Michael Chin,
Los Altos, CA.
I am personally grateful for both the East Asian cultural values passed down to me by my Chinese parents, as well as the diversity and liberal way of thinking hardwired into me during my time growing up in the Bay Area, as both aspects of my background have contributed equally to molding my identity as a Chinese American. My parents, drawing from their own experiences, instilled in me the importance of hard work in achieving my goals, as well as giving me the competitive desire to always perform better than all my peers both within and outside of the classroom. On the other hand, American societal values helped to ensure that these ravenous desires to crush all opposition did not result in me becoming completely self-centered and withdrawn, instead encouraging me to embrace the ideas of other individuals from a variety of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and heavily nurturing the ability to be creative, something that I once believed I was never fit to truly attain.
