Hi, thanks so much for joining me.

Of course, thanks so much for interviewing me. Interviewing college students must be so different, since the whole concept of 20/20 is hearing from graduates who are in this mindset of "how do I plan for my future?", "where is my home going to be?" — etc. As college students, we're still in a bubble.

True, but college is still a part of the twenties too. When I was 19 turning 20, it dawned on me, "My god, I'm technically not a teenager anymore, what comes after that but before the soccer mom vans and white picket fence"? But a lot of the same uncertainties and topics I usually discuss still apply, even at the beginning of your twenties. So tell me a little bit about yourself and your background.

So, my name is Tan, and I'm a 20 year old in college. I'm a junior doing environmental studies. I transferred out of Wharton, Penn's business school, in my sophomore year because the curriculum wasn't my cup of tea. I guess I was naïve, I didn't think I'd enter the business world; I always thought I'd do social work or government or urban planning.

What forces influenced you while growing up to shape your interests?

The number one thing is my family and their situation. We're from the working, lower middle class, whatever you want to call it. My parents grew up in rural China during the Cultural Revolution, and they didn't get past grade school. The main theme in my life growing up was their sacrifices, and it's what propels me to work hard. It seems like it's a common narrative in immigrant families.

Were you born here? If not, did you come to America when you were young?

No, I was born in Hong Kong. I'm "1.5 generation", I suppose. I came when I was young.

I am too. I wouldn't believe in the half-generation difference was a big deal, except I was born in China and my brother was not and we behave very differently regarding matters related to the "homeland". I do wonder if it's because... not that I spent any more time in China, but because I know I was born there, I feel a little more connected.

You asked me what forces were most visible to my upbringing. Could you answer that question so I can get a sense of what you mean?

I'd probably talk about being 1.5 generation, growing up in Texas, and the different identities I took on. I went from being the only Chinese kid in elementary school to going to a middle school with a few more Asian kids who all knew each other through the same church groups I wasn't a part of. Then, in high school, I was a part of a generally "nerdy" group of great people and found peers that shared my lifestyle and interests, as opposed to just sharing my cultural identity. After that, there was going on to college to find that I really was very interested in my cultural identity and wanted to explore it more.

To be honest, this project started because I truly didn't know what to expect or even what I wanted out of my twenties. When I was little, I thought I'd be 25 and married or something (clearly not on that path right now, haha), and just didn't know what to do with myself. There was this big blank slate in my imagination for what this period of life was supposed to contain. This was around the same time I started looking into the idea of unlived lives. There's a part of us that wants to travel, do exciting things, and what we're doing now is a bit of a compromise. A blog I read a lot, Brain Pickings, pointed out, "How we spend our days is how we spend our lives." Whatever you do on a daily basis, when aggregated, is what you spend your entire life.

That's a little scary to think about... So you talked about your identity — did you ever "own" it?

In high school, I think I kind of rejected it. I didn't want to be lumped in with all of the other Asians. But... the weird forces of life kicked in and I made friends and I did end up getting lumped in together. I think that self-actualization is critical here. People do this in different ways, when they're exploring their social, economic, political, sexual identities; that was just my path to "self-actualization."

Speaking of unlived lives — I know I'm skipping around — but what are some things that you can imagine or fantasize as what you want to do, but it's so divorced from your current reality that it doesn't ever seem really possible?

There are so many things — I wanted to write books, be an artist, be an academic. I had dreams of being able to pursue all of these tangential interests. If I were to go to college now, I think I'd have a totally different perspective. Back then, I didn't know how to study — no, I knew how to study, but I didn't know how to learn. Part of that was leftover conditioning from high school, where I didn't know how to learn either. I spent all my time memorizing stuff and learning how to take tests.

In college, I learned how to merely get by, haha. I spent as much time on extracurricular activities as I did on my studies, if not more. But I didn't quite learn how to be deeply intellectually stimulated. Even for the topics I was interested in, I didn't dive very deeply into it. Since I've graduated, I've been learning about various research methods and how to synthesize arguments, and I'm piecing together this field that I could've spent 4 years devoting myself to in school. I do feel more driven to learn now, but it's more disorganized because I'm learning things here and there.

What are things you would do again?

I think I'd try to reach out to my professors more. The most recent regret I had was related to an independent study project I was doing. It was an awesome project related to large-scale disaster and catastrophe risk management, led by a very sage professor in the OPIM department. As I was doing the project, I felt like I was going through the motions without truly understanding what was at hand. Now that I know more about design thinking and how to conduct stakeholder interviews, field research, and statistical analysis, I feel like that project could've had a much larger impact, not only on me or on the university, but in the field I was working in.

Also, I wish I had the guts to just run with it. People in college are always doing projects, publicizing it and just going for it. They put themselves out there, like, "Hey, this is what I'm doing!" That's something I'm still not very comfortable with. Amanda Palmer, a musician (from the Dresden Dolls) did a TED talk about this — about being an artist and having to ask for help. She was a street performer, one of those people who dressed themselves up and took tips. It's hard to ask for money. It's hard to ask for other people to do something for you to begin with, especially strangers. When you're an artist, you're asking people to take a look at your art, and you have to realize that people are going to reject you at some point. And a lot of people prevent that fear of failure by just not putting themselves out there. I got much better in college at putting myself out there in terms of applying for stuff, meeting people, and doing things, but with art and my brainchildren, I was afraid to own it. I had to spread it out in little spurts. I'd show my friends, who were always supportive. If they were iffy, then that project would never see the light of day again. But there are so many people at Penn that just go for it. Some people think they're obnoxious, but at the same time, it's so brave of them. Two sides of the coin — maybe they're driven by the ego, but the other side is, they're the ones that are going to be able to seize things in life because they're putting things out there.

Maybe you're held back because you feel like your entire persona isn't that of the artist. You studied business, and did a lot of other things.

A little bit. I'm still all over the place in that I know my value is that I can speak fluently about a lot of different fields, but in any of those fields, I can't claim to be an expert. I'm probably better at art than most coders, but I'm not the best artist. It's an impossible standard to have. Ira Glass from This American Life has that very famous comment about beginners — "Nobody tells this to beginners..." That's how I feel. Because I have this taste, my work disappoints me and I have to keep trudging through it.

When you were on campus, what projects did you want to publicize? Do you mean, in terms of art?

Even a start-up idea, or if I wanted to start a club or organization, I wish I just went for it. College takes away a lot of those barriers. But all things considered, there's nothing I really regret in college. I think I made the most out of my time here, except for really connecting with professors and valuing classwork. After I graduated, I had enough time to read about topics I was interested in and knew how to narrow my focus, but I don't have the resources I had in college. It's a kind of paradox.

That depends on your goals, too. Valuing your classwork is a means to an end.

Although, in thinking about it, this makes sense to me as to why people go to grad school, and are so much more focused on the topic once they're there.

By the way, we should probably get to your interview soon, haha. Every time I sit down with someone for one of these conversations, I feel like I'm getting interviewed as well since it's a requisite part of a two-way conversation.

Haha, yes of course. It can be a mini-interview; I'm kind of reticent anyway. Sorry for going off-topic; it's interesting to hear your perspective as someone older who has gone through some of these transitions.

I'm beginning to suspect that's why I started this in the first place — to be nosy and hear about what everyone else thinks. So, tell me a little about how you grew up.

I was born in Hong Kong and moved to the US when I was 5. I first moved to Connecticut, a small predominantly white town with no Asian families. I moved to Miami during middle school, where it was totally different — there were no white people, all Hispanic (mostly Cubans). Miami is a refuge for Cuban culture. There, also, I was the only Asian girl, but I think moving to Miami was a real shocker. In the first week of middle school, someone stole my MP3 player, so it was a big contrast from the sterile, small-town environment of Connecticut.

What brought your family over there?

My brother was accepted to the University of Miami, and my parents wanted a change of scenery.

So what brought your family to America in the first place?

I think it's because they didn't want my brother to grow up to be a bad kid, do drugs — you know.

And they felt that this would happen in Hong Kong?

The culture was different back then. Films about Hong Kong's triad underground were a big hit, especially with youth. It was our fortune to have family in the states who were able to sponsor our immigration.

So your parents mostly moved for your brother and his future. You have four siblings, how old are they?

My oldest brother is 30 now. My second brother is 27 and just moved to the UK. He's in a relationship with a woman he met at his company that he's known for six months, and he's uprooted himself to go to the UK. Isn't that crazy? For his twenties, I guess it's not that big of a statement. My sister is 25 and is also a graphic designer for Kate Spade. I'm the youngest, and my English is the most fluent because I moved here when I was young.

Do your older siblings have varying levels of American-ness?

I think it's gradual. My oldest brother can speak English the least proficiently, listens to Hong Kong radio, and things like that. My sister is more American — she uses Pinterest? Does that say something about being American?

Do you view yourself as having a strong American identity?

I have a strong Miami identity. I live outside downtown Miami, and it's a town with the second highest percentage of Spanish speakers in the US.

Wow, do you speak Spanish?

No, I used to when I worked in my parent's restaurant during high school. None of the customers spoke English. My parents basically speak no Spanish. They spoke a little English when they were in Connecticut, working for my aunt's deli.

Your siblings have a pretty big age range. Do you feel like they fulfill different roles because of that age range?

Not really. My family isn't particularly close. I'm not sure if it's cultural, this lack of emotional attachment or effusing of emotion. We're all pretty independent, but it's fair to say my family still shaped me a lot growing up. It was mostly regarding my parent's sacrifices, especially in their job. They ran a small take-out restaurant in Miami for four years. It was just us; we didn't hire anyone. They never wanted to work for "the man"; they wanted to earn money through their own business. In Hong Kong, they sold fruit and according to them, they were the best fruit vendors in Hong Kong, or maybe at least in their small neighborhood.

I can think of many families who moved to America, or even Florida specifically, that ended up working in the food industry.

It's quite common — it's something they can do with limited grasp of English or Spanish. When my dad migrated from mainland China to Hong Kong, the first thing he did was sell vegetables, and then move on to selling fish ball kebabs. Get this — back in the day, it was real fish balls — he ordered the fish, skinned it, and put it on a stick. Nowadays, it's just flour. From fish balls, they moved on to congee...

So they're very entrepreneurial.

Yes, I guess they are. Once, when my mom was selling fruit, there was a category 8 typhoon and they were running from the police at the same time because they weren't supposed to sell on the street. They would occasionally — actually, always — get chased by the police and even arrested sometimes. Every time they'd pay the bail. I was in her womb once when she was being chased and fell, so I guess even physically, their sacrifices affected me.

Wow, that's crazy. Did they ever set any expectations of what they wanted you to grow up and do?

Not at all. Zero. If you're talk about parenting, they always said that education is important, "do better than the Americans". It was always about that. But they didn't know any English and couldn't check up on my grades or my homework. Also, they were too busy working.

So, you mentioned that your parents shaped you, but was it because their path brought you to where you are now? It sounds like they were fairly hands off.

They didn't exactly teach through words. It was about how I saw them in their struggle. Working in the same restaurant with them every day for four years, I saw when they were weak and still making fried rice. One day, my mom just fainted during a peak hour on a Saturday, so it was just my dad holding down the restaurant. He was doing everything, and I was just with my mom, lying there, immobile. It was a moment that really affected me...

Did you always feel like you had that awe in terms of what they did? Sometimes, kids see their parents in a moment that changes how they view them forever. Was their sacrifice something you always knew growing up, or was there a moment where you really internalized this?

Growing up, I always knew this. I didn't understand it on that deep of a level, but it was always there. It was always about the sacrifice.

I think the cultural expression of love and sacrifice is sometimes missed by young kids, especially growing up in contrast to an American culture that is all about expressiveness, saying "I love you" and showing up at your kid's baseball games. Not that I played baseball, but when I was a younger teen, I would constantly look for that kind of affirmation but my parents’ style was just different. It even took a few times when my parents would explain to me very explicitly, "We're Chinese; we don't parade around advertising these things." It might not be fair to say all Chinese families are like this, but for my parents at least, it was a cultural issue.

Was it something you sought out?

Maybe initially at first. I didn't know any better. There were Asian families around me when I was growing up, but being a minority subculture in mainstream America and without steady access to Chinese culture, it was harder to understand that. I was constantly made aware of my family's differences. The idea of an immigrant parent's sacrifice was something I took for granted. The media didn't reinforce it, and my friends didn't reinforce it. But my own realization of that sacrifice has resulted in a sense of gratefulness. So for you, when did that realization come? Do you feel like you've always been on the same page as your family?

Yes, actually. I saw how hard they worked every day; they didn't need to tell me. If I needed the warmer, gushier type of love, I didn't really know it.

So, having seen what your parents did, did you ever want to follow in their footsteps?

I think my interests were mostly carved out on my own. I'm not following in their footsteps in that I'm getting an education and it's a totally different era now.

What drove you to want to apply to Penn?

It was very serendipitous. There was a scholarship program called the Posse Foundation that recruits 10-12 public school students in each major city, and send them together as a posse to top universities across the country. The idea is that students do better when they have a support network. I actually only knew about Penn from going through that recruitment process. I was originally going to stay in state because I didn't think I was qualified to go anywhere else, but happily, that was not the case.

That's great that this foundation's mission was effective in bringing you here.

Definitely. Growing up, I didn't even think about dream schools. Did you?

I grew up in a very different context — my parents were both grad students in the sciences, so education was extremely important and my work was closely watched. You know, growing up it was "Harvard or bust!" and then eventually, "Ivy League or bust!" You know the type, haha.

There's a book I was reading about by Andrew Solomon, who is writing about all different kinds of love — the idea of love, no matter what. He writes about deaf communities, or parents of dwarves or children with Down's syndrome and how that relates to horizontal and vertical identities. Vertical identities are traits you inherit from your parents, like ethnicity, physical appearance, or culture, but horizontal identities are identities different from your parents and often you have to seek out companions in your peer group. For example, many gay children are born to straight parents, or blind children born to seeing parents. That necessitates going out and finding and defining your identity on your own, separate from your parents. I liked the concept of the book a lot, because of the force it takes for parents to bridge the gap across their differences and understand how their children's identities are different.

I brought up this tangent because we were talking about unlived lives earlier. One of the strongest forces I've seen was how parents tend to will their unlived lives upon their children. For a lot of parents, children are a chance at immortality — they get to continue living the life that they want. But it's hard, and one major part of parenthood is about coming around to the realization that your children will one day be their own independent people with their own character traits. While a lot of their identity is inherited from the parents vertically, they are also developing their own needs and have horizontal identities they share with their cohorts and their generation.

I see this happen all the time — I see banker parents tell their kids to avoid the long hours and personal stress, and it's the opposite for my dad, who did sciences but always had a yen for finance and wanted to earn the big bucks. It was often a source of contention, impacting where I applied to college and what I wanted to study. I always suspected that deeper than the desire to establish your kids in a universally accepted "well-to-do" field, there was a chance for the parent to relive their choices and change it. But it's hard on the kids. I knew that I always had my parents’ love, but what I wanted was their approval. The easiest way to get approval, in my case, was to get their agreement. As long as my parents had the idea of what they wanted me to do, I knew that I had to be the one to submit to their will, not vice versa.

From their point of view, their years of experience covered it all — they moved across the ocean, learned a new language, did a graduate degree, lost it because it didn't transfer between countries, redid a degree in America — "I went through this rodeo, I know what to do." But while I was reading about Andrew Solomon's book, I couldn't shake off those horizontal identities.

My identity as a 1.5-generation Asian American is not shared with my parents. And my children will be different from me. That was a revelation for me. As I'm going through life, I'm thinking about the lessons I learned and the inclination is to pass those lessons all on to my kids. But this came like a flash — you have to sit back and trust them, too.

So, for you, your whole life has been this observation of your parents and their sacrifices, how hard they worked to support your family. It formed a strong part of your vertical identity as an immigrant, with a gradient of American-ness in your family.

Now that you're 20, what expectations do you have for this decade? How do you want to take that part of you and apply it?

It's really hard to say, even though it shouldn't be. I'm very inarticulate about this question because I haven't thought through anything concrete. I don't want to take it day by day, but I haven't teased out any concrete plans.

That's totally fine, too. When I was in college, especially in the middle of school, I rarely thought about what I would do afterwards. Once you graduate and are out of the school context, the "what now?" question gets more relevant.

For most students, I guess the focus is around jobs. I want to support my parents. I need to support my parents. Everybody is interested in travel. What else? Travel, read a lot, fall in love. The stuff you see on TV. I'll probably have to get back to you about this. It really is different as a college student, thinking about these topics. But like you said, the way you live your days is the way you live your life. I want to plan a little, even if plans don't always come to fruition.

Sometimes, it helps to think about what overarching things are important to your life. What would you say your top three are?

Love. Family. Creativity.

Agreed, the foundations of any good life. So, this was a very unique interview in that half the time, this turned into an interview about me. Thanks for entertaining that, Tan! I know we have to wrap this up, so in conclusion, ten years from now, what do you think your thirty-year-old self would tell your twenty-year-old self?

Express love as often as you can. ■