view identity, how visiting China has impacted the way that I see myself and this intentional way of connecting to culture.

Almost all the research that I was doing, all the questions that I was asking, were in Chinese. After a while, I started thinking in Chinese. I started dreaming in Chinese. It was an interesting time!

Learning How to be a Person

This year, I’m a course mentor for my adviser’s First-Year Tutorial, called Chinatowns around the World.

Tutorial is a class that all first-years take as an introduction to college. The professor teaches them how to be students in the classroom. They assign their first essays and they talk about academic honesty and different ways of reading and discussing. This class teaches you how to be a student at Â鶹´«Ã½.

In my role, I teach them how to be people. I talk to them about time management. I talk to them about the ideal times in dining hall when they can go get a meal without being bombarded with long lines. I’m even teaching them like, oh, you should wake up an hour or two before your first class. Go to breakfast, wake up for the day so you’re sharp and ready.

Not long after that, I saw six of them at breakfast!

It’s a very rewarding job. It’s a great way for me to reflect on the past three years at Â鶹´«Ã½ — the things that I’ve learned just through osmosis, picking up things as I go. While the tutorial professor is meant to teach them how to be students at Â鶹´«Ã½, it’s a nice balance to have someone who teaches you the people part of it all. I think everyone wishes they had someone to teach them how to be a person in college. And it’s a great way for them to learn about Â鶹´«Ã½ from someone who’s done it already, especially as I’m finishing my last semester. And they’re in their first semester. We’re kind of in this interesting bookending area.

I’m also working in admission as a senior interviewer, and I’m a New Student Orientation (NSO) coordinator, also called a student involvement coordinator. In that role, I work with the Office of Student Involvement to utilize feedback given after the previous NSO to improve the next one.

I like to be that in-between. I think all the jobs that I’ve had so far have been that in-between bridge, so that’s been interesting.

Just for Fun

I lived off campus last year. I like to cook. It was great to be able to cook and plan my own meals in my apartment. I would play guitar, go on walks. The weather in Â鶹´«Ã½ in the early fall and the springtime is so nice — I’d just go outside. In the evenings it’s a little less humid, and I just like the smell of nighttime, so that’s nice. 

And I’ll hang out with my friends. Some of my friends have cars, so we’ll go to Iowa City or Des Moines. We’ll get boba and go grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s. Sometimes we’ll watch a movie or something.

Hopes and Plans for the Future

Ideally, I’m looking at getting either a J.D. or an M.B.A. but I want to work for a little bit first. Especially with the rigorous academic environments that I’ve been in, I want to experience the real world through the workforce. I’m excited to just experience something that’s different than full-time school.

I’ve always wanted to work with people. When you work with people, you never have the same day twice. It’s a nice thing to know that you’re connecting with somebody and having those conversations.

And so, I’m looking at jobs in human resources. At Save Cantonese, a lot of the work that I do is creating and adapting policies to improve the volunteer experience. I onboard new volunteers. I get them situated into teams. I check in with the team leads under my direction. We’ve created a code of conduct. We’ve adapted role descriptions, and we’ve created an organizational chart.

I kind of love it. I know that reading policies and procedures is usually not everybody’s cup of tea, but if you love it, you love it!

I think my time in student government taught me a lot. It’s an interesting crossover of the anthropology degree and student government. They fit together nicely in a lot of unexpected ways. I think that any time you’re working with people, you’re doing anthropology in some way. Some of my best friends are anthropology majors, too. Not because we’ve even taken classes together, but because we share a curiosity for people, language, culture food.

The flip side is I’m also looking at jobs in admission. I think it’s just been a thing that I’ve been doing for most of my life at this point. I was even working in admission when I was in seventh and eighth grade for the K-8 at school I went to. Admission work feels like home to me. Regardless of what kind of work I do, I center it around people. I love working with people. I think when you work with people, you never get the same day twice. I like that.