Where Am I From Again?

“Where Am I From Again?”

As a baby born into a Korean family, there was to be a discrepancy on the selection of language to be taught at home.  From my early infant years, I was taught to speak only Korean.  Entering school with insufficient knowledge on speaking the native language was a difficult beginning.  As I progressed in my years in school, I began to excel and was able to win spelling bees in elementary school and had poems I wrote in high school get published in the school literacy books.  When college came upon me, a tough decision was to be made on whether or not to have English or History be my major. 

The biggest issue I came to face when integrating myself into the American culture was that I became too assimilated and I slowly began to lose my original culture.  I became deficient in my ability to speak my own native language.  To bring myself back own culture, I spent many days visiting my grandparents who speak only Korean and started to improve on my Korean.  Capitalizing on my privilege to attend a university, I took time to put learning Korean in my class schedule.  I learned as you get older, you tend to forget where you are from and try to camouflage yourself to your surroundings.  Learning about all the different literacy in American history is a great benefit but slowly losing my own heritage makes it a difficult tradeoff.