I was born in a poor village in rural Vietnam, Giao Long, where agriculture and fishing remain the main ways of living. When I was small, Vietnam’s economy was bad, and there often was not enough food for my family. I am now in my 4th year of graduate school in the United States. My first year I lived near campus, among people who never worried about having enough food. In my third year, I moved to a housing complex where there were many Hispanic-American immigrants, who by American standards were relatively poor but who were very friendly. Although I realize that this is a limited view given how vast the U.S. is, in one sense I have seen both sides of the U.S., the well-to-do and the poor, and it has given me empathy and some small sense of understanding for Americans and their diversity.
When I was 10 years old, we moved to Hanoi, the capital. I was amazed and wondered about people’s behaviors, which were so different from in my small, rural village. This is probably the beginning of my interest in psychology, as a ten year old trying to understand what these city dwellers’ behavior meant, and why they were so different from my village. Or at least why they seemed so different. I have begun to understand on one level, that they were not so different after all.
In Vietnam, psychology is new. If you went to my village today and asked what a nhà tâm lý was (Vietnamese for psychologist) people would probably look at you blankly. When I was a high school student, everyone wanted to be an engineer, an architect, a doctor, or work for the army. I realized that I was not suitable for those jobs. I realize I am an introverted person, I prefer to sit and read books and think about my own experience, then think about other people and try to understand their behaviors and their experience.
In 2002, after finishing high school, like all other students I took the national examination to enter the university. At that time, about one in five students passed the exam. I was accepted for two universities. I chose to study psychology, much to the surprise, frustration, and ultimately anger of my family members. My classmates literally thought I was crazy. Years later, they still ask me “If you could choose again, what you would choose?” I still answer “I would choose psychology”.
In a one page essay, I cannot say much about myself, about being selected by NIH to come to the United States to the Vanderbilt University Clinical Sciences program, about being a part of and becoming a faculty member in the Graduate Program in Clinical Psychology at Vietnam National University, the first program in clinical psychology in my country. In 500 words, you cannot say much to describe yourself, unless you are a poet, and I am not a poet. I am a psychologist.
(Cong Tran, written in June 2012)