Karen C
Major: Pharmacy
Hometown: Mystic, Connecticut
Age: 22
Parents' Home Country: China
"After family, education was the next priority. I was taught that education was correlated with success. If you have an education, then you would have a successful career and happy. Like many Chinese-American families, my parents wanted my siblings and I to be doctors because doctors are associated with money, and money is equivalent to success. Like many parents, they wanted the best futures for their children and they saw it through an education.
There was always an internal pressure of not wanting disappoint my parents and family because, in Chinese culture, family is the most important value. Due to this, the idea of not being able to make my parents proud felt worse than failing to receive an education. My parents gave up so much of their lives to raise three children in a completely different country, learn a new language, be accustomed to a new culture, and at the same time not lose their culture and language.
I try the best to my ability to speak my parents’ native language. My parents know three different dialects - Fuzhounese, Mandarin, & Cantonese. My parents are Buddhists, but I do my best to please them when it comes to Buddhist traditions. We celebrate Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year, Qingming or Tomb Sweeping Day or Chinese Memorial Day or Ancestors Day, and the Mid-Autumn Festival. My house has many traditional Chinese decorations scatter throughout. I have a jade mouse necklace that I keep next to my bed at home, which I’ve had since I was a baby. Jade is very important culture because it is seen as the “Stone of Heaven.” It represents beauty, virtue, grace and purity. It’s in the shape of a mouse because that is my Chinese zodiac sign. The mouse is the first animal of the 12 year cycle, of which each year related to an animal."
