For Unity Day of 2021, I prepared and led a session on Chinese adoption. This was the first time I had ever openly shared my experience with adoption. At first, I was worried that I wouldn’t have the courage or enough information to do so; however, I found a lot of confidence and comfort in the three other girls helping me present and lead the session. Part of the reason I had never talked about adoption before was that there weren’t many people who I knew that went through a similar experience. I am thankful that Fountain Valley has such a high ratio of Chinese adopted girls compared to the total population of the school allowing me to find those like me. With that high ratio in mind, I thought it would be beneficial for the FVS community to learn about what we have gone through and, ultimately, spread awareness over adoption whether it be transracial, international, or both. In our session, we provided a brief history of China’s One-Child Policy and how we presumed we ended up in the adoption system. During the session, I not only taught about my experience, but I also learned a lot more about the other co-leaders’ experiences. I was fascinated by the differences in our stories as I always presumed that it would be basically the same story as mine. We also shared our struggle with our culture and identity because of being adopted internationally. Before starting high school, I never realized how much I neglected learning about China and Chinese culture because I was trying to fit in American society.
Overall, I think this session was very successful and I would love to do it in the future. Adoption is a topic that the FVS community hasn’t talked about and now that it has been introduced I hope for it to become more commonly talked about to provide awareness and comfortability. One thing that I don’t think was very successful in providing a more tolerant and sustainable FVS community was that there were some negative, defensive responses to my session even before I even led it. At first, I was upset with the accusations and didn’t understand why people would dislike my session, but then it fueled my confidence as it showed that this topic was crucial. Looking back, I have realized that much of the language and diction in the blurb for the session could be misinterpreted and allowed for miscommunication. I didn’t think much of it at the time and didn’t think that it would be misleading or possibly offensive to others. I hope that my session and my story will lead to conversations about adoption and Chinese relations. I would love to speak more about it so that there will be a more open and tolerant FVS community where stories and experiences can be heard.
With the multiple racial/cultural issues in America occurring today, one of the most important actions for Fountain Valley is to make their POC students feel comfortable and safe. I joined the Student Cultural Organization because I understand the value of one’s culture in their identity and the struggle of not fitting in.
The first year of SCO was filled with obstacles as we were unable to finish many projects due to COVID quarantines. We started with Black History Month in which we aimed to highlight Black Americans, both their success and their struggles. Although we were unable to finish the project, I learned a lot about the variety of Black American culture. We often think of only African Americans when accounting for blacks in the US, oftentimes disregarding Caribbean Black Americans. Indulging in Caribbean culture by making Jamaican Patties, while still paying attention to African Americans helped me understand the diversity even within a race similar to Asians. A project I started to enact was in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander month. I had planned to kickstart the month with a luau on May 1st (Lei day). We were going to have a luau style food provided by the dining hall and a local Polynesian dance group, whom I dance with, was going to provide entertainment. In addition to this luau, I had planned a potluck for Asian students on campus to share their favorite dishes with one another. Unfortunately this was all canceled due to the last COVID quarantine. Thankfully, I was able to make a video for AAPI month.
This year was a little more “normal”. With the more laxed COVID restrictions, we had significantly more international students and were able to have the leadership training. For the leadership training, The Culture of Dignity presented their case of respect vs dignity. I had never heard of dignity used in the way of dignifying others. From what I grew up with, dignity was a standard you held yourself at. It was very interesting to learn these new definitions and try to apply them to our leadership and just overall human nature. We learned that you don’t necessarily have to have respect for everyone but you should always dignify them. Additionally, we worked out scenarios in which we would have to exhibit appropriate enforcement and understand how to react. On the SCO side of leadership, we worked with the new international students. I had missed the first meeting because I joined Bob in picking up one of the new international students. Although she was very tired and was new to the area, we tried our best to make her comfortable. The next day, we worked with the admissions office in providing tours to the students. Having lived on campus for four years, I have never really appreciated the resources we have. On the tour, I saw all of them amazed by the new athletic center, the horse barn, and the art barn. They definitely influenced my perception of FVS for the better. I learned how privileged I was to be able to use these places and made me want to be more active on campus. Later that day, we debriefed as SCO to talk about what we learned and possible issues. One of the biggest issues was the usage of English versus their native language. While FVS is an English-speaking school and we encourage this as a form of communication, I think the issue is more than a black and white situation. First, for most of them, it was their second day in America. It takes time to be comfortable with a new language. Second, they were speaking with students who could relate to them. At Fountain Valley, the community is a huge part of our commitment. A common language is a form of community in a place where one isn’t familiar with. Third, some of them were translating for other students. The overall enforcement of speaking English seems to be too strict without looking into the situation. Thankfully we had this conversation and the clarification both with SCO and with the peer leader meeting.
All of this was all before the 2021-2021 school year started, indicating a great start for the Student Cultural Organization. And I am excited to have the opportunity to be a peer leader for the freshman.