Personal Narrative-What Is Your Ethnicity?

The rustling of papers, shuffling of feet, and fear of failure suffocate my thoughts as I carefully fill in the circular bubbles of the all to well-known standardized testing packet. The dust of #2 pencils stain my eyes, and the monotonous recitation of lines by one unlucky administrator evokes a collective grown. Not many others share this fear of testing quite like I do. It’s not the tedious english passages or the excessive and obscure math problems, but instead the inevitable question: “What is your ethnicity?” The fear invoked by the simple question is indescribable. As we are forcefully told to emit information crammed into our young minds, my sweaty hair sticks to my flushed cheeks. I turn to see what my neighbor wrote, and an angry elbow is placed protectively over their paper in response to my wandering eyes. The teacher’s instructions are advancing without me and I am still stuck. I am neither fully Asian or Caucasian. I cannot completely owe my identity to either culture. The blend of both contribute to my uniqueness. In an effort to fulfill what is normal and praised, I bubble in Caucasian. It leaves me feeling wrong and misleading. My stomach doesn't settle until I am home and my third-grade self is distracted by the
People still react based on uninformed and stereotypical misconceptions. As a result of my personal relations with this behavior, I have gained the insight necessary to pursue my future career. Through documentaries and photographs I will create the representation that was lacking in my childhood. I want to make the impact on children’s lives that I saw was needed in my own. The more normalized it is to be different, the less children will feel ostracized. They will each proudly select every culture that contributes to who they are on the standardized test. The concern should regard the test questions themselves, not the consequences of being