the rougher side of being surrounded by “people who look like me”

I grew up mostly surrounded by white and Asian people. I was one of 3 black people in my middle school and one of maybe 30 in a high school of 2800. There was always this sense that I was “the other”. Whenever I walked into the room, I was the only person of my "category" there, and I couldn’t really do anything about it. 

But the thing is, sometimes I felt that way around black people too. Sometimes I would end up in groups of black people, but I wasn’t like those black people, and everyone knew it. People told me that I “acted white”. The way I spoke, the way I viewed school, the things I was interested in—they didn’t fit the mold of these black people. So I grew up basically never fitting in—too black for the white people, and too white (too much of an “Oreo”) for the black people.

When I went to college, everything changed. There were more black people around me than I had even been around in my life, but that wasn’t the thing. It was the kind of black people I was surrounded by. The black people at Harvard talked like me, dressed like me, valued education as much as me. They were to a large extent, like me. For the first time (at least in a school setting…refer to the “Black Panther” C&C post) I was surrounded by people who looked like me. And it was cool! it was cool hanging out with the other black girls and realizing that I wasn’t the only one of my "specific kind”, if you will.

But sometimes, it wasn’t so cool.

Here’s why.

All of a sudden, I had found my “group” per se. After a whole lifetime of not fitting in, I had finally found the group where I was supposed to “fit in”. These were the guys and girls that I was to look up to…and to set up as a benchmark. If I was not doing as well as them, and if I wasn’t doing the stuff they did or liking the stuff they liked, it made me less of a Black Harvard Girl. And who was I, if not a Black Harvard Girl? 

So instead of my friends they became my idols. If I didn’t think the exact same thing with the exact same perspective on an issue as they did, it made me question my own blackness. If I didn’t do as well in school as they did, it became a stumbling block to me. Why can’t I do as well as her? Am I not just like her?

It took me a couple of years to figure out that the answer to that is NO.

I am not just the sum of the people who look like me. I am ME. And each black girl who looks like me is not just “another black girl” either. Every person is fearfully and wonderfully made. Every person has their own UNIQUE gifts and/or talents. Each person is made to make his or her own mark on the world. Each person has his or her own race to run. I spent a lot of time looking at other black girls wondering why I didn’t run my race just like them, not knowing that my only job was to finish MY OWN race. And as I came into myself, I realized that difference is not an enemy. Other people thinking different, or learning different, is not bad. We can all make it to the other side.

Maybe you’re a black girl reading this, the opinion of another black girl, and you have never had this problem. That’s wonderful! You go be your beautiful black self! You don’t have to relate to me or people like me on everything ever. If you did, you’d be a copy, and that’s not who you’re made to be.

But I reckon I’m not the only person with this experience, which is why this post is public. Let’s help each other. :)

Hillsong Conference

In 2015, I told God that one day I wanted to go to a Hillsong concert, and that has been fulfilled in more ways than one...

One of those was that last night, I got to attend the tail-end of the US Hillsong Conference. The Hillsong Conference is a series of three-day conferences where you get to hear speakers, do breakout sessions and worship and jam with the Hillsong worship teams. They had conferences in Australia, the UK, and the US, and I was fortunate that the US conference happened to land in LA this year! (It's usually in New York City.) 

I wasn't able to attend all the conference, but they were gracious enough to be selling tickets to all the night sessions for a pretty fair price, so I went to the Saturday night one. And it was LIT!

Due to a lack of preparation I missed a large part of the first worship set, but the rest of the program made up for it. The sermon, preached by a pastor from Georgia named Jentezen Franklin, was relatively simple, but it was worth hearing. Basically, he said that if we continue to depend on ourselves and how much we deserve blessings from God, we won't get anything. The whole point of the Gospel is that Jesus and his sacrifice is the only thing that made us pure and gave us the right to receive anything from God. Several times during the sermon, he stopped preaching and directed the crowd to stop and worship for a moment. I think he really wanted the crowd to direct themselves towards God and to look to God rather than to themselves.

I got a similar sentiment from everything else that happened that night--that the point of the whole conference was for us to look to God, not to ourselves, Hillsong or any other human establishment. At one point during the night, the lead pastor of Hillsong Church, who is definitely not a singer, started singing the song that the worship team were playing. After a moment of confusion, the crowd joined him in singing the song, and we literally led ourselves in worship; the team just played the melody while we sang. Though it seemed a little awkward at the time, I actually enjoyed that moment immensely. I sensed that Hillsong were trying to bring out the worshippers in us, instead of having us look to them for a good worship experience.

I've had the privilege of attending a couple of big Christian conferences in my life, and until recently I had a little problem with them. The conferences were always great, the messages were wonderful and relevant and life-changing, and the worship would always be good; but when the conference was over, I'd come back home to my normal life, and almost forget that it all happened. Because I was looking to the preachers, to the crowd, to the conference to inspire me and to bring me something new, I found myself unable to perpetuate what they had given me for the most part. But at this conference, I sensed that everyone, including the worship team, the preachers, the staff, and the crowd were all looking to God together for inspiration. 

After the sermon (and our singalong moment with the lead pastor), the worship team did another set, and it was awesome. Most of the songs were newer, but there was one song in there that had been a part of my teenage years. Singing that song along with the huge crowd and with the team was the fulfillment of a dream that had been in my heart for years, and I definitely let out my best little-girl scream when they played the first note. The worship team was incredible, and they put their hearts into the set, but there were points where I could barely hear them above the crowd. Again, we were leading worship together. 

Overall, it was a great night and I'm really glad I went! Next year's conference is in New York again, but the year after that (2019) it will probably come back here. I hope to be able to go again before medical school ends. In the meantime, I get to go to Hillsong's campus in downtown LA today. God is good! 

Thoughts on a middle school graduation

Yesterday, I went back to my middle school to watch a close family friend graduate from eighth grade. Other than a cursory tour that I'd given my cousin a couple of years back, it was my first time stepping into my middle school since I myself had graduated seven years ago. The whole experience gave me so much to think about that I had to write a blog about it.

I arrived about ten minutes late and to my chagrin, I missed the processional. I came in through the back of the gym where the graduation was taking place, and I saw that the bleachers, which are small to begin with, were almost empty. There were chairs set up on the gym floor and almost all the attendees as well as the band were in the chairs. It was the smallest graduation I'd been to in a while. I'd forgotten just how small my middle school was. As I came in by the bleachers, some of the sixth and seventh graders looked at me (naturally), and I suddenly felt very awkward. Thank God, my friend's dad showed up around the same time as me, and I found him and a seat almost immediately after that.

I arrived just in time for the student speeches. A couple of students spoke about all the good memories they had of elementary and middle school (since everyone in the middle school went to the same elementary school). As expected, they sounded very fond of their time there. As I recounted my own memories of middle school, I felt awkward again. The students spoke of a strong community, of having good friends for life, while I remembered feeling excluded almost all the time and wondering if I would ever have any friends. What made it worse was knowing that my poor friend hadn't fared much better than me. Not much had changed in seven years.

It certainly wasn't all bad, though. I loved elementary school, so it made me happy when the students talked about memories from there. I happened to sit behind a couple of teachers from elementary school who still remembered me and were eager to hear about how my life had been going. It was really nice to see them. Also, one of the student speakers talked about the various achievements of my middle school's sports and academic teams over the past year, and it was funny to listen to because again, nothing had really changed in seven years. The basketball teams were still terrible. Cross country, volleyball and wrestling were decent, and an eighth grader had to miss graduation because he was competing at the National Spelling Bee. Same academics and athletics.

They presented a couple of awards, and then they called up all 48 students to get their diplomas. I was so proud of my friend. Many of the girls impressed me by wearing fashionable short dresses and extremely high heels that I can't even wear now at age 20, but my friend wore a silver-grey floor length dress with gold jewelry and her hair up in a bun. She looked so unique and elegant and classy. When I took pictures with her, she looked a lot better than I did.

After the graduation ceremony, we went to a nearby hotel for the after party. When I'd graduated, I hadn't even gone to my after party, so it was all new to me. As it happened, my friend's family and I ended up next to the new principal and the new superintendent, both of whom were very nice. After dinner, we watched a special movie that some students or the PTA had made, showing memories and the students answering various questions about their experiences. One of the questions they asked, naturally, was what the kids wanted to do with their future. Everyone had pretty high goals, which was good, but my friend made me proud again when she said she wanted to do something that made her happy and helped people.

After the movie, the dancing began. At first it was awkward to even watch the middle schoolers dance, let alone get on the dance floor. But as time went on and they played songs that the adults and I liked (namely the Cuban Shuffle), I got onto the floor to dance, though I generally kept my distance from the graduates as it was their night. Around this time I met a former classmate whose sister had graduated that night. I believe we were the only twenty-somethings who stayed for the dancing, so I was happy that neither of us would have to be alone. We got kiddie cocktails at the bar (she doesn't drink much and I'm not 21 yet) and had fun together.

The graduates danced in a very tight circle which didn't even take up the entire dance floor. My friend alternated between dancing in the circle and coming out to dance with her mom or me and my classmate. At one point, she was with me and she was looking at the circle but she wasn't sure if she could enter in. On the outside of the circle, I saw another girl in a beige dress and shorter heels who had won three big awards during the ceremony and had given the first student speech. I recognized her immediately. The girl looked back, and when she saw my friend hesitating, she took my friend's hand and pulled her into the circle to dance with the others. You don't forget people like that. The girl was quite the big shot, and she could have easily blended in with the popular group, yet she was still nice to people who weren't as popular as her. There was a girl like that in my graduating class who always at least tried to make me feel included. Her name was Katherine, but everyone called her K.K. I haven't forgotten her to this day, and I don't think I ever will.

I drove my friend home that night, and after I got home I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was quite the bag of mixed feelings. Memories flooded my head throughout the ceremony and even the dance, and it was interesting how that same themes of awkwardness and loneliness that had defined my middle school experience came back to see me again, as if they were old friends. I'm certainly not nostalgic for middle school at all, but I'm not angry about my experience either; I think it gave me a lot of compassion and made me stronger, and I can see that in my friend too. Also, I made friends in high school and college, so that awkwardness phase was definitely past for me. Coming back, it just felt like looking through a scrapbook and thinking through all the memories, good and not so good. My biggest hope now is that my friend has a wonderful high school experience so that if she ever comes back for a graduation ceremony, she'll feel the same way as I do.