At the risk of sounding small minded, I want to clarify that this piece is not meant to seek sympathy, nor pity, but rather to serve as a thank you to my parents and grandparents for the grand sacrifices they made for me to live such a wonderful life, and to be able to get a college education.
As I sit here writing this in my university's cafeteria, there are hundreds of students getting their salads from the salad bar, or their burritos from the "street food" section of our cafeteria. I overhear some students complaining that there isn’t enough of a variety, or that there are no good vegan options (I myself am guilty of this). I glance to my left and see three bottled water dispensers, flavored strawberry, lemon, and mint, as well as a choice of sparkling or flat water. The people around me are chatting about their plans for going out this weekend, the new shirt they saw at Urban Outfitters, or the amount of homework they have to do tonight. Here I am, a first generation Iranian-American and second generation Mexican-American. Meanwhile, I am sitting here writing a list of to-dos. Then it dawns on me, how I myself have become caught up in these "privileged" problems as I like to call them. Its kind of like "first world problems," but they are stressors or problems in our lives that I feel when we really don't have much to complain about, we use these to stress and complain about.
When I think of where my grandparents were at my age, they were struggling as immigrants working in the fields, just so that they could provide a better future for themselves and their own families. They worked tirelessly, from dawn to dusk to build a modest home to house their family of 10. When I think about where my dad was at the age of 21, he had only been in the United States for three years. He immigrated to the U.S.A. at the age of 17, knowing no one, and having very little planned and only knew enough english to get by. And here I am, a culmination of a couple generations of hard working family members work, worried about the incessant, most minuscule things in my fancy, private university cafeteria.
In a few generations, my family has come so far just so I can have this opportunity to even get an education, let alone at such a nice university. I have always had this drive instilled in me to make my parents proud, and to make all that they did for me and sacrifice for me worth it. They have instilled such a hard work ethic in me. I want to make their sacrifices worthwhile, and yet I still find the time to get wrapped up in the common, most insignificant details of life. And that is a privilege I have as a first and second generation American. I am caught in this divide between the immigrant experience of my family and living the life of the people I am surrounded by at school. I see on the internet everyone and their child doing these reminder affirmations in the mirror, telling themselves all the things they have and love about themselves. Meanwhile, the only affirmations I need are when I look in the mirror and see the curly hair of my hard working grandfather, the smile of my selflessly driven grandmother, the hands of my mother who worked so hard in school to get an education herself, and the eyes of my brave father who immigrated to this country alone. This is the only affirmation I need to continue on and find my happiness. I was given this opportunity through generations of hard work, and I hope to do the same for the generations after me. And that is what it is like, to be a first and second generation American. We aren't lazy, we aren't less driven, we aren't "not assimilated." We are (hopefully) appreciative of all the opportunities we have that others in our family didn't, hard working so that we can continue to further our family, loving of the land that gave us this opportunity, and happy to have the kind of love that would sacrifice generation after generation.
