Essay #1

My laptop is like a passport. It is plastered with stickers all over the outside, inside,
and bottom. Each sticker is a stamp, representing a place I’ve been, a passion I’ve
pursued, or community I’ve belonged to. These stickers make for an untraditional
rst impression at a meeting or presentation, but it’s one I’m proud of. Let me take
you on a quick tour:

“We <3 Design,” bottom left corner. Art has been a constant for me for as long as I
can remember. Today my primary engagement with art is through design. I’ve spent
entire weekends designing websites and social media graphics for my companies.
Design means more to me than just branding and marketing; it gives me the
opportunity to experiment with texture, perspective, and contrast, helping me re ne
my professional style.

“Common Threads,” bottom right corner. A rectangular black and red sticker
displaying the theme of the 2017 TEDxYouth@Austin event. For years I’ve been
interested in the street artists and musicians in downtown Austin who are so
unapologetically themselves. As a result, I’ve become more open-minded and
appreciative of unconventional lifestyles. TED gives me the opportunity to help other
youth understand new perspectives, by exposing them to the diversity of Austin
where culture is created, not just consumed.

Poop emoji, middle right. My 13-year-old brother often sends his messages with the
poop emoji ‘echo effect,’ so whenever I open a new message from him, hundreds of
poops elegantly cascade across my screen. He brings out my goofy side, but also
helps me think rationally when I am overwhelmed. We don’t have the typical “I hate
you, don’t talk to me” siblinghood (although occasionally it would be nice to get
away from him); we’re each other’s best friends. Or at least he’s mine.

“Lol ur not Harry Styles,” upper left corner. Bought in seventh grade and
transferred from my old laptop, this sticker is torn but persevering with layers of tape.
Despite conveying my fangirl-y infatuation with Harry Styles’ boyband, One
Direction, for me Styles embodies an artist-activist who uses his privilege for the
betterment of society. As a $42K donor to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, a hair
donor to the Little Princess Trust, and promoter of LGBTQ+ equality, he has
motivated me to be a more public activist instead of internalizing my beliefs.
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 “Catapult,” middle right. This is the logo of a startup incubator where I launched my
rst company, Threading Twine. I learned that business can provide others access to
fundamental human needs, such as economic empowerment of minorities and
education. In my career, I hope to be a corporate advocate for the empowerment of
women, creating large-scale impact and deconstructing institutional boundaries that
obstruct women from working in high-level positions. Working as a women’s rights
activist will allow me to engage in creating lasting movements for equality, rather
than contributing to a cycle that elevates the stances of wealthy individuals.

“Thank God it’s Monday,” sneakily nestled in the upper right corner. Although I
attempt to love all my stickers equally (haha), this is one of my favorites. I always
want my association with work to be positive.

And there are many others, including the horizontal, yellow stripes of the Human
Rights Campaign; “The Team,” a sticker from the Model G20 Economics Summit
where I collaborated with youth from around the globe; and stickers from “Kode
with Klossy,” a community of girls working to promote women’s involvement in
underrepresented elds.

When my computer dies (hopefully not for another few years), it will be like my
passport expiring. It’ll be dif cult leaving these moments and memories behind, but I
probably won’t want these stickers in my 20s anyways (except Harry Styles, that’s
never leaving). My next set of stickers will reveal my next set of aspirations. They
hold the key to future paths I will navigate, knowledge I will gain, and connections I
will make.
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 Essay #2
Only ve left. As my adrenaline rushes, I carefully move my only remaining pawn
past my grandfather’s frontline when suddenly, my bushy hair is detangled violently
and my slouched back is forcibly straightened by thin, point- ed ngers - my
grandmother is launching her own daily battle against me.

Quietly enduring, I transform the pawn into a queen at the last square and remove the
king from the chess board. With a little victorious dance, I inadvertently ruin my
grandmother’s intricate braids, only to receive a light slap on the hand.
“No matter how good you are at chess, no man will take you as a wife with such bad
hair and graces.”

I wait for my grandfather to defend me as usual, but he just looks on as if what my

I sneak out for a chess game with my friends the next day. However, my eyes are
targeting not my opponent’s moves, but her lolling posture, and my hands refrain
from reaching out to poke her back. As hard as I might try and resist, a part of me is
gradually turning into my grandmother.
For most of middle school, I would spend my afternoons revising lessons in front of
my grandmother’s blackboard, left hand on my hip, right hand copying her neat
handwriting with a piece of white chalk, just like what she had done every day for the
last 35 years. In the attic room smelled of fragrant jasmines and occupied by books
with broken spines and elaborate margin notes, I would pick up the adventures my
grandmother had read and noted down. She endured two Indochina wars, a Cultural
Revolution, a Great Hunger, and countless relocations when men were sent to the
frontlines and women stayed back. Throughout my grandmother’s lifetime, it has
been mothers and daughters who breathed and loved and hurt, ful lling Confucian
duties, protecting others, and stay- ing on the supposedly safe path.

I have learned the best of the world from my grandmother, whose heart I absolutely
trust, but I do not wish to continue on the journey I know both the beginning and the
end. Though the traditional values my grandmother upholds are not always
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 impediments to progress, they do keep us prisoners of our own selves.
We can accept the world as it is and act accordingly to the expectations that govern it,
or we can be wardens of our own thoughts and choose an unknown life down the
uncharted pathways - one that can be and is absolutely more ful lling. In a
suffocating airtight room full of sweaty screaming children, I could easily have
followed human tendencies to treat them the same way I was taught - to separate boys
and girls in competition for excellence and give their stories universally happy
endings. But I want to reveal to them instead our unfettered, limitless selves,
encouraging boys and girls to work together and learn from each other’s uniqueness,
inspiring them to derive their own de nition of happiness and make it personally
appealing.

Sitting straight on my own, I am the pawn that keeps moving against obstacles and
nally transforms into an all-powerful queen, because life doesn’t end with all the
pieces remaining the same: it begins with us unlearning imposed positions, growing
unafraid and standing up even when expectations try to pull us down.
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Essay #3
I used to have very strict rules with books:
1. Never open them wider than 90 degree
2. Keep them away from any possible impurity
3. Protect the dust covers from any injury
These applied to me and anyone who borrowed my books. Inevitably, some of my
friends called me crazy but I didn’t mind the slightest. “Why bought something just
to keep it perfect”, “How can you read books that way?”. I never argued. I continued
to lend my books only to those who agreed to comply.
Don’t get me wrong. I love seeing people enjoying my books as much as I do and I
appreciate them for that. Strangely enough, it almost feels like seeing my own
children appreciating the good things in life. But as much as I was pleased to see
people engrossed in my books, I could not ght the urge to keep them safe from all
harm. To me, books were born to be protected, and I was born to protect them.
Life was good, until one day. Anh, my best friend, asked to borrow my copy of ‘The
Neverending Story’. She had never shown any interest in books whatsoever; it came
as a sweet surprise. All of the persuasion and promotion paid off; my passion nally
reached her. I was over the moon.
But very shortly after, I was crushed.
Anh returned the book. I looked at what was once the beautiful title I treasured: The
spine was scuffed and broken. The cover was tattered and held together by tape. Most
of the pages were dog-eared and marked with either tea or crayon.
“I’m never going to lend you my books again!” I shouted at her in front of the whole
class and stormed out of the room, leaving her stunned and speechless.
We were friends since kindergarten, and I had never lost it with her like that. At
home, I shoved the book into the furthest corner of the bookshelf. The mere sight of it
broke my heart.
Months later, I decided to replace the book and so I took it off the shelf. The stain
marks hurt my eyes when I start- ed the rst few pages. But as I continued reading, I
discovered something surprisingly pleasant. Bastian was still lovable, the Childlike
Empress still beautiful and
Fantastica no less charming. I still shivered every time Childlike Empress met the
Old Man of the Wandering Mountain and demanded him to entangle the whole
Kingdom into an eternal loop.
Finishing the book, I put it back on the shelf. For once, I read without worrying about
any rule, probably like many others do. I have been criticizing people all my life just
because their reading habit differs from mine. I came to the realization that some
rules put our experiences in a glass box. And for the rst time in my life as a book
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lover, I realized my books do not need rules to protect them because their beauty lies
within.
From that day, I stopped making such a big deal out of keeping my books in perfect
conditions. People were surprised at rst, but more friends started to borrow my
books. Today my class is the only group in school into reading, and I like to think my
opening up my library has something to do with it. They don’t always return the
books pristine, but not horrible neither. Anh is still not quite a bookworm, but now we
spend much of our free time reading and discussing books together. That incident
taught me that perfection can be a wrong goal to strive for when its pursuit limits
discovery and impact. But I am glad I experienced letting go of something in return
for personal growth and a bit of good. How else could I have spread my craze for
books if I hadn’t let go of my craze for perfection?
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