A Lamb in Sheep's Clothing

Panting from multiple flights of the wrong stairs, I slowly walked into the room. The room was naturally lit with windows lining the top of the left and right walls; the rectangular desks were long enough for three people to sit comfortably. Because I come from a high school with the size and layout of a dentist's office, everything was unfamiliar: from the sheer number of buildings to the shared desks.

But, I couldn't dwell on the unfamiliarity of my physical surroundings. I had to find a seat. Most of the students—whom I later discovered were a mixture of sophomores and juniors—sat in pairs with people they already seemed to know. Towards the front of the room was a desk with one person and two empty seats. Not wanting to sit completely alone, I took one of them.

Then came the scariest part: introducing myself to the random student I chose to sit next to. I was nervous that I would be treated differently as a lamb in sheep's clothing, a high school student pretending to be a college student. However,the sophomore I sat next to turned out to be completely welcoming and talked to me like I was an ASU student. He even kindly offered to send me the lecture notes I missed because I couldn't miss two days of my high school in a week to attend class at ASU.

To supplement my internship with Dr. Brandon Yoo, I am currently auditing one of his classes, Asian Pacific American Psychology. Five weeks into the class, I've become much more comfortable with the college environment. Fortunately, the structure of the class isn't too different from that of my high school classes. The only major change is that I only attend class twice a week, as opposed to every day. 

Besides attending Asian Pacific American Psychology, I've been helping Dr. Yoo narrow down the main research question and compile survey questions. At the moment, we are focusing on three factors that may influence mental health in terms of race: perceived racism, internalized racism, and racial socialization. 

Perceived racism is an individual's experience of racial discrimination, such as being called "chink." On the other hand, internalized racism is an individual's adoption of racial stereotypes, exemplified by Asians who get double-eyelid surgery to make their eyes look bigger, more Western. Internalized racism is hypothesized to be influenced by racial socialization, the methods by which individuals are exposed to the concept and treatment of race. For example, some parents teach their children about different races and the equality of humans regardless of race. Sorting through previous studies and measures about racial discrimination and its origins, I will be creating a mass table of measures for internalized racism and racial socialization for the next week.

In the first week, I realized that I'm learning more than just about my topic through this research project. I'm learning how to become a college student, not simply pretending to be one.