meaning.

In My Asian American Studies Law Class on Friday we were supposed to do a review session for our midterm but instead are professor proposed to us these questions and the following conversation ensued (in the same document are also my notes from the review but I left those babies out :D ):


Q: Why are you taking this class? Why are you in school?
We always talk about critical thought, why can’t we thinking critically about our own lives?

Given opportunity/want to learn
Understand history/present
Impact community
Goal-finish school-get to where you want
Carol -Want to become a lawyer (works at the cal calling center)
Joanne- Understand law and rules to understand inequalities; everyone affected
Tomas- Wants to become a lawyer in Korea – wants to be able to compare the U.S. vs. Korean Constitutions and systems
Sean - Likes the art of argument and persuasion
Eric- to learn about different things he didn’t know about and get a degree and a job (him his mom and father came to US from South Korea in 6th grade)
Justine-wants to make her family proud, wants to become a lawyer, wants to change lives
Jackie- Can better understand how she came to be in America (born in states though), wants to gain the perspective of how it was for Chinese/Korean/immigrant experiences in coming to United States, Values that they stood up for justice. I don’t believe that the world is black and white. I believe that there is a lot of gray.
Tiffany-More spiritual-understanding your own oppression and using it to relate to others, “I think because of different class/gender we face different forms of oppression but sometimes we organize around that oppression and don’t realize how we can understand ourselves and each other. If I want to improve my own condition I have to understand other peoples’ conditions as well.
Lisa-I thought it’d be interesting and I might want to go to Law School but now that you ask why, the only thing I can think of is because it’s my way of trying to help others but then again I don’t know why. Why not help others? Because we’re exposed to more discrimination, we have to care. How can you turn your back on someone like that?

“Why do you want to help others?”
Prof. says that the recurring theme that he says that we want the truth.
One of the secrets to school is to enjoy it, when you enjoy it you do better at it. The reason why I’m putting this up there is because I want to challenge you all to see what defines you. It’s 6:41 PM, at 6:45, you can redefine yourself. You can say that you felt this way, saw something, and say that this is who I want to be. One thing that is inconspicuously absent is money, I grew up poor and that’s what I always wanted. The Nissan Z was big when I said that when I grew up I was gonna buy one and I did buy a 350 Z. I do public interest work and get paid pretty well, I’m not going to say that it’s not a part of everything, it’s a part of it as well. You can ask yourself, who am I? Do any of these apply to me, or you can choose to not care about none of that as well?

In 7th grade I always ate lunch with two of my friends. My friend Chris had two divorced parents. Chris’ family owned the only Chinese grocery store in town. Chris would get fantastic food from the cafeteria. Mike would have ding dongs, great stuff and never share with anyone. I would have a sandwich of some sort. Chris would always get French fries (which were really good). Every single day for a year, I would ask Chris for French fries and he would always say no, finally he gave in once and let me get two leftover fries. I always told myself that I’d never grow up having to ask anyone for French fries.
People always ask how can you want to help communities and still drive a sports car? (His experiences show that he wants to work for those communities but it’s still ok to have some things that you like, sheeit, you did happen to bust your butt to get to where you wanted to be in your life!)