Thursday, July 31, 2003

Reconfirmation

I'm back... and it's time to refamiliarize myself with politics in a language I can understand.

First of all, something interesting happened today. Upon my return from Japan last week, my father handed me a letter from one of the local universities. In this letter, they were requesting my presence to do a formal interview regarding my immigrant background. I had been part of this study for the past ten years, starting in 1992 when I was in the ninth grade. During that time, I had done numerous questionnaires regarding my educational experience in high school and college. They are now at the final phase of this study, tracking all the students they had once studied to see how they are in adult life. I was glad to do the interview for many reasons, mostly revealing my current beliefs about immigrant children, biculturality, cultural identification, and affirmative action... and the $100 check at the end of the interview played a part, too. =)

The woman who interviewed me was Filipino, and she had been helping the two sociological doctors who started this study eleven years ago. She interviewed me for roughly three and a half hours, starting with questions about my birth country and upbringing, trudging through my high school experience, comparing high school and college, living situations and experiences, all the way down to personal relationships, dating, friends, and career and personal goals.

She was particularly interested in my ideas of affirmative action. She said she doesn't normally ask the "affirmative action" question to some of the interviewees because many of the interviewees are not firmly grounded in their political beliefs. She was eager to jump on this question as much as I wanted to answer it. I told her about my thoughts and personal experiences about why I was against such a program, and how it seemed to invalidate everything I had worked for as an individual with my own merit.

So now it's on the record of some sociological study: I don't support affirmative action, and I hope to be successful without it.