"Change is Good" by Jonathan W.

     When the Chinese Communist Party suppressed the pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests,
my mother was forced to quit school and flee Beijing when she was only 21. She sought true
freedom: somewhere she could build herself and her family without restrictions, such as China’s
one child policy. In pursuit of her “American Dream”, she came to California, where she would
later raise five children.

     After ten years of working odd jobs and receiving aid from friends and family, my mother settled
and started her own trucking business in our living room, with my step-father as the only driver.
During summers, I would accompany my parents on business trips across the country, seeing
America through rural truck stops and scenic highways. At home, my mother had to create a
makeshift room in the garage for our family and rented out all of the bedrooms, so I helped her
find and manage new tenants. It was rare that I would have a room to myself. My family’s
unconventional, entrepreneurial endeavor allowed us to get by and we were grateful.
But my biological father passed away when I was eleven, just as my two older siblings began
college, disrupting the precarious financial security we had been working hard to maintain.
Incapable of surviving the high socioeconomic standards of Arcadia, my family moved to
Rancho Cucamonga. A year after moving, my mother got licensed herself and started driving
with my step-father to increase income. It became a rare occurrence for my parents to have the
leisure of staying home. I believed that leaving the community I had built myself into halfway
through high school would be horrifying, so I convinced my family to let me stay with a friend in
Arcadia for another semester. I would occasionally visit my family every weekend and lived
with my best friend during summer school and then the beginning of sophomore year.
Once I finally moved, I reminded myself that this inevitable change was similar to my mother’s
move to America. Rather than be deterred by the challenge of starting over, I pushed myself to
make the best of my time in High School. I was exposed to a world that deviated from the Asian
culture I was raised around, and I developed a standard to build my character for the purpose of
self-improvement, not to satiate society’s normatives.

     I am now on the brink of another transition, with college merely months away. We’re all in this
weird position wondering where we might end up next year, since most of us are still dreading
the college acceptance letters. But after these next couple months, it’ll all be okay. We’ll know
where we’ll want to be next year and we’ll have to make the best of the opportunity. I was
reluctant to move away from home to adapt to an entirely new environment, but it was an
experience that prompted my eagerness to explore. It revealed the true nature of the multifaceted
culture my parents came for, and how diverse a city just thirty minutes away from home can be.
College will be an experience to absorb the culture that people from across the world will bring
to us. Honestly, just have fun and enjoy life while we’re young and work hard! Let’s get through
the rest of this year!