In 250–500 words, describe how a life experience has challenged you. What did you learn from it? How has it helped you to become a better person?
My life has been nothing but struggle and turmoil. I am caught between two worlds, too white to play with the Vietnamese and too chink to play with the Americans. My parents are refugees. My grandfather was left to rot in a prison camp for half a decade after the fall of Saigon, and my grandmother peddled cigarettes and other stupid baubles to keep them alive in his absence. My entire life has led up to this moment. My people’s history has led up to this moment, and again I am made to prostrate myself and my name as my ancestors did, in the not-too distant parlors of Indochina.
What good could I do to write about all the late nights my family spent, huddled around our kitchen table, forcing me to read? What would my accounts of being victimized by racism, the distilled vintage of privileged families and children so rich they can afford to waste opportunity? My story as the child of immigrants, of the spawn of disheveled masses, yearning to breathe free, is nothing new or interesting. I am here because of circumstance.
I am the vessel of two generations’ worth of bedside prayer, the manifestation of a dead country and the ghosts who loved her. I worked hard, and continue to do so, because I can’t afford to waste the opportunities I stumble across. I excel because perfection has never been the end-goal, but the bare minimum. I succeed because that was, and still remains, the only option ever given to me.
I am not arrogant by any means, but I will not stand here and grovel before you like the peasant before his landlord, like the subject before their master. I am a first-generation Vietnamese. My people, my family, has done enough begging as it is. This moment was decided well before I was born; it—I—was inevitable.
Take me or toss me, if you don’t some other admissions board will. I’ll add diversity to your campus, I’ll contribute to your student life, I might even produce research worth reading, all in the school’s good name. I’ll do everything that is expected of me and more, but I won’t beg. My family has done enough of that for my sake.
