TOW #15 - Finding Myself Through My College Major

Joshua Kam, a junior in college born to Malaysian-Chinese parents, often gets questioned on his origins.  Clearly looking foreign due to his ancestry, “Where are you from?” is a question he is all too used to.  But what he isn’t used to, is an answer.  Kam was born in Montana, raised in Malaysia, and is going to college in Michigan.  But explaining this to others left his audience in a flurry of various places with no clear answer.  However, after two years in college, Kam finds himself answering this question with newfound ease.  In Joshua Kam's, "Finding Myself Through My College Major," Kam shows progression in answering questions about his ancestry through anecdotes.  By displaying progression, Kam highlights his comfort in his background and attributes it to his life in college.

            Kam’s piece starts out with an experience from his freshman year in college.  While in church an old man asked him, “So you’re from one of those Oriental nations, right?” (1).  Kam had heard questions like these before, but as he tried to explain the multiple places he has lived, the mans “eyes were glazed over and I was fumbling for the door” (1).  Kam found it difficult to accurately explain where he came from and this left his audience confused and him desperate to leave the situation.  But as time progressed, Kam found a simpler way to answer this question.  Instead he now says Montana and thus sparks a delightful conversation about the state and all its wonders.  Although he found a way to please his interrogators, Kam still dreads the questions, and wonders if he is even answering it fully to himself.  This is where his education in college comes to the rescue.  Through “studying history and the classics” (11), Kam learns the background behind his ancestry and sees how he is who he is because “an 11-year-old leapt onto a schooner in South China and landed on British Malaya to work the fruit orchards” (10) and he has “two sets of founding fathers who carved forth from their great continents new nations” (10).  By studying in college, Kam has his eyes opened by past stories and experiences about his ancestors.  Without his education, his answers to the question, “Where are you from?” may not have come so easily.