On Old Richmond Road, all kinds of religious institutions and cultural centers can be found, all speaking to the diversity of Sugar Land, Texas. When I tell Taiwanese and other international students that I'm from Texas, the diversity and complexity of my neighborhood are the last things they can imagine.
I was born here in 2002, as the youngest child of a family with two older sisters, one ten years older, the other eight. Going through school from kindergarten to senior year, with the pandemic, I was surrounded by peers with all kinds of backgrounds. But even with diversity, I also faced times of difficulty. My parents are entrepreneurs, so risk was part our lives as we moved from place to place. Between Sugar Land and India, I struggled to settle and make long-lasting connections outside of my family. However, things got better in high school, and I finally began a journey of discovering purpose.
In high school, I loved interacting with different cultures and reading about history. I still remember looking forward to World Geography in ninth grade, learning about how societies became the way they are because of the power of place. I volunteered for my first political campaign in 2018 as a tenth grader, where I supported an Indian American congressional candidate and watched how his campaign attempted to reach voters in dozens of languages from all over the world. At school, I attended Model UN conferences, basically roleplaying as an edgy world leader, and through this experience I learned meaningful lessons about cultural adaptability, negotiation and rapid judgment in the face of complex situations.
