#repreflections

Hello! My name is Maria Angela Sarte and I am a student scholar of the APIASF AANAPISI and Wells Fargo scholarship representing California State University, Sacramento. I would first like to express my deepest gratitude for all who contributed to planning and making the 7th Annual APIASF Higher Education Summit a success. Upon my return in Sacramento, I am still in awe of the knowledge and mentorships that I’ve gained upon participating as a scholar representative in the Summit. As I reflect on my experience, I am amazed to learn of the many educators who strive to represent our AAPI community. In addition, although I learned upon AAPIs having been described as the “Invisible minorities,” I never realized how prevalent and detrimental that is not only in my state of California but also nationwide for our populations until coming to the Summit. This brings upon the ripple effects of many problems from high suicidal and ideation rates to a continued stimulus of poverty. However, attending this Summit has made me realized that it is up to our generation and collected voices to bring about a change in improving the rights of our communities.

           This resonates upon my own experiences as I reflect on who I am as an API woman in America. Growing up, I felt that I was to stay subservient and quiet because of being API. I often received stereotypes from people of not only different backgrounds of me, but of my own and this just shows that we too as APIs are experiencing internalized oppression that is put from colonialism. One quote that I will especially remember is from Dr. Curtiss Takada Rooks who said, “See the ball. Hit the ball. See suffering. End suffering.” Something so straightforward yet so powerful is what we need more of within our API backgrounds. It is our call to stand a stand and remember to take action to constantly keep in reminder of helping others acknowledge the identities that we have and to educate others who don’t understand our histories. This is what I hope to do and bring back to my university of California State University, Sacramento as I want to pass on the stone into the waters of my community and create that ripple effect.

           Throughout this Summit, I heard numerous discussions and felt my own sense of community with the openness of the various professionals that I’ve met who took the initiative to offer their input on how they can improve the educational rates upon our AAPI populations as well as eagerly listened to us as scholars in Higher Education. I believe that I will apply what I learned by starting my own discussions with the communities I am involved with. Sometimes within my own university that I attend to, we solely as students don’t follow up or discuss on what more we can do to improve our representations as AAPI. I am currently involved as a student and staff member of the Full Circle Project of Sacramento State which was funded by the AANAPISI grant that helps cater toward increasing the graduation and retention rates of our API student populations through hosting community forums and workshops, and I am honored and humbled to have a connection personally with my supervisors and professors who are closely knit with the AAPI community in Sacramento. However, because I have the advantage being a Full Circle Project I often feel that there are students out there who are going through obstacles that put a barrier upon finishing their educations because of the lack of awareness of the resources that are available to them. In addition, there are numbers of students who are afraid to take the initiative in making connections with professionals to help guide them. Thus, I believe that this Summit has made me much more aware of the advantage that I have as a student and now a scholar, and I plan to pass this on by offering mentorships to those who have not felt the support that I’ve felt throughout my college journey.

Thank you to @hello-xinchao for the submission today.

This December, join us as we #repReflections by reflecting on 2016 and look to 2017. See the below daily prompts, and submit a photo and caption reflecting on as many aspects of the last year as possible! 

Dec 1/ giving

Dec 2/ #NotTheSame

Dec 3/ grit

Dec 4/ joy

Dec 5/ roots

Dec 6/ family

Dec 7/ pride

Dec 8/ #tbt

Dec 9/ reach

Dec 10/ squad

Dec 11/ identity

Dec 12/ sanctuary

Dec 13/ love

Dec 14/ poetry

Dec 15/ empathy

Dec 16/ mission

Dec 17/ truth

Dec 18/ brave

Dec 19/ destination

Dec 20/ memory

Dec 21/ community

Dec 22/ #standforsomething

Dec 23/ inspiration

Dec 24/ perspiration

Dec 25/ celebrate

Dec 26/ humble

Dec 27/ journey

Dec 28/ comfort

Dec 29/ AANHPI

Dec 30/ play

By: Jean Abac, APIASF Scholar

I’ve been meaning to upload this photo and share it with my fellow United Health Foundation scholars as well as our very welcoming APIASF representatives (Miss Melissa May and Miss Cecilia Marshall) whom we met this past June 2016 at the Washington D.C. Diverse Scholars Initiative with United Health Foundation. I am so blessed and grateful to be able to take part in such wonderful experiences! My motivations for higher education are continually fueled through all the outreach programs and educational opportunities offered to us scholars. I feel incredibly blessed and grateful for APIASF! Thank you!

Yours Truly, 

By: Rebekah Loving, APIASF Scholar

Raindrops formed an opaque mosaic on my eyeglasses as I ran through the sheets of sweet, acidic Hamakua rain to my house, sitting on a slope of Maunakea. One step in front of me was all I could see, but, fortunately, my eyes were not my only vision. In my community, there were always many eyes watching over me. Despite my community being as far removed from homogeneous as honey is distant from poi, the bland, slightly sour ground taro root that was a staple of the ancient Hawaiians’ diet and is still widely eaten, we looked after one another, like families in a siege bound together through adversity. I am Rebekah Loving, recipient of the AANAPISI-APIASF scholarship in the Spring of 2016 and a rising sophomore at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. As a young woman of Native Hawaiian and Japanese descent with a multitude of other heritages, including African American, Puerto Rican, and Swedish, to name just a few, I’ve never per se fit into an ethnic community. I’m an oddball, but my community didn’t care.

When I began attending the University, I had two main goals in mind. One: I must take every opportunity to improve myself both intellectually and as a person. Two: I must be an encouragement to those less blessed than me through tutoring, mentoring, encouraging, and inspiring, but most importantly through loving. With these objectives in mind, I began to actively engage with my fellow students, which made me realize that I desired to build a community, not based on ethnicity or academic excellence, but founded on giving care and support. I wanted to create a community, as my family had in the neighbourhood I grew up in–one that managed to overlook differences and create an environment for growth and collaboration. My first goal has been surprisingly successful considering this year’s outcomes. I have collaborated on a paper published in the European Journal of Physics and will be participating in the Summer Program in Biostatistics and Computational Biology in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH). My second goal is much more difficult to quantify success in, but examination showed me that the community is maturing.

Saoimanu Sope | APIASF-NBCUniversal Scholar, 2014 | UC Santa Cruz |

“Saoi” is in her final year at UC Santa Cruz where she is studying Film Production and Community Studies. Following graduation, she has plans to further her knowledge and experience in youth counseling and/or psychological therapy for, primarily, urban youth. Until then, Saoi is in the process of wrapping up her senior capstone for Community Studies after having spent six months working in the Media, Arts and Culture Department of the RYSE Youth Center in Richmond, CA. 

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You may be thinking, “how could anyone love to ‘let go’?” It’s probably easy to make sense of this when it comes to the not so great experiences in our lives, but let me explain myself a bit further.

The idea of “letting go” has too often been associated with the understanding that if you're letting go of something, it must be because that something has caused you more harm than help. And let me just say that in some cases—probably more than both you and I have ever considered—that isn’t true at all. Letting go shouldn’t be seen as a way for us to rid ourselves of the negativity in our lives, but rather, a way for us to accept our experiences for what it was/is, and look forward to what is yet to come. When we feel comfortable with this practice of letting go, we are unconsciously preparing ourselves (emotionally and mentally) for whatever may come our way. We don’t get caught up in comparing the future to the past and we certainly don’t let what we’ve already been through, impact how we approach our future endeavors.

 Letting go may be hard to do when it comes to the good in our lives, but in doing so, we acknowledge that, as we’ve probably heard over and over again, life goes on. Now, don’t get me wrong… When I say “love to let go”, I’m not asking you to completely trash your happiest memories and forget about them. What I am saying, is that if you’re anything like me: someone that takes a million and one photos and posts everything on social media so that I have the pleasure of reliving that moment as much as I want (whether it be how beautifully my food fills my plate, the incredible view of the place I’m currently at or the amazing people that I’m sharing a space with at some crazy cool event), it may be relieving to let go of those memories so that you’re not constantly stuck on what “used to be”.

By Leilani Pimentel, APIASF Staff