I remember when my father screamed at me for having bad grades my freshman year of high school. The memory of it was so vivid that when I think of it now, it still bites. I wince at the sharp words he used, yet I sense no hostility attached to them. Rather than something aggressive, it felt more surgical — a necessary sting, rather than a ruthless jab.
My father first immigrated to the United States in the 1980s after my grandfather died. He was only fourteen. His version of starting anew was different to many others pursuing the American Dream — instead of pursuing school, he worked tirelessly to support my aunt and uncle. As the oldest sibling by a couple years, he was forced into the position of a father as a teenager. He picked up random jobs, recycling bottles and cans on the streets of San Francisco for spare change instead of experiencing life how others his age would have.
That’s why part of me felt guilty when he screamed at me. I had let him down because I was wasting away my privilege to even be able to attend school — a luxury that he had never experienced. I slept through my Zoom classes and did none of my work. But being berated like that made me realize something had to change. At the time though, I just thought, “why change now? It’s too late.”
My freshman year on my transcript left the ugliest of marks. I felt immense shame towards that mark, even though when I look back now, those grades, and in a broader sense, that period of my life, have shaped who I am now so significantly that I feel like it isn’t possible for me to be myself without it. I stretched myself so thin trying to hide that part of me, but I was still unaware that my thinly stretched self was still part of the picture.
So, when I got my college decisions back in 2024 and found out that I had been rejected basically everywhere except California State University, Long Beach — which was almost guaranteed admission for my school district — I was disappointed, but not surprised. After all, I had enough self awareness to know that I was the one who brought that upon myself. CSULB is a fantastic school, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t enamored with the idea of staying at home. I love my home, but to me, it would have been no different from high school. And high school was the part of me I desperately wanted to leave behind.
Influenced by my desire to move out of my house and gain some sense of self-agency, I enrolled at Long Beach City College with the sole intention of finishing my two years and leaving home.
I had no plans at LBCC, and the moment I started, I set myself an end goal — to transfer out. That’s the goal that most people at a community college have, regardless of background. But since I was on my high horse, I thought I deserved better than just community college. Being self-absorbed left me to speed through this part of my life as quickly as I could — to separate myself from my hometown, my family, and the people who I just brushed off as background characters without acknowledging their histories.
Or at least, I wish my time at community college was that simple. Looking back now, I’m glad it wasn’t. Community college not only offered me a chance to explore my interests — and for free — but it also expanded my interactions, which was kind of ironic given that I originally did not want to talk to anyone. Veterans and retirees who want to continue their education, peers my age who were like me, and parents looking to improve their circumstances — all of them expanded my lease on life. It was these small interactions and exchanges of experience that allowed me to reinvent myself into the person that I am today.
One of the biggest reasons that I chose Swarthmore College was because of the fact that I did not know anyone here from my hometown. I wanted to be immersed in a completely new and different environment than the home that I was used to, with people from diverse backgrounds. Although my time at Swarthmore is nowhere near perfect, the (honestly) soul-draining, tiring, and mentally taxing experience of adapting to a new place allowed me to become someone new once more. Long Beach City College allowed me to become someone who cared about my work, and Swarthmore College allowed me to reinforce what I became in community college.
“I would never have thought that you were that kind of person,” said one of my friends here when I was telling her about my experiences in high school. The idea that I was once a 0.6 GPA student was a surprise to her, which I saw as evidence of how far I have become from the person that I once was.
Now, I don’t reject it, but rather, I embrace it. When people ask me about my story or where I come from, that is what I tell people: that I was once a failure. But I will never declare that I have fully claimed my identity. As I’ve already seen, a lot can change in two years, and I am excited to see who I become after my two remaining years at Swarthmore.
