my i'm so snooty autobiography

My autobiography

An autobiography, a review of one’s life. Sounds like a simple assignment to get to know one’s peer, but this is, or should be rather, a reflection of one’s own self, getting to know one’s own self better. I’m not sure how to start off, what to include, or what to omit, but here goes. I write very verbosely by the way.

I was born in Fountain Valley, California, and have stayed in Orange County all my life, all besides this self deployment to Vietnam. Grew up with the standard, the Asian parents who wanted, needed, forced a better life upon their child, complete with the eight years of piano, random dance and martial art classes, straight A’s in school, and ambitions of doctor-try. Not to sound spiteful, but it was just so unappreciated and mundane at the time that I never gave it full credit and still haven’t found a way to convey my gratitude for it. It wasn’t until the end of high school that I actually started to think for myself and realize what I had. By that time, I had dropped piano and missed it sorely, and I began to realize that that wasn’t the only thing that my parents were right about.

Somewhere between college and now, I realized that education is the gate to everything, beyond a successful career; it begets a successful life. It gives the ability to realize one’s ambition and strive for it. In high school, I still had the A’s and continue to have them (almost), although I didn’t appreciate them until college; now I work for them with all of strength, because they are the means to pursuing my hopes. I also never thought much about my interest in science, letting it carry me as it would, until I nearly changed my career path. I’ll get into that more when I write about my high school experiences. However, to this day, I am grateful to my parents for implanting me with a strong education, even when I didn’t know what it meant, because they gave me the means to do anything when the time came.

College came as a shock to me, such a change of conditions. I knew to expect the parties and the clichés, but I didn’t realize that it would define, refine, and send me soul-searching so much. Initially, I sent my SIR (Statement of Intent to Register) to UCSD, however on the SIR due date, I decided to change my decision to UCI, having given more thought to the benefits that accompany UCI. I lived in the honors dormitories my first two years, surrounded by peers who encouraged and inspired me. Upon arriving, I was expecting parties after parties, it being the first time many of us had a chance to live away from home. However, the environment around me was completely unexpected; there were indeed festivities the whole year through, but at the same time, it was a completely motivating environment. The other students in the dorm, many of them now my closest friends, knew what they wanted to do, why they were doing it, and were fully disciplined on getting there. There was ambition flowing through their veins and determination rooted in their hearts, things that had never really found itself to me before. It was in this environment that I saw who I wanted to become and set about changing myself. I saw that I had a desire to pursue medicine, and so I jumped headfirst into it, loading myself with classes, and grabbing opportunities left and right. I was so full of fervor to take advantage of all the things around me, as I had been unaware of them before and had foolishly let them slip through my fingers, spending my time in high school relaxing idly.

My sudden excitement to act during the first year caught up to me last year, my second year of college. Fall quarter, I was suddenly overwhelmed with a plethora of activities, from academics to extracurriculars. I had a loaded summer, starting my management minor and taking classes in advance to allot time to study abroad the following fall. I also took an Emergency Medical Training course, a move I have never regretted, and interned at a hospital, doing three times the hours expected because I knew I would need to finish early in order to spend the summer at a research program that I planned to attend. Come fall quarter, I dived headfirst into research, heading my own project, rather blindly. I also took classes intended for third-year biology majors, a move that the counselor rather didn’t recommend, but I thought it necessary if I wanted to be able to free time to take other opportunities available to me. On top of that, I continued to intern at the hospital, was vice president of the Honors Student Council, and co-headed my own autoimmunity club. I stumbled much the first few weeks and finally crashed and burned half way through the quarter. My research was going nowhere, Physics class terrified me, sleep was rare, time was nowhere to be found, and stress was driving me insane. My friends helped me re-evaluate what I was doing, and I realized that although I had the right intent, this was nowhere near the right approach. What I had mistaken before as a path towards the goal of helping other, was actually a path of self-destruction, empty and fruitless. I saw that what I had admired before was actually character, and I started to work on knowing what was best for myself. Even though I could take all these classes and do all these activities, it wouldn’t be of any benefit unless I took care of myself first and was able to put my heart into it. I ended up dropping physics and pacing myself in research and my studies. By the end of the next quarter, I was able to get ahold of my classes and research. I enjoyed the classes that I took, the activities that I did, and especially my research. I was no longer doing my own project, but I was working under the guidance of postdoctorate Victor Guh and Doctor Professor O’Dowd, both figures who have inspired me with their passion for their work.

Ever since my first year, I knew that I had wanted to study abroad. Initially I was planning on studying in Spain, but after realizing that my Spanish wasn’t proficient, I decided to change my course to Vietnam. The prospect of studying abroad both captivated and terrified me, although it terrified me more as the time came closer to leave my sole homeland. I never really traveled much in my life, besides trips to visit family in Canada that usually lasted only a week. I had only been to Vietnam once, when I was very young and can’t remember much about it, besides that we lived in my aunt’s multistory furniture store, she had cats everywhere, and there was relief from the endless heat in her air conditioned room. However, different environments held the allure of a culture so incredibly different from mine, a culture that gave way to people who, although they interact with me daily and did the same tasks that I did, thought in an entirely different way. I wanted to understand why people acted the way they did, what values governed their lives, and how they thought. It was only by knowing their background and way of life could I begin to understand the way they behaved. It was essential to becoming an understanding physician and friend.

I never attended Vietnamese school before college and my parents never actually taught me much about the culture of Vietnam. They had renounced it upon starting a life here and hadn’t looked back. When introducing them to the idea of studying abroad in Vietnam, they were rather bewildered, asking why I wanted to study over there when I was fortunate enough to be in the states and people were trying to come here to study. My mother thought I was going to either die in Vietnam, or come back a permanently handicapped person. In the end, they let me make the decision, although it was clear that they disapproved. In the summer after my first year of college, I took a Vietnamese language course at a community college, although that ended up being a complete joke, and the woman showed us Vietnamese tourist videos all day. She herself had never been back to Vietnam since leaving after the war, and she didn’t want to either.

In the quarter and summer immediately before departing, doubts were springing left and right about my trip abroad. I was giving up so much to go. I continued research up to a week before departing, and made plans to continue as soon as I return. I also finished up my internship, making plans to return post study abroad. My classes, studies, and extracurricular activities are on hold. My father recently came down with something, and I wish I could be there to support him or at least spend more of my summer with him, because I was away at school all year. If I could have changed my decision, I would have, because there was too much to live for in California.

Goodbyeeee.