Two summers ago, right before I started my first internship in a male-dominated field, my mom told me not to wear pink, not to laugh, and to just try to fit in. It took time for me to feel comfortable acting a certain way, and I even acknowledged my love of Disney and Broadway this past summer in a company blog post. Though it’s 2018, many still don’t take women seriously because of how they act or dress, like what happened to Jess in the TV show New Girl, below.

My name is Lizzie, I quote Disney almost every day, I wear pink, and I also read a lot of baseball and basketball (fiction and nonfiction) books.

A little over a year ago, I was listening to my usual mix of Broadway and Disney tunes when the YouTube recommendation algorithm suggested I watch a series of videos called the Broadway Princess Party. I didn’t really understand what that was, and only recognized a few of the singers (but all of the songs)…and I was hooked. Every actress in the Broadway Princess Party was assigned a princess (the term is loose, some were not royal but just main female characters.) Where else could someone watch the actress who played Jasmine on Broadway in Aladdin sing songs from Pocahontas? Or Moana? The sky was the limit!

This past Sunday, I made the 1.5 hour trek to New York City to see the Broadway Princess Party in-person with a friend I met in NYC this past summer. Gwen is a well-known iOS engineer and conference speaker who (like me) also happens to love Broadway, Disney, poetry, yoga, art, and the color purple. When the Broadway star singing Snow White updated the lyrics to make them more modern, “woke”, and feminist, I scanned the room and noted the diversity of audience members in attendance. I thought it was so cool to see people of all genders, backgrounds, and ages who were interested in a show called the Broadway Princess Party. (If you’re wondering, it exceeded my already-high expectations.)

A few summers ago, the #ILookLikeAnEngineer campaign took off because people didn’t believe a woman in an advertisement was an engineer, showing that even in the 21st century, people still have preconceived notions of what someone who does a certain job looks like.

I’m fortunate that I’ve never felt that I had to change myself to be taken seriously while at Bryn Mawr. Here, I’ve found friends, classmates, professors, and staff who are multi-dimensional. When I think of a computer scientist, a biochemist, or a philosopher, I think of a woman because they’re the ones I’ve been surrounded by these past four years. They all challenge stereotypes of typically-male-dominated fields.

I hope to do the same, and I’ll do it while wearing my Pride and Prejudice earrings, Mulan shirt, and panda earmuffs.

Has anyone ever misjudged you before because of preconceived stereotypes?

I was in the Campus Center with many classmates and fellow Mawrters last Sunday night as we crowded together to watch the Philadelphia Eagles’ monumental win over the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee hosts a Watch Party with food, raffles, and fun each year, but this year was different. It was a battle between students who had grown up in the area or students (like myself) who are from another state against students from New England (for the most part–and there are a lot of students from the Boston area.)

The atmosphere in the Campus Center that night was electric, fun, and intense, regardless of which team you were rooting for. I went back to my dorm and heard screaming in the halls, and fell asleep to sounds of fireworks going off. When I woke up, I saw posts from friends who had gone into Philly to watch the game and some pictures of the aftermath of the celebration.

That celebration continued throughout the week, especially with the Eagles’ celebratory Super Bowl Parade. It was such a huge event that Penn classes were canceled and SEPTA schedules were modified for the day, forcing many to find alternate forms of transportation. I spent the night at my friend Devica’s (’18) house around half an hour away with Rachel Bruce ’18, and we got up at 5:30 a.m. to be at the station at 6:20 a.m. with Hannah Terz ’18 for a 6:50 a.m. train. The line was already long when we got there, and we almost didn’t get on the train!

Line for SEPTA around 6:20am

The train went straight to Jefferson Station, and we speed-walked past Reading Terminal Market to get to Benjamin Franklin Parkway, where the parade would be going by. We waited in the cold for over five hours, but we were in the first and second rows of people, and the overall excitement, happiness, and positivity radiated off of most people there. Devica was so close, she high-fived a few players!

Overall, it’s been an eventful, spirited, and joyous week. I love the hope that seems to radiate from the city now. Even if there are more parades, they won’t be like the first one!

I just started my final semester of college, and I’m feeling a lot of feelings. Since May last year, I’ve been thinking a lot about my time here at Bryn Mawr. What would I do differently, or the same? What did I enjoy the most, or enjoy the least? Who or what made my time here fun?

I noticed a general pattern: my Spring semesters have been more enjoyable than the Fall ones, for the most part (maybe it’s the flowers in bloom, or maybe it’s Hell Week or May Day?) I think this is because the classes I took in the Fall were more difficult and time-consuming. In the Fall (most of the time), I said “no” to fun things more often than I said “yes” in order to prioritize academics. I felt FOMO (fear of missing out.) I felt guilty for doing things for me, knowing that I could be using that “me” time to focus on classes I was struggling with. These are common sentiments both on campus as well as off of it–I’ve heard friends at other colleges agree here.

My favorite time of year on campus: flowers blooming.

This past Fall, however, I did more things for me. For pleasure. I watched more TV than I had since middle school, went out on both weekend days, and weekday nights, made the trek across campus to Brecon to see friends guilt-free, got enough sleep (for the most part), and had an off-campus activity I looked forward to every few weeks: it was those events that I looked forward to the most. This continued over my winter break: previous winter breaks were spent applying to internships, reading ahead to prepare for upcoming coursework, trying to develop new technical skills, etc. This break, I caught up with people from my internships, people from high school, people from travels, and hiked, ran, and tried aerial yoga for the first time. I watched so many movies and shows (of course I had to see the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel!) and read a lot too–and I still made sure to dedicate some time to my senior project and other projects related to my future job.

Tried aerial yoga with a friend.

Binged The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with my mom.

Last semester was my favorite semester (so far) because I truly enjoyed myself. No, classes weren’t easy, but for some reason, they weren’t as emotionally-draining as they had been in the past, but I also found that what I had considered wasting time before was not actually wasting time. Taking breaks and having fun made me not just happier, but also more productive. Now, that change of mindset that’s personal growth!

As I focus on my senior project this semester (developing web and mobile apps to compare which apps are better suited to teach people with autism emotions and social skills), I aim to also remember to breathe. To soak in the beautiful flowers come springtime. To not feel guilty for doing something not related to school. To make memories. To live.

What would you do in your final semester, or what did you do?

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.