"The Asian Fail"

Chapter 1: My first bad grade

I always thought that I wouldn’t be bothered by an Asian Fail. I was obviously above that, and it didn’t even really apply to me. Grades didn’t feel like the most important thing, learning was, of course. While my classmates studied like crazy to land on the better side of the dangerous A/A- boundary, I read the textbook over and over again because I was interested in the content. But it’s easy to think that when you Ace every single class without the fear of getting an A-. I thought an Asian Fail wouldn’t impact me until I got my first A- at Olin.

I received my first Asian Fail during the fall semester of my senior year at Olin. Like getting an injury just meters away from the end of the marathon! I won’t delve into exactly how I got my first A-, because I don’t actually know why thanks to some mysterious and subjective grading scheme. (Clearly I am completely over it and not bitter at all!)

Anyways, I opened up my unofficial transcript— on a whim, since I never stalk my Olin account around the time grades are supposed to come out— and encountered the classic Asian Fail in the form of an ugly A-. At first, I thought the minus sign was some fleck of dust on my computer monitor. After scrolling back and forth, I realized its true identity. During the next few hours, the thought that I actually learned a lot in that class didn’t cross my mind once. I was shocked and extremely pissed. My perfect streak was broken! I epically failed, and my student status will now plummet down the ranks.

I confessed my failure to my family, and they completely sympathized with me telling me that it was horrible and that I should send an email to the teacher for clarification. My dad complained about how Olin got rid of letter grades last semester when I was doing well in all of my classes and decided to give out grades for the semester when I was most negatively impacted by the pandemic. My mom tried to comfort me, saying that she thought my work looked great and that the teacher did not properly adjust his expectations. My brother sighed and told me that he was super disappointed because now he couldn’t brag about me to his friends anymore. (I think he was joking?)

I also admitted my Asian Fail to my partner, who went through the most competitive high school in Shanghai where they publicly ranked students for every test, and he had a completely different reaction. He didn’t understand why I was in so much pain. I didn’t have to share my grades with my classmates, and my GPA was already high enough for grad school. I was being overly dramatic. Maybe I was acting like a drama queen, but getting an A- was a huge deal to me. Now that a few weeks have passed, I’m sort of in the acceptance stage— as long as I never look at my transcript ever again. Seriously, I’m never downloading that file again.

You might be thinking something like come on, there’s no way you didn’t get your first A- until senior year of college. I know that’s hard to believe, especially since I claim to prioritize learning over getting good grades, but let me clarify a few things. I did get A-’s in the past and plenty of worse grades, but that was in elementary school. Ever since 7th grade, I haven’t gotten anything less than an A, until recently. So my streak isn’t that flawless, in case that makes me more trustworthy. Also, I said that I worked so hard in my classes because I love learning, but actually, I sort of conditioned myself to believe that, so I could do what was necessary to succeed in every class. It was my brain’s way of coping with the endless pile of work on my plate. Convincing me that I loved what I was doing and that yes, I did want to read the chemistry textbook instead of my YA fantasy novel during breakfast every morning. This persuasion was how I survived Lynbrook High School without buckling from all the competition and stress.

My high school has a stereotypical type of student: Asian, hardworking, takes as many AP classes as possible, and is determined to get a 4.0 GPA. My friend, Sarah, employed a dozen tactics to get an A in AP Chemistry and even paid lots of money to attend a selective Lynbrook AP Chem study group organized by one of those huge SAT prep companies. One of my closest childhood friends, Katie, was terrified to get an Asian Fail because of her mom. Katie’s mom would check her SchoolLoop grade portal several times a day and immediately message Katie if there was any grade lower than an A-. That sounds pretty intense right?

Well, many people were even more extreme. There was a huge cheating problem at my school, which I witnessed first-hand in AP Physics in the form of answer keys being passed around right before a test. A bunch of Chinese parents made a WeChat group where they constantly posted their kids’ achievements and compared scores. Some parents bled thousands of dollars to get their kids into good colleges by purchasing professional counseling services and shipping their kids off to third-world countries to build houses for the sake of more eye-catching extracurriculars. I have heard about students with borderline grades giving some pretty lavish Christmas gifts to their teachers. A few of my high school teachers complained about parents who constantly sent them emails and demanded 1-1 meetings whenever their kids got a question wrong on a test or quiz. The parent-teacher dynamics got so bad at my school that teachers refused to communicate at all with parents, and my school changed their grading scale by getting rid of all the minus grades.

I’m not trying to purposefully keep myself separate from all of these crazy descriptions about my high school. I was just as invested in my performance as everyone else. I was my own helicopter parent. My mom and dad didn’t even know my class schedule or what clubs I led but that was fine. My parents didn’t need to get involved in my studies because if I got a score less than an A, I was the one sending emails to my teachers for more feedback. Though I got to admit that I was a lot more diplomatic and affable than those aggressive parents.

In 9th grade literature class, I received a horrendous A- or B on my first essay. I was determined to raise my grade, so I went to the teacher during every single tutorial session and asked for feedback on my writing assignments. For my second essay, I asked her to give me feedback on my writing several times before she graded it. I got like 100/100 on that essay and kept up the streak for the rest of the semester. I definitely learned a lot from all of the extra feedback I got, and I enjoyed critically analyzing interesting books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Fahrenheit 451. But I would be lying if I said I did all of that just because I was interested in the subject matter. I cared so much about my writing because I didn’t want to get an Asian Fail on it, and I’m still a bit scared to get one.

Chapter 2: Unintended transformation

I didn’t always care about getting an Asian Fail. When I was in elementary school, I was the complete opposite type of student. At the time, grades were in the form of numbers where 1 meant capital F fail and 6 meant excellent. I went through most of elementary school as a cheerful girl content with getting 3s. My first and only 6 was for a poster on bees that I did in my first grade Chinese class. I don’t know if it counts because my parents did most of the work. My mom came up with the poster content that I copied in my own handwriting, and my dad printed out bee clipart images that he had me trace over and color. In general, all of my elementary-school projects became a joint family effort. I would go to my parents the day before a big assignment was due and tell them about it for the first time. I made sure to put on an innocent but guilty expression, so my parents wouldn’t waste time lecturing me. Instead they would pull on their hair, call for my brother, and start dividing up the work among themselves. My dad usually took care of the images; my mom was an expert on putting border tape on poster boards; and my brother did all the weird stuff like creating models of Native American villages. That’s where I learned the importance of delegating work to other people. I was just living up to my initials, the natural C.E.O.

Except for projects, I avoided doing homework at all costs. Projects were important because I had to share them with my classmates. There was no way that I was going to hang up a loser poster on the wall. It had to be one of the best looking ones in the room. Homework, on the other hand, was something I shoved into my closest for later, which is probably why I ended up with so many 3s. I literally have no memories of ever doing homework in elementary school. While taking tests, I spent more effort doodling on the pages and writing my name as neatly as possible than actually trying to solve the questions. I was every Asian parent’s nightmare. My biggest accomplishment in 4th grade was organizing a black market in my class for students to trade pencils and animal squishies without telling the teachers. One of my best trade deals involved giving Kerry some random scented waxing liquid that I found in my mom's bathroom cabinet for five brand-new mechanical pencils and a super cute green frog squishy. At home, I had even less of a reason to do any schoolwork. Why would I when I had all of my barbies and polly pockets to play with? I spent my afternoons pretending to do homework when I was actually roleplaying crazy adventures with my favorite toys. Even bugging my brother and distracting him from his homework was more entertaining than completing cursive-writing worksheets.

When I entered 3rd grade, my parents started to get more concerned about my low grades. Before then, they were super busy with work, and my brother was dealing with some pretty serious bullying problems that took up their attention. My brother also didn’t have the most amazing grades, which made my parents super anxious because he was approaching high school when grades started to matter. I was able to run free for those first few years in elementary school, but that freedom became much more limited when my parents banished me to a Chinese after-school program called Little Genius for most days of the week. It was torture! I was forced to do my homework and take extra classes with inferior snack options. Seriously, I don’t get why adults think kids like plain animal crackers when cheez-its, oreos and frosted circus animal cookies exist in the world. I kept getting into arguments with one of my English teachers until I got kicked out and spent most of Chinese class trying to convince my teacher to let me raid the snack closest. Most of the time, I was banished to the homework room with zero toys and only a small white bookshelf with boring children’s classics. All the other students actually did their homework, so I barely had anyone to play with. Sometimes, I completed grammar and math worksheets out of boredom, which my teachers considered to be a great success on their part.

I hated Little Genius so much that I devised all kinds of sound arguments to convince my dad not to drive me there. My reasons ranged from I have a stomach ache to I have a really, really bad stomach ache. One time, I was a bit more creative and quite accidentally discovered the power of pathos. When my dad drove me in front of Little Genius and got ready to walk me across the parking lot to the miserable building, a wave of desperation passed through me, and tears started welling in my eyes. I tapped on my dad’s shoulder and pointed at the Little Genius building while whispering, “daddy, don’t make me go. They torture people in there!” My dad was so amused by my little performance that he decided to let me off the hook this time and drove me to his company where I bought chocolate bars from the vending machine and a vanilla bean smoothie from Starbucks.

Whenever I didn’t succeed in convincing my dad not to send me to Little Genius, I forced him to buy me bubble tea and pineapple buns from the food court next to the after-school program. My mom was a bit harder to convince. She rarely came to pick me up early from Little Genius even if I called her on the phone and told her that I wanted to go home. Since it was worth the risk, I always asked if we could buy more snacks from the food court before leaving. Sometimes, she said yes, and I got treats before and after experiencing hell. Those Little Genius days weren’t too bad.

Near the end of 4th grade, my metamorphosis into the student I am today began. Through my brother’s school experience, my parents learned that in 5th grade everyone in the Bay Area takes a math test, which determines whether they can skip a year of math when entering middle school. Many students are able to score high enough to pass the threshold, and my parents wanted me to hop onto that bandwagon. I was no longer able to skip Little Genius, especially the math classes, and I was “strongly encouraged” to do my homework. Even worse, I had to attend weekend math sessions taught by my dad. Every Saturday, I would spend half the day progressing through the 5th grade and 6th grade math textbooks.

Going from doing almost zero work to being forced to learn all of the math that I was trying to avoid for years wasn’t easy. I may have thrown a few fits, but I trudged along because I knew that the upcoming math placement test was the most important math test I was going to take in my life. I knew that the test would determine which math class I would be taking in 6th grade, and I, sure as hell, wanted to be in the more prestigious class. There was no way I was going to seem so obviously inferior to my classmates. I wanted to be one of the special kids who could be seen walking from the 6th grade zone to the 7th and 8th grade classrooms for a fancy math class. I worked my butt off. Well, I worked as hard as I could without giving up any snack time or “official” play time. In 5th grade, I took that math test and scored high enough to skip a year in math. That year, I also got my first 5 in math and scored a 600/600 on the STAR test.

During 6th grade, I attempted to backtrack to my carefree learning mentality from before. I passed that math test and didn’t have to go to Little Genius anymore. I could put all the horrors of hard work behind me and play to the fullest. I tried that for a few months until I started to realize that I was failing the special Pre-Algebra class that I worked so hard to get into. At first, some sucky test scores didn’t bother me. It’s not like I didn’t have those before. But something happened in the middle of the school year that changed everything. That something involved the math substitute teacher handing back a math test in ascending order of scores. What sucked is that everyone knew that the first few people to be called had especially bad scores (I’m talking about Ds and Fs) since the test was super hard. I was one of the first few students to be called. I hated the substitute teacher for shaming me in front of my classmates. I could imagine the students sitting in the front row seeing my test score and snickering to themselves. A hot flush rose in my cheeks, and I vowed to never get such a low math grade again.

For the next math test, I actually studied with some tutoring from my brother, and my scores skyrocketed. Flash forward to 7th grade when I was taking Algebra. One time, when my teacher was handing out the tests, she announced to the class that I was the only one among all three of her classes to get a full score. I felt like I just ate a whole bag of swedish fish. My head was swimming in the clouds. I was high on success for the rest of the day. After all, I was the only one who got every single question right on the test! It was a novel concept to me, and I needed to experience it again. So I studied harder and soon enough started building up a streak of perfect math scores. For all future math classes (minus Geometry), I strived for perfection. I was able to build up a pretty solid streak of 100%s in AP Calc BC and never failed to get a full score on a Linearity 1 & 2 quiz.

Math was the driving force behind my transformation from an elementary-school snack monster to a perfectionist who can’t handle getting an A-. With math, it’s possible to attain perfection because there is only one right answer. Of course, there could be a bunch of different ways to solve a problem, but only the final outcome matters when receiving a grade. Also, striving for perfection is necessary to fully grasp more complex math concepts, but what I didn’t predict was that I would project my fear of making mistakes to all my other classes. By the time I realized just how much of a perfectionist I became, it was already much too integrated into my identity. Being a perfectionist is exhausting. It’s like being trapped in Little Genius for the entire day without any snacks. I’m constantly finding problems with my work and a million ways that I can improve it. I need to timebox every task I work on to prevent dangerous rabbit holes from popping up.

Now, if I got a bee poster assignment, I would not only whip out the clipart images to trace over but also glue on dried flowers and little hairs for the bee legs. After that, I would convert my list of bee facts into a poem to transcribe in cursive on bee-themed handouts that people can pick up when they are in front of my poster. I miss that little girl version of me who could just delegate the bee poster to someone else and be happy with whatever it looked like. Little me didn’t care at all about those assignments. She did what mattered to her. I want that too. I want to not care so much anymore. I want to be able to put aside a convoluted textbook or unimportant presentation and spend my time doing research and baking. Where is that little girl hiding in me?

Chapter 3: Technically, this should be called “The Half Asian Fail”

My relationship with the Asian Fail is kinda complicated because I’m technically half Asian. My mom, originating from China, met my dad, who came from Switzerland, during graduate school. Officially, I’m half Chinese, a quarter German, and a quarter Swiss. At Lynbrook High School, I was never “Asian enough” compared to my classmates. My pale skin, medium brown hair, and deep-set eyes placed me in the white kid group, even though I knew more Mandarin than most of my Chinese friends and was obsessed with Chinese pop culture.

With my foreign appearance, I was never officially part of the Asian STEM crowd. I had to form my own friend group with an outstanding representation of halfies (half Asian and half something else). While other lunch groups talked about college admission essays and helped each other with math homework, we discussed various art techniques and analyzed fight sequences from the RWBY animation. For the first two years of high school, I could afford to goof off during lunch, but starting junior year, I started to feel like I was wasting my time. I was taking 4 AP classes and had to start practicing for the SATs. I saw my more academic-focused classmates working every moment of the day on their homework and was feeling left out, so I started going to the library during brunch and lunch to squeeze in as much homework and study time as possible.

At the library, I met a whole new gang of students. Students who were like me in that they put too much on their plates and were scared of getting an Asian Fail. Instead of eating lunch, we would sit at one of those round tables at the back of the library and work on AP Calc homework and study for AP Chemistry exams. However, there was always a divide between me and those like-minded students. They were all willing to study with me in the library and ask me science and math questions, but when they finally had an opportunity to hang out and have fun, they would sprint away to their Asian friend groups, and I would still be at the library working on some other assignment or chatting with the librarians.

To them, I was a smart white kid, but I wasn’t actually part of their group. There was no way I could understand their stress and their parents’ high expectations. Eric’s older brother got into Princeton, and now he was expected to accomplish the same miracle. Irene was submitting over ten pieces to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in an attempt to pump out even more achievements for her Stanford application. Joshua’s parents signed him up for a million intense SAT prep boot camps, and he had to stay up until 4 am every day to finish his AP homework and SAT workbooks. On the other hand, my parents didn’t seem to care. My only responsibilities were to finish my school assignments, lead three clubs, compete in the science fair, play two varsity-level sports, practice for the SATs, and teach creative writing and science to kids at the Calabazas library. I was able to go to sleep at 10 pm every night, so clearly my life was pretty chill.

Also, I had way less competition compared to my Asian classmates. While they had to compete against thousands of amazing Asian students to get into UCLA or UC Berkeley, I could pick and choose which race I wanted to be. One of my college counselors recommended that I identify as Caucasian for UC schools and Asian for East Coast schools to raise my chances. I thought that was a good thing. I could flip flop between two races, constantly picking the side that was most convenient for me. I wanted to feel the flexibility of being a halfie, but really, I was trapped in between, not ever belonging on either side. I identified with the Asian work mentality, but I couldn’t fully call it my own because I was constantly reminded of my difference.

I remember one of my classmates, David, jokingly asked me why I was so smart for a white person after I helped him understand a more complicated AP Stat concept. At the time, I laughed it off and told him that it was because I’m part Chinese. David’s question didn’t bother me at all because I was so used to everyone seeing me as the outlier Caucasian girl with flawless grades. The stereotype that Asians were good at studying and everyone else sucked was so embedded into my school’s culture that I truly believed that my half-Chinese background was the reason why I did so well in school. For a bunch of people with 4.0 GPAs, we were pretty stupid on some things.

The most troubling thing about being part white in a school with mostly Asians is that whenever I received an award I wasn’t sure whether I got the award for my merit or for my race. In 10th grade, I started receiving a bunch of academic awards: athlete scholar, the Princeton book award, and five class-specific best student awards. I constantly received invitations to attend award ceremonies that my brother didn’t even know existed back when he was at Lynbrook. I was being showered with awards even though I didn’t work as hard as many of my classmates. I assumed that I was being recognized so much because I stood out as a non-Asian person with good grades.

In 12th grade, I received a note from the principal’s office asking me to meet with the principal at the beginning of lunch. I had no idea why I was receiving the note and assumed that I was in trouble. Did they somehow realize that I ditched every school rally, so I could wait in front of the dining hall for cookies when the bell rang? I nervously entered the principal’s office and found another student sitting at the table. Maybe I accidentally cut in front of him in the lunch line? The principal had us sit side-by-side in front of her and proudly announced that we were selected as the class of 2017 poster students. Posters about our achievements would be displayed in the district office for an entire year, and the school would organize several award ceremonies to honor us. For a school with like 80% Asians, both of the Lynbrook 2017 poster students were white, which wasn’t fishy at all. I suspected that I only got the award because I didn’t look Asian. It felt like a fake and superficial badge of honor. I didn’t even show up to the second award ceremony.

I like being recognized for my hard work, but I can’t stand receiving something that I didn’t earn from scratch. The perfectionist within me doesn’t care about race. It wants to produce top-notch work that stands out. It doesn’t want to fail, regardless of whether it’s called an “Asian” fail or not. Race has nothing to do with fearing imperfection. What matters is that I grew up in an achievement-driven environment and tried to stay afloat by becoming a perfectionist. Asian Fail is what my high school school used to describe anything less than perfect, but it exists in other places too. Even at Olin, which is much more diverse than my hometown, there are people who can’t easily shake off their terror of not getting a 4.0 GPA. I’m definitely one of those people.

I’m trying to change (that’s partly why I’m writing this in the first place), but it’s not going to happen overnight. I can’t help going all out on every assignment or poster, even if it keeps me awake at night and gives me stomach aches.

In a way, I’m glad that I got that A-. It put me down from the clouds and onto the ground where I can properly reflect and learn from this experience. I guess that’s the whole point of education, figuring out who you are and then working hard to go beyond your own definition. I’ll try applying this perspective more often. (Disclaimer: just to clarify, I’m not asking to get A-’s or lower grades starting now just for the sake of personal development. I still plan to work hard and try my best. The thing I can’t stand the most is getting a grade without understanding why, but that’s another topic for another time.)

Writing prompt

Think of a problem you are currently facing with lots of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors at play
Draw the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (it could be a Venn diagram, drawing, or other visual representation of how the intrinsic and extrinsic factors relate to each other)
Indicate (e.g. circle, highlight, or underline) the strongest motivator. Write a bit about why it’s the strongest
Pick between these two options (you don’t have to use the same motivator from part 3)
- Transcribe an internal debate with the motivator that bothers you the most
- Write a thank you note to the motivator that you most value

Inspiration behind writing prompt

“The Asian Fail” is an example of a situation, in which intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors are in conflict. Throughout the piece, I battle with how the Bay Area Asian school culture impacted the way I learn. Fearing an Asian Fail was an extrinsic motivation that powered most of my educational accomplishments. It is a motivational factor that I delve into and, through the process, try to weaken.

Recipes

There are three recipes that go with this story. Click here for chapter 1’s recipe (cornmeal cake), here for chapter 2’s recipe (pineapple buns), and here for chapter 3’s recipe (marble bundt cake).