Undergraduate /
SOCIALLY AMBIDEXTROUS - CommonApp Personal Statement [6]
Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.Socially Ambidextrous
I am often asked how growing up as an Indian in Japan has influenced my personality and way of thinking. Anything that impacts someone in small degrees is easy to explain. Having to describe how something that is a constant in one's life has affected them, however, is a profound, mammoth and seemingly impossible task. This is why for a long time, this question has seemed almost unbearable to answer.
The first time I registered the disparities in the Japanese and Indian cultures and ethos, I was nine and was visiting India over the summer. After an exhausting nine-hour flight, my family and I were hunting for a cab in the overcrowded and bustling Indira Gandhi Airport in New Delhi. When we found one, my brother and I were startled, if not shocked by the way our taxi driver handled our bags and spoke to our parents. What was worse was, our parents were
negotiating the travel fare, arguing back and forth in rapid Hindi with the taxi driver, half the words that were being spoken flying over my unaccustomed head. I was yet to understand why I felt so nervous, uncomfortable, and terrified. We'd come to India so many times before. It was our country, our background; why then did I feel the need to immediately go home to Japan?
Of course, in retrospect, I know now that the only reason I felt this way was that my mind and body - conditioned to follow the strict and polite Japanese social norms - were reacting negatively to the sudden cacophony of loud noises and gestures. In Japan, most social cues are based on the ideology of placing a group's needs above oneself's. Through early childhood karate, tennis and swimming lessons with Japanese children, my subconscious was subtly being sculpted towards keeping a large personal bubble, avoiding causing any discomfort to anyone even if they were in the wrong, and remaining polite at all times. The sudden disregard for these 'rules' in India the wiring in my brain to malfunction and triggered all my neurological alarms. Nevertheless, I soldiered on and experienced a summer chock-full of lessons. Amongst playing alley cricket, watching dubbed Hollywood action flicks, learning to cook Indian food, and hopping between nearly twenty cousins' houses, I learned to come to terms with my identity.
After many more trips to the subcontinent, culture shock has now ceased to occur in my plane of existence. I can leave home having had a breakfast of
paratha and yogurt, eat some
onigiri for lunch at school, then go on to gorge on some home-cooked spaghetti after a long day, without blinking an eye at the strangeness of it. I no longer worry about being walked over in India because of a demure demeanor, nor do I have to worry about seeming too brash in the metro in Japan.
Both cultures and societies have given me an arsenal of personality traits that I can whip out contingent on the situation I am facing. The silent determination and eye for accuracy taught in Japanese society has helped me excel in researching for debates and Model UN conferences to a T. My capability of garnering the attention of others towards what I have to say - a trait I have acquired through constant bickering with vendors in India - has aided me in my public speaking endeavors as well.
What earlier seemed to me to be an 'identity crisis,' has later instilled in me the realization that my background of two almost entirely disparate cultures is beneficial not only for me but also for those I interact with. It is not like flicking a switch that changes my personality; in both Japan and India I am the same person, only my usual disposition is highlighted by the positive aspects of both cultures.
