Blending Life Together

Growing up in an Chinese-American household, I was given the blessing of having two different discourses, one from my Chinese heritage and one from all the American customs I learned growing up in San Diego. These two eventually became my first primary discourses, which is “... the one we first use to make sense of the world and interact with others. Our primary Discourse constitutes our original and home-based sense of identity…”(pg 7). Because of that, my childhood allowed me to learn to create and adapt to new different discourses.

During my high school career, I was initially very cocooned and took me a while to get out of my shell to experience new things. It wasn’t until my friend convinced me to join the badminton team at my school where I found my athletic discourse. After making the team, I got more and more fascinated on the sport and eventually saw some of my teammates make San Diego Headlines. After my first year ended, I started to put more time and dedication on my physical health by training and exercising more for next season. This conflicted with my primary discourse because I always was a person who was lazy and wanted to work smarter, not harder. In the end, I became a team captain and became district champions but decided to hang up the mantle, ending my athletic career competitively and becoming a fossilized discourse.

As for college, I am able to still connect with all my friends since most of us didn’t stray too far from our high school. Going to SDSU was definitely a different beast compared to high school. Not many people knew who I was so it was a good opportunity to create a name for myself to the new people I meet. Eventually, I was introduced to many new friends from group projects and classes. This then started to shape my college discourse, learning how to become a more social person but also keeping up with school. Few notable things that I’ve done was join a club called SDSU eSports, where a bunch of people meet up just to have fun and play video games. I eventually was offered a position to play on a team for a chance to win a scholarship. Sadly me and my team couldn’t win but it was a fun experience to meet others with the same interest as me. As well as I was able to reconnect with old friends from elementary school and was given the opportunity to be a guest on her KCR Radio Show.

As the person I am today, I have a blend of all the previous discourses I listed above. For example, every year I look forward to San Diego Comic Con where I go explore Downtown San Diego and enjoy the pop culture that comes into town. From this I try to meet new people to make new connections, try different things that I never thought I would do, as well as spreading the San Diego spirit that I grew up to love.