NYC-Feature Story

The Things That Make Us Who We Are

Magic at My Fingertips

By Cassandra Lim

When I was 11 and still living in Malaysia, I wondered why my two teenage cousins liked to paint their nails. It seemed like a waste of time. I was curious to know what was fun about it, so one day I snuck into their room and put on their black nail polish while they were out at work.


	Careful Reading; Essay Writing

My nails looked terrible. I painted too thick in some spots and painted onto my fingers in others. But I had fun doing it. It looked like magic to me.

Looking at other girls, I realized that in order to get better-looking painted nails, I needed to grow my nails long. The only problem was that long nails weren’t allowed in my school, and I eventually got in trouble for my new hobby.

Whipped for Long Nails

One warm day, I got to school and lined up for morning assembly, where the principal and deans would inspect students’ uniforms, hair and nails. I realized I had forgotten to cut my nails before assembly and I was so nervous that sweat kept falling down my forehead. I asked friends around me for nail clippers, but it was too late. The dean was in front of me.

When he saw my nails, he asked students near me to stand clear as he raised his rattan stick to punish me. He hit me once on the palm and it turned really red. Then he gave me a pair of scissors and watched until I finished cutting all my long nails. I felt sad about cutting off my nails involuntarily.

That’s why I feel lucky that, ever since I moved to New York City five years ago, I’ve been free to keep my nails as long as I want and customize them however I want.

My Colorful Pets

When I open my hands wide and put them out on the table, I can see their happiness at being painted. For me, my nails are like my pets. I can communicate with them and see their pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy. When they look pretty and neat, they are happy; when they look colorless and short, they are sad. I feel like I need to treat my nails well so that I deserve to be their owner.

To care for them, I first shape my nails into square shapes and then I put on the color, followed by a clear topcoat. My policy for polishing nails is to give the same service to each nail, paying full attention while applying the polish and fixing any mistakes immediately to make each one of them pretty.

Sometimes I copy nail designs from the Internet or use them to inspire my own unique designs. I usually paint my nails with plain colors like black, white, silver or gold. But sometimes when I have patience, I do French style (a clear or transparent pink base with a straight thin line at the tip) or apply some 3-D nail stickers like hot-red hearts, silver-black crowns and stars or dots. When I’m done, I always feel a sense of achievement from the bottom of my heart, like I finished a huge construction project.

Pretty and Proud

After working one summer at my aunt’s nail salon, I discovered that I don’t like to do nails for other people, except for close friends or relatives. That’s partly because I don’t do as good a job painting other people’s nails, and it’s also because I want to keep my talent for my own nails instead of using it on others who don’t treasure it the way I do.

My nails are the one part of my body that I feel good about. I see myself as overweight and short, so hearing people tell me my nails are pretty makes me excited to show them to the world. I also feel proud of my talent for doing my nails myself, when most people around me rely on the nail salon to get their nails done. I like showing others what I can do. My nails represent me and tell people who I am. They’re like life to me, and any time I cut them or accidentally hurt them, I feel my heart breaking at the same time.

I Am My Mother's Daughter

By Elsa Ho

“I am not anything like my parents, and I never will be.” I hear this phrase a lot among my friends and even from myself. My friends and I always speak negatively to each other about our parents, complaining about how annoying and obsessive they are about everything.

“Wake up! You shouldn’t sleep until noon even if you don’t have school!”

“Where were you today? Who were you with?”

For some reason, most teenagers only focus on their parents’ negative aspects. Maybe it’s because teenagers desire to be independent and our parents still enforce the same rules as they did when we were 5 years old. Our parents make us feel like little children.

Teenagers never want to hear that we’re similar to our parents, because that suggests we’ve inherited all the qualities we find irritating. So we refute and deny that we’re like them in any way. We’re so blinded by their flaws that we don’t see how much our parents influence our personalities.

Singing in the Kitchen

When my mom and I argue, I’m so busy focusing on her “unreasonable” behavior that I don’t even notice how similar our tones sound and how familiar the words coming out of my mouth are. But the similarity is there. I hear phrases that I’ve used thrown back at me. The way we emphasize certain words, our facial expressions—it’s all so alike.

I’ve discovered that some of my mother’s small habits have rubbed off on me as well. I was baking with my friend one day while my mother was making dinner. All of a sudden my friend stopped mixing the flour and said, “Wow, you and your mom are both singing.” I knew that my mom had a habit of humming and singing while making dinner, but I didn’t know that I did the same thing.

Ethnicity, religion and generation seem to dominate how people identify themselves. But if we dig deeper and closely examine our behavior, beliefs and personality, we realize that since infancy our parents, whether knowingly or not, have been slowly molding and shaping our identity.

My Moral Teacher

My mother has influenced many of my morals and principles, too. By telling me not to take my cousin’s toys with me when I left his house, she taught me that I should always ask for permission and never steal. By making me attend swimming lessons, Chinese school and tutoring school, she taught me the importance of being healthy and receiving a good education. By encouraging me to recite my poem during the winter show in the second grade, my mom taught me the power of courage. By loving me and helping me whenever I have a problem, my mom proved to me that my family will always be there to support me.

All these lessons have affected the way I perceive myself. For example, I often get frustrated when my laziness takes over. My mom has shown me that no one else can motivate me but myself. Because of my mom’s support I know I have the potential to be just as diligent as my most intelligent peers, but because of her values, I’m filled with disappointment when I don’t put as much effort into schoolwork as I should.

Flashbacks

Every now and then, memories that I deemed insignificant suddenly reappear in my head. Scenes of my mom telling me to bow and pay contributions to various Chinese Gods make me understand why, although I consider myself an atheist, a big part of me believes in the existence of a superior being. Images of my mom and my grandma telling me repeatedly not to waste food on my plate explain why every time I empty out food into the garbage can, I feel a rush of guilt.

In such moments, I discover that these memories—every word my parents have ever said, every action my parents have shown me—contribute to the elements that make up who I am, my identity.

Secure in My Strengths

By Courtney Smith

In elementary school I was a bright star, one of the smartest kids in my class. My mom and aunt would say how smart I was. It made them happy and that made me happy.

But it set me up for a rough time when I was admitted to a more competitive junior high school. In 5th grade I went to Philippa Schuyler, a junior high for the gifted and talented. I was used to comparing myself to others, but suddenly those comparisons were hurting my confidence, not helping it. The teachers at my new school gave so much homework and I didn’t understand what was going on in most of my classes. I was no longer the star. My homeroom in 5th grade was 501, the “01” meaning I was among the kids with the higher grades, but as I went through junior high I dropped to homerooms 605, 707, 810.

When I realized that I was no longer the smartest kid, I looked for something else to give me confidence. Being one of the cool kids was the best thing to be if you weren’t the smartest, I thought. I tried to talk to anyone who was considered popular. I tried to be funny and nonchalant. I thought being popular would be easy because I was a nice person.

Too Dark, Too Quiet

But it turned out there were other standards that I had to fit into and they had nothing to do with being nice. The girls with the long hair and light complexions got all the attention. I had pretty short hair and dark skin. I’d never worried about my appearance before; I’d always thought I was the same color as chocolate and that was good enough for me. But now it was a problem.

If there was a darker-skinned girl who was “popular,” it was because she had a big mouth. I was one of the quiet girls, and that definitely didn’t work in my favor. As I started to notice the way other girls looked and their outgoing personalities, I began to judge myself constantly. And it wasn’t just in school. When I watched TV I saw so many skinny, light-skinned models that it made me insecure about everything I was.

When I got to high school, though, things got better. I was making friends faster than I ever had before. My friends in high school liked me because of my personality, and there wasn’t a popular crowd. My friends helped me repair my broken self-esteem. They saw how hard I was on myself and turned my insecurities into little jokes to make me realize how silly those insecurities were.

Seeing Myself Clearly

It took time, but when I blocked out other people’s ideas and opinions, gradually I was able to see myself more clearly. From debates I had at school in English and history classes, I found that I’m a strong-minded person. I also saw that I am nothing like most people I’m around. I was raised to be well-spoken and I never liked slang. While my peers didn’t like being quiet and dressing or acting grown-up, I behaved maturely around adults because I knew they respected it and it came easily to me.

I figured out that I could use my mind and my maturity to my advantage in planning a career. And I reconsidered my career goals. I’d always wanted to be an interior designer, but after my friends advised me to look at who I was and what I really wanted, I saw I’d been going by what other people thought was exciting. I noticed that I loved writing and really wanted to be a journalist, or more specifically, a TV news correspondent. It will take a lot of self-esteem to put myself out there in public, but I know it’s what I want to do.

I Believe It

Today, I have many people in my life telling me I’m going to be great and that I can have anything I strive for. The important thing is that I can believe it myself now.

I’ve learned that it’s not the people around you who make you who you are. You are part of that community, and people’s opinions may influence you in good ways and bad. But you have to listen to yourself to find out what you’re really all about. Then you can figure out for yourself what separates you from the rest.

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