Like many Chinese people, my name carries family expectations. “Xian” was taken from the word “宪法 (Xian Fa),” which means “The Constitution.” My dad has been a judge in China for some 20 years. He thinks his job is sacred and wanted me to follow in his footsteps. Growing up in Harbin, China, I always knew my parents wanted me to be a lawyer in the future. When did they start to impose this idea on me? I don’t even remember.
I never thought much about my own dreams. The Chinese idiom “子承父业 (a child carries on his father’s business)” sounded so right to me – this is the culture I was born in and grew up with.
In addition, the education system didn’t leave me any free time to think. In middle school, my scores always ranked top 50 – twice No. 1 – among the class of more than 1,000 students. I was the president of a classroom of over 70 people. All I wanted – or all my parents and teachers wanted from me – was to get into the best high school of the city and the whole province, Harbin No. 3 High School.
Because of my high score in the provincial high school entrance exam, I was admitted by the famous Harbin No. 3 high school. My parents always sounded so proud when they talked to friends about me. People thought I loved to study so much, but I told my parents I just wanted to make them happy.
In high school, competition became extremely intense because getting a perfect score in the national college entrance exam is the only way to get into an ideal college. The rule is simple: Everyone has to fight their way out of the battle.
School ran from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. I’d spend 10 to 15 minutes on each meal and head right back to the classroom to do homework. Students lived on campus and only had Sundays off. After 10 p.m. every day, we just went back to the dorm and kept studying till after midnight. I got bad eyesight and had to deal with back and neck pain. Life was the same day after day.
I didn’t need to think about what college I wanted to go to and what I should major in – it is quite common that parents decide for their children.
But something unexpected happened during my senior year that would forever change my life.
During my senior year in high school, Purdue University Calumet (PUC) sent people to visit and recruit students directly from my high school. I had never had any dreams about America before because opportunities like this were unheard of. Looking for changes in my life and trying to avoid the tortures from the college entrance exam, I applied.
I got in and spent one year at PUC. I studied accounting because my parents wanted me to find a stable job in the future, and I took their advice.
I was always interested in many different subjects, like music, history, languages and arts. However, there was not a good variety of classes to choose from at PUC. Longing for a better curriculum and a university located in a city, I transferred to Boston College.
During my first year at BC, I started to realize that becoming an accountant was not my dream job. I couldn’t imagine myself working in an office, dealing with numbers every day. I tried a few communication classes and fell in love with them, especially video production classes. I also joined the campus radio and television stations. Finally, I found my passion and often worked on projects for hours nonstop.
I dropped out of BC’s high-ranking business school, changed my major to communication and added a minor in music.
It is easy to say it now, but at that time, it was the toughest decision that I had ever made. The whole decision-making process took about a year. My BC professors kept telling me that I should follow my passion, my bliss. Their advice made me realize forcing myself to keep studying accounting was so painful. But when I tried to tell my parents about my feelings, they couldn’t understand. It made them angry.
“How could you say that?” they questioned me. “We’re paying so much money to support you, but you say you don’t like it!” My parents are not rich people in China, but they wanted to help their only child to realize her American dream. “It was your own decision to study in the U.S. Then why did you go to America in the first place?” they argued.
They were strongly against the idea that I switch majors. But I did anyway. Being Chinese, I am bound to obey my parents and take good care of them when they get old. The second part I definitely will follow. But I figured I needed to live my own life.
During my last year at BC, my dream for the future was to be a reporter or producer for television. With a lot of help from BC professors, I was accepted by Columbia Journalism School. Getting into an Ivy League school made my parents really proud of me. They spread the words to their friends very fast. This again earned them tremendous 面子 (face). When my parents told me how their friends were amazed when they heard the good news, I just laughed. There is no need to explain that I don’t care about what their friends think of me anymore. It’s my own life!
After one year of endless work and sleepless nights, I earned my Master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Columbia. With my education background, I hope to get a lot of work experience to help achieve my goals in the future.