Kids are mean. As a young girl, I never paid attention to the way I looked, the way I talked, or even the way I dressed. I had lots of friends and always loved meeting new people, but things started to change when I turned twelve. I entered middle school and things soon took a turn.

My elementary school was predominately white, which meant that a lot of my friends were… white. When I entered the seventh grade at a secondary school with a population of over 3,000 kids, I was overwhelmed. There were such diverse groups of people and for the first time, Asians.

I know it sounds silly, but I had never seen so many Asians of my age in one place. I soon started branching out of my immediate friend group and soon made more friends who shared my cultural background Things seemed fine until I started getting called out and bullied for being something I could not help. My race and my culture was something I was assigned at birth and I had no say in the matter.

“Go sit at the Asian table,” “Do you eat dogs?,” “How do you see”, “chink,” were just some of the racial slurs and ignorant comments I had to deal with on a daily basis. It made me embarrassed and it also made me ignorant. I started to close off my Asian friends and I masked my culture. This is something that I still regret.

As we grow older, many aspects can influence the way we see the world around us and the way we identify others and ourselves. I allowed the hateful words of ignorant children mold my identity, but as I grew older I began to understand that I am the main creator of my identity.

Yes, other aspects can have an effect on the shaping process of my identity, but in the end, I am the one who decides where to put it and how it affects me. These occurrences in my adolescence allowed me to realize that there is nothing wrong with who I am and that my culture and my race is something that I am fiercely proud of and I would never change anything about it.