Status Updates From Boring Asian Female

‘His exact words were “You are too similar to all the other applicants in your particular demographic, so you probably just didn’t stand out.” And when I asked him what he meant by my “particular demographic,” he cleared his throat and said, “Well, you know, Asians. And I should say, women, since on average more women apply to law school than men.”’

Oh

‘...They would see me—Elizabeth Zhang, fresh out of a top undergrad, sky-high scores—and say to each other, “I’m just not sure what she adds to our student body.” It was the politically correct version of what they really mean: “Do we really need another one of these?”

I was boring. Specifically, I was a Boring Asian Female.’

Damn 😬

“Laura, who didn’t even need Harvard, who would be fine working in one of those underpaid jobs for brain-dead trust fund kids in industries like fashion or interior design or PR.”

💀

“...my public high school in South Dakota, despite being the best public high school in the state, was still, at the end of the day, a public high school in South Dakota, and I had gone to college completely unprepared for the rigor of Columbia.”

At least she's self-aware?

“There was a stack of printer paper in the corner by the blackboard, and I imagined using the sheets to create tiny little paper cuts in the fleshy area between my index finger and thumb, creating a sufficient amount of pain to distract me from the cringe I was about to witness in this room.”

👁️👄👁️

“Not long after my father left, my mother started taking me to an Evangelical church every week, where the Sunday school teachers frightened us into faith through cartoon drawings of sinners burning in hell. (It wasn’t until college that I learned most of these images came from Dante, not Revelations.) Consequently, I had nightmares in which an old bearded man in a sweeping white robe would curse me....” 😐

“Finally, Leah’s friend poked her head out of the door. Leah squealed when they saw each other. She usually didn’t squeal when she saw me, but I wasn’t offended; only certain types of people appreciate squealing, and I am not one of them.”

Relatable

‘I shook my head. “You are missing the spirit of the question. It isn’t what major makes someone attractive. It’s what major are the attractive people happening to pick?”

“If not art history, then definitely not computer science,” Eunjin said. “They don’t even shower.”’

💀

“When we first met, after I found out that her goal was to become a concert violinist, I wondered if she was like the other artistic students I knew, the ones who simply were below average at everything except their art. But it was the second semester when we had this conversation, and I knew that she had gotten As in all of her classes...”

Girl not at Columbia!!

‘“Someday you’ll be able to eat Outback Steakhouse every day,” my dad used to say to me. “Actually, by then, you won’t even want to go to Outback Steakhouse. When you’re my age, it won’t be good enough for you.” I could not fathom that anywhere could be nicer than an Outback Steakhouse.’

Midwest millennial childhood throwback

‘“Doesn’t her dad work there?” she replied. “Wasn’t her whole spiel about how her dad, the Korean investment banker, experienced racism because the Chinese cleaning ladies working on the floor kept trying to speak Chinese to him because they thought he was Chinese?”

“Yep.”

“Wow. Truly insufferable.”’

What

“A blond-haired, blue-eyed guy from Argentina shared a heartfelt monologue about how his country still experienced the legacy of colonization. An Indian guy from the Bay Area said he hated that everyone assumed he studied computer science, even though he actually was studying computer science.”

💀💀

‘“I just don’t want us to be complacent about the white privilege that mixed people experience. It’s simply a different experience than when you’re fully Asian, like both of your biological parents are Asian. I’m not saying you guys don’t have problems—sorry, y’all don’t have problems—but it’s simply a different experience. You’re not otherized to the same degree.”’

Guess this isn't a safe space anymore

‘“It was pretty much what I expected,” I replied. “By that I mean I expected I would feel like the poorest person there, and that is indeed how I felt.”

“Eh. The bartender is probably poorer than you. I’m poorer than you.”

“Semantics, but fine.”’

Lmao girl

“The subway car smelled of stale air-conditioning with a hint of pee. It was a slight upgrade from the subway platform, which smelled like trash with a hint of feces.”

🤢

‘They mispronounced her name, calling her “Yi-jen” or “Lee-jing” instead of “En-jin.” Eunjin didn’t correct them. I was a little bit mad that she didn’t correct them. But if I were in her position, maybe I wouldn’t either.’

The ick

“The show taught us Great Plains teenagers something important about the world: that the least cool Upper East Side private school kid was still eons cooler than the queen bees of a South Dakota public school. Even the popular kids at Brookings High, the ones who looked down upon me all my life, knew that.”

Lmao

“A friend from middle school told me that because I was so smart, they now assumed that all Asians were smart.”

😐

‘If you looked her up on the internet (as I did after the first time we met), you’d find a string of articles describing her as “the ten-year-old virtuoso playing with the Philadelphia Orchestra” and “the daughter of Korean immigrants whose performance sparkled at Carnegie Hall.” Technically, only her mom is Korean. Her dad is white.’

👁️👄👁️

‘Schoenbackler described the exhibition as “a harmonious symphony of temporal epochs and spiritual contemplation through an alchemical fusion of calligraphic antiquity and the visceral fervor of Abstract Expressionism.” I would describe it as a modern take on Chinese calligraphy. The artist was Chinese, but he wasn’t there, so I was the only ethnically Chinese person in the room.’

👁️👄👁️

“SHE ALWAYS SUSPECTED SHE WOULD DIE YOUNG. SHE OFTEN dreamed of it, in fact. An intruder stabs her in the neck. A drunk driver crashes into her car. Her heart stops beating in the middle of the night.”

Depresso first paragraph

Yes plz. I love an unhinged obsession. 👀