Empowerly

Student profile

Personal Essay

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Alex in Wonderland

I gulp as I pick at the fraying corners of my Spongebob Squarepants pencil case, a hopeless attempt to distract me from the sound of flipping pages as the class breezes through the question I linger on. Although I’m looking down at the two boxes on the page, I feel as if I’ve suddenly shrunken smaller than Alice in Wonderland. But, in this world, two doors towering above me take the place of magical cakes and potions, each marked “Pick Me.” “All About Me” headlines the page, and my pencil wavers between the two boxes: “White” and “Asian.” There is no option for both. If I choose the first, I categorize myself with the other kindergarteners and fit in, but lose my Filipino heritage from my mother. If I choose the latter, I keep my Filipino culture, but stick out as the only non-white student and disregard my privilege from my white father. No matter which door I choose, no matter which box I check, I neglect half of who I am. The two squares blur out of focus, and I revisit the question that haunts me through every cardboard family tree, Where-I’m-From-poem, and standardized test: “Why must I choose?”

Growing up half-white and half-Filipino, I felt forced to identify with one ethnicity. At Thanksgiving dinners heaped with steaming turkey legs and grandma’s famous mashed potatoes, my white family defines me and my siblings  purely by our Asianess because we’re the only non-white blood within my father’s side. In rowdy meals where my Filipino cousins bicker across a table overflowing with adobo and balut, my Filipino family perceives us as “the white cousins.”

Being held to the Asian stereotype of being the top of class created a struggle for me to embrace my inquisitive nature. As I attempted to feed my appetite to learn, an influx of eye-rolls followed my endless questions in class—you’re Asian, why don’t you get this?—leading me to suppress my curiosity. Regardless of whom I was with, I acted differently to fit their contrasting expectations of me, and soon began rejecting my diversity with them.

But even when I silenced myself around family or in class, more questions flooded my head: Why was I letting others paint the image of who I should and shouldn’t be? As I should’ve expected, I persisted in asking why.

My questioning not only sparked my desire to defy others’ prejudices about my capabilities, but also reignited my natural curiosity. The same isolation I felt as the minority at the dinner table, the youngest student in Calculus, and one of the few girls in my summer Engineering course reaffirmed that I never fit others’ expectations. My newfound passions for engineering and human rights taught me to embrace difference in perspective, so rather than feel insecure about being the outlier, I realized that the attributes for which others alienated me are the ones I’m proudest of. As I grew into a proud, biracial girl, I proved to myself my own potential rather than prove my worth to

Others. 

Whether I’m building a spaghetti bridge capable of holding 22 pounds, laser-cutting a prototype in the lab, or chanting along the Women’s March on NYC, my empowerment from embracing my mixed identity allowed me to flourish while investigating the why’s and how’s of the world.

Instead of entering one of the two doors, I chose not to be confined by either. Through my love for both heritages, I learned that I cannot be diminished to my race because I am more than my race. I’m a foodie, I’m a physics geek, I’m an activist—I am diverse. Embracing my biracial identity sparks my motivation to defy others’ expectations, and more important, the ones I have for myself. I’m reclaiming the pen for my own story, having grown this tall and strong without the need for any magical cakes or potions.