Essay: The Stepping Stones of Success in an Unfair Society

Before I entered the fourth grade, I did not know the concept of race. How could I understand the concept of a minority when I was the majority. Little did I know, as I grew up, my little Asian bubble in the Outer Sunset District of San Francisco would burst. That’s too dramatic, it did not really burst. While I have learned to be aware of the social issues around me, I have spent my whole life as a male in a middle class community around fellow Asians. I have not faced too many problems such as racism or issues blocking my success. Even at UC Berkeley, there is still a huge Asian community, with Asians making up 40% of the undergraduate population in 2013. I attribute my success of getting into a prestigious university to my comfort growing up in addition to all of the resources offered to me. This runs true of most of society. Success of a student is not solely due to his or her inherent intelligence, but rather the cumulative effect of his or her educational opportunities, social policies and financial situation.
I have been given many opportunities to develop my abilities as a child. Even though my parents worked full time, my grandparents and my aunt lived with us. They patiently taught me math at the age of 3, advancing my knowledge. By the age of 5, I knew the multiplication tables. This is something that a family with a single parent or two full time working parents would not have the time to do. By first grade, I was enrolled in Chinese and Piano classes. Even though both skills did not stick, I am sure that the act of learning aided in the development of my young brain. In fourth grade, I started going to an after school program that offered homework assistance followed with extra lessons about math and English in to get ahead. I have also received the luxury of taking swimming and tennis lessons with private instructors in the hope of discovering new talents. I am sure that all these classes and opportunities helped in my cognitive development. I have been privileged with everything my family has done for me.
The middle class neighborhood I grew up in was also very safe. I grew up in the Sunset District of San Francisco, California. It is an Asian dominated neighborhood with a low crime rate. The streets are clean and everyone is relatively well off. My family always had more than enough healthy food to eat. I never had any worries about my financial situation and we were always comfortable. If I wanted something or needed something for school, money would not be inhibiting factor to stop me from getting it. Financial stability and food stability are factors that I have taken for granted. Children in families who suffer from poverty are more like to worry about their survival than success. School becomes less of a priority.
Getting into public schools is quite the ordeal in San Francisco. The school district’s student assignment system is known as the lottery. Unlike Finland, schools are not uniform. Some schools clearly have better resources and students with a better socioeconomic
standing. This is due to segregated housing patterns. The school district has tried to tackle the issue of diversity by creating a system where your address did not decide where you will go to school. The system attempts to balance parental choices with diversity factors. The policy did not seem to work in my elementary and middle school. By lottery, I got into my parents’ top choice which was Lawton Alternative Elementary School. It was a school that taught students from kindergarten to eighth grade. The population of the students was over Asian. I believe that I only saw one or two African American students in the whole school. In addition, the school was six blocks away from my house. Distance from school does make an impact on quality of education. Low income households may not be able to afford cars. This would mean reliance on a public transport system if the school is far. This could lead to tardiness and tiredness due to difficulty of travel. In addition, Lawton is a very high performing school with amazing teachers and programs. The school is where children spend most of their time, so the quality of the school is important in their development. I believe that Lawton’s community and rigor really helped develop my academic abilities and has greatly contributed to my success.
The selection of process for high school was not as forgiving, I got into a school that was not one of my choices and was on the other side of the city where I lived. It would mean hour long bus rides to school and waking up at extremely early times every day. In addition, Wallenberg was one of the high schools with lower resources. The school was converted from an elementary school meaning that the facilities were really small. The school also had very few advanced placement courses and honors courses. Low school spirit, a small school population and inefficient facilities meant that the sports teams were lacking. Weirdly, going to Wallenberg with all these seemingly negative attributes actually helped me get into UC Berkeley.
At Wallenberg, over half of the students were Asian. There is the stereotypical belief that the parents of Asian children have extremely high expectations of their children. There are families that do follow that path, but mine were not. Because my parents were immigrants and did not understand the education system, I managed academics on my own. In middle school, the rigor, the talent of everyone around me, and the lack of validation led me to have low confidence in my academic abilities. That changed at Wallenberg. Due to the school’s law of competitiveness, my abilities were actually strong relative to others. In addition, I had really strong teacher support where several teachers really focused on cultivating my academics. Teacher encouragement really fostered my confidence and I began reaching into leadership positions and different extra curricular activities. Low motivation of fellow students made it fairly easy to acquire these positions. Since our sport teams were not taken seriously, it was a smaller time commitment because the emphasis was on having fun, since we didn’t have the resources anyway. There were no tryouts and everyone automatically got in. By the end of high school, I had worked through the positions of Ecology Club President, ASB Vice President, and sophomore class Vice
President. I had participated in the school spirit club, cross country team, swim team, and Red Cross clubs. I had achieved top grades because of my strong foundation from middle school relative to everyone else’s. I ended up ranking third in my class of one hundred and sixty students.
Ultimately, UC Berkeley acknowledged that I had gone to a High School with lower resources and reached out with a Scholarship program. This program was the Cal Opportunity Scholarship. It such an honor to receive it and really helped in my decision to attend UC Berkeley because it resolved the financial burden of going to college. I assumed that I earned the scholarship through my hard work. Looking back now, I wonder if I would still be here with the scholarship if I had to a different high school.
Growing up in a mostly Asian neighborhood where I was the majority made it very easy to succeed. Everyone had similar cultures so it made it easy to make friends and connect over food and similar backgrounds. In addition, it was hard not to reap the benefits from less aware teachers imposing the Model Minority stereotype. The Model Minority Myth may harm a students if their talents lie elsewhere instead of academics, but it really helped because I did fit the stereotype. In middle school, I did not see the effects of race in teaching because the school was over ninety percent Asian. In high school, the Asian population was lower at fifty-seven percent, and I started experiencing more diverse classes. In some of my classes with students that were not as acclimated to school, I saw mutual disrespect between the teacher and student. It may not only be due to me being Asian, but it felt like the teacher automatically treated me better because I was ahead of the class and he assumed it was because I was Asian. Obviously there were confounding variables due to my good foundation and opportunities, but I do believe that being Asian did have an effect.
There were many factors that led to my success in high school which built a strong resume that gained me admission to UC Berkeley. I had lots of educational opportunities such as family time, extra classes, and after school programs that helped develop my cognitive abilities when I was younger. I grew up in a good neighborhood and in financial circumstances that did not hinder my growth. School district assignment policies led to me getting a really strong background education in middle school and elementary school and getting into a high school that really boosted my confidence and allowed my abilities to shine. I know that my success is not due solely to my hard work. Social policies, class inequalities, and opportunities play such an important role in the success of cultivating children. There has to be fair social policies that help to eliminate the differences imposed by class inequalities and create equal opportunities for everyone. This is how a society should exist. To have a society, the members of the society have to believe that it is fair and that everyone has an equal chance of social mobility. Otherwise, the society won’t be cohesive, and it will have to rely on coercive methods to keep society in place. Fairness means that more people will be integrated into society. If people believe that hard work can yield good results, they are less like to turn to crime to survive, making the society a better place for all those who reside in it.