After the death of both my grandfathers and my uncle's cancer diagnosis, I decided that if there was any time to learn about my Chinese culture and my family, it was now. Growing up in the rural Midwest, I swept the Chinese side of me under the rug for my own safety, never to come out but momentarily during family parties. My Mandarin is decipherable at best. It was only until I arrived at Yale that I experienced diversity for the first time.
Taking a semester to live alone in Shanghai was the spontaneous result of a downward depressive spiral I felt myself becoming sucked into as my graduation looms ever larger. The impending corporate rat race after Yale was slowly suffocating me — nearly all my friends have full-time corporate offers in hand and I hold nothing but my camera and love for films, which may very well get me nowhere. In a year, my friends will be maximizing shareholder value while I'll be attempting to maximize my free will.
These past few months, I have been asking myself questions: Is it fruitless to live in the pursuit of fulfillment? Has my time here been nothing but a series of wrong turns? Have I been spending all my energy on the wrong people, in pursuit of the wrong things? Is it possible to make a difference in a world of indifference?
It might take me a lifetime to find the answers, but at least in Shanghai, I'm beginning now.
Contact Daphne Joyce Wu at daphne.wu@yale.edu.