“My dad came to America in the 90’s. He worked at one of those...

“My dad came to America in the 90’s.  He worked at one of those stalls on 34th street selling ‘I Love New York’ t-shirts and plastic Statues of Liberty.  One of his coworkers had a sister back in Bangladesh, which was my mom. The whole thing was arranged over the phone.  Even the wedding was done over the phone. Everyone was on the line: my grandparents, my uncles, the Islamic priest.  My parents didn’t even meet in person until five months after the wedding.  I’m the oldest child in our extended family. Plus I’m the first one to grow up in America, so everyone is watching me. I’m like the lab rat for the American Dream. I was initially told that I was going to be a doctor. One of my earliest memories is sitting in my SpongeBob chair, practicing my numbers and letters.  In first grade my parents hired my kindergarten teacher to tutor me after school. My mother would actually negotiate with my teachers during parent-teacher conferences.  When I didn’t have a perfect grade in 5th grade science, she convinced my teacher to let me build a baking soda volcano for extra credit.  We didn’t have food coloring so we used Bengali spices for the lava.  Right now I’m in my first year of college. My parents have let go of the doctor thing. I think they trust me now because they’ve seen me accomplish a lot of things. But I still feel a lot of pressure.  A lot of people are watching me back in Bangladesh.  The sense of family is so big there.  If one person gets lifted up, everyone gets lifted up.  So everyone wants me to do well. And I want to do well for them.”