I wrote this reflection, in summer 2018, right before I graduated from the Schwarzman Scholars program. It was a private thing, just for me. Since then, I moved to Manila, began working at IDinsight (which spoiler: is everything I had thought it’d be), and (hopefully) am keeping the vows I made at the end of this post. I’m sharing this now, in case it helps others on their journeys.
It was one of those hot, humid days in Boston, when the sun beat you in the face for venturing into its territory. I was 20, and trooping my eight cranky students out of the Museum of Science. For this challenge, and all other challenges I’d experience as senior counselor, the ESL summer camp I was working at had armed me with two weeks of training.
As we dawdled on the sidewalk for a bus that refused to materialize, my students complained incessantly about hunger. That was no surprise; the state-provided free lunch was tiny. One sandwich, a pretzel snack, a fruit cup, and a milk box wouldn’t have kept a five-year-old full, let alone rambunctious eleven-year-olds who had just finish running all over a museum. I’d save their lunch leftovers for this very purpose, but I’d already depleted those reserves earlier that afternoon.
With nothing else to offer, I repeated half-hearted “teacher phrases” I knew by heart: the bus would arrive any minute now, be patient, leave him alone, sentences the kids knew by heart too. All while I struggled to take my own advice, as the sweat dripped down my back and the seconds dripped by.
Just as the complaints reached a crescendo, as if on cue came another group of children. They were also from a summer camp — We could tell by their matching shirts and hats.
They sat down on a nearby ledge, within full view of my kids. As we all watched, their teachers began distributing each child ham sandwiches, and cookies, and cold water bottles wet with condensation.
Every one of those children — this isn’t an exaggeration, every. single. one — was white.
Every one of my children was a student of color, either black or Latino or Asian.
One of my kids, Abdul* — the loudest complainer, my troublemaker, my secret favorite — pointed at them immediately, his face all scrunched up. He yelled at the top of his voice, “Why do they get that, and we don’t?”
Before I could even react, he’d stomped away to a corner, while the other kids began to parrot him, a surround sound cacophony of complaints.
At the time, I answered in the best way I knew how: that the kids belonged to a different program, that because of our program rules — put in place to smooth over differences of means, because even among low-income families there is a hierarchy of wealth — they couldn’t spend any pocket money they might have had; that I and all the other counselors were working our hardest to give them the best summer camp experience we could.
The bus came, eventually. I dropped them off at their homes. I went back to my home.
Then I cried.
I cried because what I told them was a little bit of truth, but a lot of platitudes. And I cried because I was angry.
Abdul was right. It wasn’t fair. And I knew it, because I had once been them. A decade before I became their counselor, I’d been a camper at the exact same program, and I’d been angry too. Once, I hadn’t had the money to buy anything from a vending machine, and so when a classmate had tried to buy soda from it I punched the water button and watched her cry. It’s one of my few memories of being in trouble as a kid.
It’s weird, to now be the kid with the sandwich, and cookies, and refreshingly cold water bottle.
Because you see, I grew up to be the American Dream.
When I was seven, my family immigrated from Vietnam to the US. My mom is a manicurist, my dad a machinist. But I started testing well in elementary school, and kept testing well, and got into Harvard. And when Harvard was over, I received an incredibly prestigious fellowship, one that allowed me to spend a year in China and get a Masters for free.
It was an incredibly enriching experience, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I wouldn’t trade any of my experiences at all.
But that doesn’t change the fact that during my year as a Schwarzman Scholar, with the program’s $300 million dollar endowment at my back, I became one of the students others on the same campus often looked at with envy.
The other day, another Scholar—a close friend—remarked that he saw so much of where I came from in my values, and in my passions. This is true, I know.
But what is also true is that I’ve moved far, far away from the impoverished circumstances that imbued those traits in me. Karl Marx was right, economic conditions determine our external world, and much of our internal world.
Try as I might to cling to a vanished time, I can’t back to before I went to Schwarzman, to before I attended one of the most prestigious, expensive colleges in the world. I can’t go back to when I labored over getting a $20 shirt and begged permission to buy a $5 cookie. I can’t go back to being the kid that looked enviously at another’s full lunch.
But for so long, that was my identity. If I’m not that kid, who am I?
To be honest, I don’t know.
But—
I do know that there are things that I refuse to lose, no matter who I end up being.
I’m not going to forget the feeling of being that kid without a full lunch, even as I stare head-on at my Michelin star meal.
And I’m not going to forget to share my lunch.
Let me be clear: I’m not doing it because of guilt. I’m not doing it because I feel the eyes of hungry people watching me, judging me. I know that’s why some rich people share, but that’s only an easy way to feel better about yourself.
I’m going to share because I’m still angry—because the world shouldn’t get away with this bullshit.
If I’d had packed lunches back then to give my students, I would’ve sobbed from happiness. So if I have the opportunity now, shouldn’t I try to do what I couldn’t do back then?
And I do plan to find and seize such opportunities. I think I’ll be able to do that at my next job,— but of course, I won’t know for sure until I get there.
And I’ll make this promise to myself now, I’m going to continue to do these period check-ins with myself. I’m going to ensure that my present self carries my past self forward.
For my old students, and for the old me.
Over one year later, I still feel as I did when I wrote this. If you have a similar journey, what has been your experience? If you’ve felt the same cognitive dissonance, how have you resolved it?
(Also, while I have you, if you’re looking for good causes, BRYE is my old summer camp program)
Nhu Le is working hard with awesome people to magnify impact in the development sector by day. By night, she’s toiling hard to lose the “aspiring” part of aspiring writer. Twitter | Instagram.
*name has been changed