Some classes change you.

It’s taken three years, but I’m so fortunate to have taken Professor Kalyan Nadiminti’s History course at Haverford this past semester called the Global Histories of Asian American Labor.

With a total of four enrolled students in the course (five if you count one who audited the class), this class became a tight-knit family as well as a therapy group, as Ann Tran’18 so nicely put it.

L to R: Kevin Liao (HC ’18), Rebecca Cheng (HC ’19), me, Katherine Lee (BMC ’18), Ann Tran (BMC ’18), Professor Nadiminti

As Asian-Americans, we’re often forgotten when talking about people of color. We’re also often forgotten when talking about Asians from Asia. There’s a common thread amongst many Asian American lives, and that is a feeling of being in-between. A feeling of not truly belonging, of feeling stuck in between the motherland you weren’t born in and the land you were born in. It’s about being distinctly other.

We delved into so many topics related to labor from the industrial interracial adoption complex to the narrative of the Asian immigrant as a non-resident worker, as well as the different types of Asian-Americans, like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Indian/South Asian, and Vietnamese. We discussed our own families and some personal anecdotes, cried over the text Coolies and Cane (spoiler alert: Chinese-Americans were slaves, too, at one point), busted the Model Minority Myth, watched an episode of Master of None, and gave input as to which texts we wanted to read: our last text, American Born Chinese, was one that Kevin Liao (HC ’18) suggested on the first day of class.

Master of None

American Born Chinese graphic novel

As a third-generation Chinese-American, my family’s story is different from my friends’ ones where their parents came to America, or where they themselves came here as children. I saw my family’s story not just in the stories about the San Francisco railroad (which is why my great-grandfather came here in the 1800s), but also the ones about Japanese internment, about Korean adoptees, and more.

Throughout this semester, I’ve realized that I’m not alone: others have similar stories and thoughts about being asked, “what are you?” or “where are you from?”  I also realized that this is the first time I was in a classroom committed to introspection around my own personal role and where I fit in these global narratives.

There were so many mind-blowing moments this semester where I was just in awe having learned something new that I’d previously had no clue about. I grew closer to friends and gained new ones as we grappled with our identities together, and I’m so grateful to Professor Nadiminti for leading us all through it. As the semester ends, I have more questions than I had at the start of the semester and fewer answers.

How to Measure the Unmeasurable: Just a Feeling

This past summer, I probably annoyed my manager by repeatedly asking, “Yes, I can feel I’ve improved, but in what concrete ways?” It took me a while to realize that progress isn’t always measurable, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t occur.

Chasing Greatness sign at LinkedIn SF when I visited classmate Stephanie Cao ’18, LinkedIntern

School: Measurable, but an Incomplete Picture

In school, you can sort-of track growth in the same way. How long does an assignment take? What grade did you get? How much time did you spend studying? However, grades are not a perfect measure: sometimes you learn a lot but your grade does not reflect it (here’s looking at you, computer graphics last year.)

Teammate/friend Abby Brewster ’18 admiring the tennis teams’ academic accolades

This year, I’ve been trying to measure my progress in a variety of areas to figure out how to improve in each. One concrete measurement I like is weight training. Many sports teams on campus have training sessions with our Strength and Conditioning coach, Courtney Morris ’99. There, we do exercises to train agility and strength, whether it be working our quick feet on the ladders, jumping rope, or lifting weights and training our upper body.

It’s easy to see after a week or so that you can jump rope faster and longer, do more repetitions with more weight, and increase the number of pull-ups, push-ups, and more that you do.

Yoga class with Courtney and some teammates! #selfcare

I like running and yoga for the same reason: you can always go further (running a longer distance, running faster, holding a pose for longer, etc.) than you thought you could. It doesn’t get easier; you just get better. Yoga also provides a nice mental break, and is good for stretching, toning, and relaxing. I love ending my week with a yoga class in Bryn Mawr’s gym.

There are so many mental hurdles when you run or lift, but by pushing through them and persisting, you grow both in the gym and off of it. If you discipline yourself there, you can definitely focus longer on school work and push yourself to understand a difficult concept that you previously struggled with.

Some of my fitness, health, and productivity stats for the day.

An amazing app I now use to measure different aspects of my life is Gyroscope. I love the visualizations which really show what you’re doing. The productivity one also shows how you’re spending most of your time (which websites or apps) and you can set goals to use apps less.

So What?

Next year, you bet I’ll be stronger and faster, and I’ll have the statistics to prove it. Will I be a better programmer and writer? You may have to take my word for it.