{"id":6,"date":"2016-04-11T18:31:18","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T18:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/?p=6"},"modified":"2016-04-14T04:52:57","modified_gmt":"2016-04-14T04:52:57","slug":"going-in-circles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/2016\/04\/11\/going-in-circles\/","title":{"rendered":"Base of My Pyramid: Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being a Bay Area native, I live in a particular bubble of privilege. I am surrounded by the latest and greatest technological advances that the Silicon Valley has to offer. I can easily drive over to the headquarters of various famous companies like Facebook and Google. As a Californian, I experience essentially perfect weather every day and have access to a diverse set of food on any given occasion. I attended a very prestigious private Catholic high school that has produced many outstanding individuals, including three Olympians. In many respects, yes, I am very privileged, but I was born into an immigrant family\u2014a family that never lets me forget the privileges I have. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"338934_10150365129250935_843005909_o\"

One of the most fun and terrifying photoshoots to which my uncle (featured in the middle) subjected us.<\/p><\/div>\n

As a result of the Vietnam War, my family migrated to the United States in hopes of finding a better life away from the violence and corruption. In spite of the obstacles they encountered, they worked hard and achieved their goals. Even though my family has provided me with a variety of the privileges and experiences I have today, they always remind me (whether directly or indirectly) of the work that goes into whatever I receive and how I should be appreciative as many others in the world are not as lucky. My family raised me on the notion that the more \u201cgood\u201d I accumulate in life\u2014both material and non material\u2014the more I should give back to the community. Not only did they tell me this, but they also showed me how to give back. Starting from my great grandparents, my family has a long history of generosity. In Vietnam, my great grandparents were wealthy farmers who had two servants, built their own houses, and were able to afford sending all nine of their children to varying degrees of school. With such wealth, my great grandparents kept in mind the adversities they once faced in their journey and would often distribute food and money to other villagers. They were incredibly respected in the village that even after the war, their servants and other villagers would come to them for help, in spite of the fact that they had lost a majority of their possessions. Their generosity was passed down to my grandmother who has always given what she can to others. Today, in spite of having little income, she continues to give back nearly every opportunity she gets. She sponsors students in Vietnam every month and always donates some clothes or toys or books to orphans when she visits her homeland. The generosity gene continued through my mother and eventually down to me. I am constantly reminded by my family members of how there are people both in my immediate and global community who are not as fortunate as I am and how if certain factors of my life were different, I would have been just like them. They instilled in me the idea that I am no different from others; my privileges and my inherent wealth as a US citizen does not make me any more special than the next person. My family, especially my mother, always emphasized that at our very core, we are all human and deserve to be treated as such.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"23315638466_7841dcfaed_m\"

Patiently waiting for the host to tell us we can eat.<\/p><\/div>\n

Compounding my generosity, education has also played a huge part in my discernment. It was through school that I learned more about the world and its problems. While I was exposed to all the wealth the Bay Area has, I grew up with an extremely diverse set of people. In my elementary school, students spoke English in class, but as soon as we were on the playground, I primarily heard Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Tagalog. My friends and I would often ask each other how to say certain words in our respective languages. From them, I learned not only about languages, but also about different cultures, traditions, and customs. Often times at lunch, we had packed lunches of traditional ethnic foods, seeing as most of us (if not all of us) were the children of immigrants. We would trade bits of our lunches with each other and what was supposed to be individual lunches became communal ones. It was these school lunches that cultivated my love for food, community, and diversity.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I entered high school, I continued to learn more about the globalized world we live in. My high school, Archbishop Mitty, is not a Jesuit institution, but it undoubtedly acts like one. All the faculty and staff encourage the \u201ceducation of the whole person\u201d and challenge us to think critically about our views of the world and the kind of impact we have on others. As part of the school requirement, I volunteered regularly throughout high school. Many high school volunteers would half heartedly complete their volunteer hours, but because of my classes and my family background, I tried to be very intentional about the way I volunteered my time. I used my multilingual skills to help low income (usually immigrant) families fill out applications and to give them their much needed goods. I also used my musical skills to entertain older adults in nursing homes. I always kept in mind that while what I am doing is for school, the people I interacted with gained so much more than I could fathom as a teenager. Being at Mitty truly taught me how to be a more conscientious and compassionate person by giving me insight into the ethical dilemmas of the world and allowing me multiple opportunities to witness these dilemmas for myself. My high school, in spite of its flaws, paved the way for my decision to come to Santa Clara University.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Gaway

Performing a traditional dance for Pilipino Cultural Night (PCN)<\/p><\/div>\n

Coming to Santa Clara was a rather natural choice. As I looked into campus life and spoke with Mitty alumni who are SCU students, I found that Santa Clara culture was basically my high school, but bigger. Our university, in many regards, makes education come to life. Most people have the tendency to view education as one dimensional and restricted to classrooms, libraries, and millions of dull words and facts in need of memorization. But for me, education is something very intimate and quite alive. As a Psychology & Spanish double major and Public Health Science minor and as a very active community member,\u00a0I yearn to learn as much as I possibly can and apply the knowledge and information I have to our world as my way of saying thank you to my family and my community for making me the person I am today. In light of this, applying to become a Global Social Benefits Fellow was easy: all of its values, missions, and goals were in perfect alignment with mine\u2014the desire to use the skills available to us to improve the lives of others; the promotion of social justice in society through creative, multimodal action; and the dream of creating a more equitable and sustainable world for everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being a Bay Area native, I live in a particular bubble of privilege. I am surrounded by the latest and greatest technological advances that the Silicon Valley has to offer. I can easily drive over to the headquarters of various famous companies like Facebook and Google. As a Californian, I experience essentially perfect weather every … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1582,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":1,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"Madeline Nguyen","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/author\/mhnguyen\/"},"qubely_comment":1,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"Being a Bay Area native, I live in a particular bubble of privilege. I am surrounded by the latest and greatest technological advances that the Silicon Valley has to offer. I can easily drive over to the headquarters of various famous companies like Facebook and Google. As a Californian, I experience essentially perfect weather every…","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1582"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mhnguyen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}