Escaping 1977 Vietnam: Finding a Place to Belong

SEASON 3 — EPISODE 2

Escaping 1977 Vietnam: Finding a Place to Belong

A year remembered for the Fall of Saigon and “Black April.” A year marked by uncertainty, upheaval, and impossible decisions.

For Danny Nguyen and his family, it was the year everything changed.

Caught in the aftermath of a war-torn Vietnam, Danny’s parents faced a choice no family should have to make. Call it courage. Call it desperation. They wanted a better life for their children — and if that meant boarding a small boat and sailing into the dark, cold ocean with no guarantees, then so be it.

Today, Danny serves as the Vice President of Administrative Services at Mission College — a position that reflects leadership, stability, and decades of growth. But that title stands in stark contrast to the four-year-old boy who arrived in America in 1977, carrying only memories, uncertainty, and the weight of starting over.

In this deeply reflective episode, Danny shares what it means to flee your homeland, rebuild identity in a new country, and wrestle with the lifelong search for belonging.

As the saying goes, sometimes you have to lose yourself to find who you are.

Episode Summary

02:48 – Danny recalls a recent family trip and a meaningful family photo that sparked reflection.
 04:18 – Looking back at Vietnam in 1977 and the decision to flee by boat under cover of night.
 06:24 – Vivid memories of leaving Vietnam and rediscovering part of himself during a 2015 visit to Ho Chi Minh City.
 10:37 – Arriving in the U.S. as a young child and adjusting to a new culture.
 12:28 – How the concept of belonging has shaped Danny’s life.
 16:32 – Balancing cultural heritage with assimilation into American society.
 20:14 – Going from disliking academics to making education central to his life.
 23:25 – The winding journey through rebellion, pharmacy, and ultimately leadership in higher education.
 28:24 – Gratitude for a music choir instructor at Sylvandale Middle School who made a lasting impact.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Hello, hi, how are you? Welcome to International Student Stories. I am your host, Simon Hamlin. Even though our guest today, Danny Wen, technically is not and was not an international student, his story absolutely fits what the International Student Stories podcast is all about. At a very young age, Danny and his family fled Vietnam to come to the U.S. His parents risked their lives to give Danny and his siblings a new start. In our interview, Danny talks about his sense of awe in coming to the U.S. and the challenges he had in adjusting to life in the U.S. A big theme in our conversation is finding a sense of belonging, fitting in. Danny ended up finding a career path in the world of higher education in spite of his own struggles and rebellion toward his high school and college education. Today he is the vice president of administrative services at Mission College. He works directly with international students, and I have to believe his experience coming to the US at a young age and navigating the world of education helps Danny relate to international students on a deeper level. This is part one of a two-part interview with Danny. Make sure to tune in to part two, which will come out in a few weeks. Before we jump into Danny's interview, please help us share these inspiring stories with as many people as possible. Take a minute to subscribe to and follow the International Student Stories podcast. You can also rate us, share the podcast with others, and write a review. Go ahead and pause this episode right now so you can take action. We really appreciate your help. Now I'd like to introduce Danny Weng in this episode of International Student Stories. Hi, Danny. Hi Simon. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

I'm doing well. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Good. Good. And you're coming to us from your office on the campus of Mission College, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:25

I am. Our beautiful Mission College campus in Santa Clara, California. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Excellent. I'm going to ask a question about your home first, actually. So I know you're in your office, but I'm going to ask you to think to your home of all the pictures you currently have showing in your home. And this could be artwork, it could be family photographs. What is your favorite?

SPEAKER_00 2:49

My favorite picture is a picture of my family on a fairly recent family trip several years ago. We went, we did a cabin trip and there was a hot tub there. And for some reason, we all decided, you know what? We're going to get into this hot tub. And so this is my whole family, five siblings, parents, nieces, nephews. I think we had a family friend there. Yeah, one of my nieces had her friend there. I don't think we had any dogs in the hot tub, but a good number of us and all crammed into this hot tub. And then one of our friends stood up on the balcony and took a picture down, and we were all looking up. And to this day, we all look at and marvel at it because I don't know how we all fit in there. You know, and then the trend nowadays is to reproduce these pictures, right? I don't think there's any prospect of being able to do that. But it's my favorite picture, and everybody comments on it because everybody just looks so happy and just so in the moment. And it really represents kind of just how tight-knit our family is and just how we feel when we're around each other. So it makes me smile every time I see it.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

That sounds very joyous. Well, not to break that smile, but I and this is actually a good segue with talking about water and family and being all kind of crammed together. I want to revisit your early childhood when your family fled Vietnam by boat. You were a what was called and is called a boat person. What year was it and what age when your family fled Vietnam?

SPEAKER_00 4:18

That was 1977, and I was four years old, and I had at the time four siblings. So a family of seven of us on a boat. And I can't remember how many of us were on there. I hear a couple of hundred, but it was a relatively small boat. It's a fishing boat, and we left in the middle of the night and down a river and then out to sea, and then took that boat out to international waters.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

For those not familiar with what's termed the boat people and what you were fleeing from from Vietnam, could you give a little background on that?

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Oh, yeah, sure. That's so back in in 1975, right? That's when the Americans left Vietnam, marched kind of the end of the war. And in the years following, all of the remaining families were kind of left in shambles, really, of just kind of the state of the things in the country, and everybody was trying to get out. And so in those years, that's what everybody was trying to do, looking for better opportunities. And those who were fortunate enough to leave in 1975, that was great. But for the remaining families, it was always about trying to find a way out and finding a way to America. And so we were one of those families where, you know, and I don't even know if there were other attempts at it. I'm sure there were. Sometimes these things took a lot for the family to be able to cobble together enough money or jewelry or gold and be able to hand over to somebody, you know, just trusting that they're going to be there when they say they are meeting us in the middle of the night and then shepherding us out to sea. And so we were one of just thousands and thousands of families that took to sea in the face of death and piracy and a number of things, just harrowing experience, all in the name of just trying to get out and look for better opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

I read a stat where I think it was from 1975 to 1995, there were about 800,000 people that tried to make the voyage like you did. And anywhere between 200 to 400,000 did not make it. So, to your point, very harrowing. I know you were only four years old. Do you have any memories of that voyage and of first landing in the US?

SPEAKER_00 6:24

I do. You know, it's amazing because I had visited Vietnam a couple of years ago, and just some of the memories I've always kind of harbored, and other memories just kind of came flooding back. And even that that young age, I think it's just something about just the brain and things that get impressed into your mind that makes you remember. So I do remember being on the boat. I do remember my younger brother learning how to walk. I do remember eating rice porridge with salt. So just images, really, more than just actual experiences. I do remember wondering like what the heck we were doing. I remember that, kind of just thinking at that, even at that young age. And then just coming over to America, obviously, just the awe. I think we were in Hong Kong and we flew out of Hong Kong over to America, but just the sheer bigness of everything coming from a small city or area, neighborhood, I should say, and being at that age and just seeing what the world is just like it just opened your eyes, like all this incredible, incredible stuff out there. It's interesting, Simon. I wanted to share this because when I went back, I just started this actually. When I went back in 2015, I think was the first time that I took my family back there to Vietnam, and we were in Saigon. So part of it was kind of just reconnecting, rediscovering, right? My country, my culture. But I was asking my mom about like kind of, you know, where did we grow up again? And there's all these districts, Saigon and or Ho Chi Minh City, right? We're going to be official.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Is that where you were born and where you were? I was born, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Yeah, born in Saigon. And so there's all these different districts. I'm like, mom, which district did we, you know, we grow up in and what's the address? And so I took a taxi out there to District 11. And I still remember because our house backed up to this railroad in a railway. And I remember as a kid, one of my daily pastimes was to try to find some rocks and put it on that railway and wait for the train because the train would come by like consistently, you know, every day at what in the afternoon, whatever time it was, for all the commuters. And so I'd set this rock on the railway, just hoping to see the train come by and just smash it to smithereens. Every day I'd go there and try it and just fail miserably because, you know, inevitably it would just get vibrated and rocked off of the off of the rail. But I came back there, I saw that railway. I saw it. And so it just that's where all the memories just started flooding back. And there was this gentleman, he was sitting, he was standing outside of that house, his doorway, kind of smoking a cigarette. And at the time, I was just big on just again rediscovering and just I had my camera. I talked to everybody that I could, try to just soak it all in. So I strike up a conversation with this gentleman, and so he was uh yeah, he was explaining to me that oh, he's lived here for over 40 years. And throughout the course of that conversation, learned that he had been our neighbor, he knew my family, he knew my dad. We played with his kids in that neighborhood. And he said that, you know, it's amazing because they never really knew exactly what happened to us. I mean, they could surmise what happened to us, but he said, like just one night without any warning or any discussion or anything like that, you guys just disappeared, like in the middle of the night. And he was like, the whole neighborhood for a while was just thinking, what happened to this family? Where are they? Are they sick? Are they in the hospital? Are they did they stay move out of town? What you know? So there was all of that. And then he then he jokingly said, Yeah, and then after several days, we broke into your house and took your furniture because you guys were coming back.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

So, did he still have the furniture too? Was he like sitting on your old rocking chair?

SPEAKER_00 9:47

I should have stayed claim to that, right? It's like, hey, wait, that's ours right there. I think that's my granddad's, you better give that back. But um, and that's pretty typical, I would think, for other Vietnamese families. And so that was just amazing to just the chance of that, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Well, it's so great that you got to go back and visit and have those memories and reconnect. I think that's such a gift to get that opportunity. Coming to the US, and you arrived in San Jose, is that right? Is that where you first lived and you grew up there? Yeah. What memories do you have of trying to, and I don't even know if I want to call it assimilate. I don't know if that was would have even been the goal, but just adjusting to life in the US. What were some of your early memories of that and experiences that come to mind?

SPEAKER_00 10:37

So when I was four, um, one of the first experiences I remember was my mom just not understanding the school system and and how it all worked and everything, kind of trekking me into one of the elementary schools, thinking, okay, I mean, this is America, and we came here for my son to get an education, and here he is, take him, you know, and learning that I wasn't of age yet to be in school. I was only four. But just the language barrier, not only personally, but observing kind of how everything seemed so foreign and the fact that my parents didn't quite seem to, you know, they struggled with it, right? Just kind of just so many times, just waiting around in waiting rooms. I'd see like perplexed looks on my parents' face about forms. I remember us, for example, being in line for like the DMV and being in line for like because back then as a family, we just went did everything together, you know, and so we went everywhere together. And just being at the DMV and seeing my dad wait in line for an hour, only be to be told he was in the wrong line, and then having to go to another line. And so just things like that, that kind of just stuck with me of part of that experience of assimilating is just the language barrier, learning how things worked. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

So yeah, it sounds like it was not only challenging but frustrating and probably a sense of feeling a little lost. And that I was reading an article on studyusa.com about you that talked about how you know this struggle and this struggle to really find that sense of belonging and fitting in. And it seems like if you were going through those experiences at that young age, that would really imprint that sense of not having a real feeling of belonging. Is that accurate? Am I off base?

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah, absolutely, Simon. That was that was a big, big theme of my early life, and I would say continues to be a theme in my life, you know, and I think, and it happens in phases, right? So when you're a four-year-old, it's more just these gut feelings about how you don't fit, but you don't know how you don't fit because you don't know any better. I remember playing on the playground and not knowing how to ask, hey, is my turn on the swing? You know, and so pushing some poor girl off the swing because I didn't know how to communicate, and then getting my parents getting a call from the teacher and saying, Hey, what's going on with your son? He sees a is that does he have an issue with violence and what's going on here? I just didn't know how to communicate. So little things like that. I have a lot of memories just early on, just in kindergarten of just trying to assimilate because I think that was when I was kind of most impressionable along the way, you kind of figure out, right? You could you develop these mechanisms and these techniques, and you have you know a thought process kind of thinking through how do you do this strategically. But when you're four or five or six in the early years in kindergarten, in first grade, it was just it's kind of survival mentality of just trying to figure out where you fit in. I had a girl in kindergarten. I don't know if you can consider her my first girlfriend. She may have been. I don't know this because we didn't speak, but apparently she made me sit next to her every day, you know, when you sit in the circle, and she even threatened me like if I didn't sit next to her, you know, because she lived at the corner of my street on Lock Drive in San Jose, and they owned a dog, and that dog was on a chain, and sometimes it got loose. And you know, every person from Vietnam who comes over to America is deathly afraid of dogs. I mean, we had dogs in Vietnam, but we just didn't have you know these kinds of dogs, and so I was deathly afraid of that dog, and so she threatened me with that. So, you know, she sounds like a girlfriend. That sounds like a girlfriend. Yeah, yeah, we were committed, right? It was a mutual symbiotic relationship.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

Instead of a instead of like a wedding ring, it was the dog that was kind of binding you.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Yeah, that's kind of a you know, comical story in some ways, but there were others that I think that were challenges that were a little bit more that hit me a little deeper, and I still remember to this day, you know, and things like for me to this day, like shoes is still a big trigger. You're probably wondering, well, shoes. Well, my first pair of shoes in America was a pair of Mary Janes that I that we got probably from a local organization or the church or something like that. My parents didn't know that these were girl shoes. I didn't know they were girl shoes. I sported them around, like, okay, I got shoes, you know. So so I wore those around, but got teased a lot and didn't understand why. And shoes was a thing, right? Like shoes was even at show and tell, I remember, you know, as the other kids were bringing their new Millennium Falcon or whatever, you know, I brought this little thing that my dad helped me build. I'll never forget this. His he's like, show and tell. I'm like, Dad, I don't have any toys. What am I gonna show and tell? He's like, Oh, you know what? I got something for you, son. When I was a kid, you know, we used to make these things, we take two cans and then we attach a string to them, and then you can do all different kinds of things. Look at, you know, you can play telephone. And so when I was demonstrating this in front of my class, I was telling the class, hey, you know what, you guys take off your shoes because I can show you how you can use these things as stilts, right? And you can kind of walk around them like clogs, and and everybody's just like, What? What is this guy doing? Like taking off his shoes and going barefoot, and you know, and then of course, there's the whole taking off the shoes in a Vietnamese family, right? That was big. So all the friends who came over, you know, had to take off shoes, and they thought it was something religious, they thought it was something cultural, and and it was because most Vietnamese households in Vietnam wanted to kind of you didn't want to check in, right? All the dirt and and grime from the streets into the home. But my dad was kind of a clean freak and he just wanted things to be clean, and so we ripped out all the carpets and installed this kind of new parquet floor, wood flooring, and so everybody had to take off the shoes because we wanted it to stay clean, but everybody just assumed it was some religious cultural thing, and it was just because we wanted to be clean.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

How important was it for your family to hold on to aspects of your culture, your Vietnamese heritage, and at the same time try to assimilate? Like what was that balance for you?

SPEAKER_00 16:32

I can speak to my family a bit. For my parents, you know, I hadn't had a lot of conversation with them on this, but I imagine that that must have been really, really difficult. And now as a parent, I'm kind of sensing that they must have gone through these struggles because I struggle with it as well. But I would say, if anything, back then it was probably more airing towards just helping us to assimilate, right? Wanting us to be able to do the best that we can in school and to be able to get ahead and to be able to thrive. And even for my own family, it was probably possibly even at the expense for going and sacrificing some of the cultural things. I mean, we were a religious family, and I think my parents were probably, if anything, more focused on kind of that religious upbringing, you know, and dedication to our religion than to some of the cultural aspects. Although they would share things with us all the time, right? And tell us about Vietnam and tell us what it would be like if we were kids in Vietnam. And, you know, if you're not going to eat that, well, you know, the kids in Vietnam, you know, this is you know how we grew up and things like that. So they tried, but I think that they weren't hard up about it, you know, they weren't sticklers about it. I think they wanted to have that balance and give us that space and that opportunity to assimilate and to learn the ways of being American. Of course, now I'm struggling with that a bit. With your kids? With my kids. And I think, you know, at least my parents, I think they erred on that side because they didn't have that opportunity, right? I mean, I can sit back, my wife Taylor and I can sit back and go, okay, what do we want to do with the kids? But that's more of a philosophical conversation. For my parents, it was about survival. We risked our lives to bring you over here. We spent our last time, and now you're here, and we would want nothing more than for you to be able to be successful. But I think all in the back of their mind, they in their hearts, they had always wanted to make sure that at our core that we were still true and true Vietnamese, right? So they did teach us Vietnamese, they made us learn Vietnamese, they made us go to Vietnamese school, so things like that. And with my kids, it's now kind of the same. I'm a little bit remiss in not having forced the issue a little bit because, and I and to all the Vietnamese American peers that I have out there, I'll tell them this right now. If they haven't had kids or they're having young kids, is there will be a day when the kids will turn around if they're Vietnamese American and ask you, why did you not force me to learn Vietnamese? I think many of them would, you know, and especially now that we're a generation in, right, here in America, you're gonna have many who are gonna want to reconnect with their culture and their background and their language, and then look around and realize, oh, I'm not that Vietnamese, like and I wish I knew the language. And so, you know, and I always said that I wouldn't want to be the generation that messes that up, right? Like I should, and maybe it's not too late. My kids are are in college, but and I've got a young one at home, Matthew, who's in high school. But so it's not it's never too late. So we we can still try that, but you never want to be that generation that screws that part up, right? Like it's like, okay, let's if you have to force them, force them, and then let the next generation kind of figure out what they want to do with that.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Isn't that interesting how that kind of flipped? Like your parents were really about trying to help you assimilate and understandably. And now with your kids, it sounds like there's wanting to connect them more with their Vietnamese heritage.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, they did the basics. We spoke Vietnamese as a household, they spoke to us in Vietnamese, we did not speak English. They tried where it came to language and certain cultural aspects, but they weren't sticklers per se. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Even though academics is an integral part of your life now, I know that wasn't always the case. Could you talk about your time in high school and early college and share some of your struggles that that time posed for you?

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Sure. I have a lot of kind of mixed feelings about kind of just my, and it's actually very serendipitous and you know, paradoxical and just a surprise, I think, of where I've landed because I've had somewhat of a tumultuous relationship with education. And I think it goes back to some of the experiences that I'm sharing with you, right, in in grade school. And and a big part of it, I I've recently learned is I think some of my trauma around just something as simple as my name, right? So my name is Yung. That's my Vietnamese name. And the American pronunciation of that is dung. You can imagine that's not an easy name to grow up with and enter into new classes and new grades and meeting new friends with. I didn't know what that meant at the time, but um, so so early on, it's like, okay, it's an odd name. And once in a while, you know, I'll get teased about it, but I didn't know what the meeting was. And so that was always hard because I remember skipping the first day of classes just so that I wouldn't have to hear my name called. I remember waiting around outside the classroom all the way through college, of waiting for the professor, so hoping that I can catch him or her and be able to say, Hey, by the way, you look at your roster, Jesus, you're gonna see this name. I'd like to be called Danny, or this is how you pronounce it, or you know, that was kind of traumatizing for me, I think, growing up and trying to own that name and trying to assimilate with that name. And incidentally, my name at home is really Yuan. That's my birth name.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Yuan.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Yeah, Yuan, D-U-A-N. And it's also the name of a Vietnamese communist official that I think gained more power, you know, as Ho Chi Minh kind of waned and got sick. But, anyways, nobody liked him. This guy was, you know, in our minds, evil. And so my grandparents forced my parents to change that to Yom to Dung. But at home, they still call me B-Yon. And I still had throughout grade school and high school, I still had moments where I'm like, man, I wish they could have kept that as my official name because to Americanize that, I would have been Dwayne. And even Dwayne wasn't that cool of a name back then, but it is now, right? It's now, yeah. When you have like basketball players like Dwayne Wayne and Dwayne Dirock Johnson. Right. Right. So I remember so many times where I'm like, oh man, I wish that because that's what they they call me at home. And then Danny is a name that I took on, and I've legally changed my name since. And that was hard for me too. But you know, actually having processed it and come to terms with it and all of those things, I'm like, okay, I'm ready now. And I I officially changed my name. And that's a name of a grade school friend that I had. He lived down the block from us and across the street from us, I should say. And Daniel Gemeyer. And he was just the sweetest boy. And his family is really sweet and really good to us. One of my first friends that accepted me. And I just thought it'd be a nice name to take on.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

So in spite of all those struggles and challenges and discomfort around education, you are now in the education field. Was there one turning point during your high school or college journey that all of a sudden it shifted and you thought, oh, I'm actually going to go into this world as a profession? Or was it a series of events that led you there?

SPEAKER_00 23:26

No, that's a great question, Simon, because it was it was a journey. It was by no means was there an epiphany, or there was a conscientious decision. It was all part of just my path and my journey. And so in high school was pretty rough. I didn't do well. I think I rebelled at some point. And that was part of a, you know, what I think a lot of people kind of struggled, a lot of people in my generation, Vietnamese Americans, struggled with is just kind of just that sense of identity and who we are. What does it mean to be Vietnamese American? What are the expectations of your family? Did I really want to be on the path to becoming a doctor like my brother? Did I want to be an engineer? You know, all those pressures. And so there are a couple of years where I rebelled a little bit. I found a group of friends that I never had before, and they were more because growing up, I was trying to be American. I had a lot of American friends. And so I found this group that I was like, oh, this is what teenage boys like Vietnamese American teenage boys are like, and all the bad words that they taught me and what they they like to do, and just the culture and hanging out at cafes and doing certain things. And I so I got into that and got in a little bit of trouble. And so it was a really real struggle. But I have I had some teachers that you know always was able to see bright spots in me, always believed in me, always managed to kind of steer me back onto the right path. And so even in college, I struggled with college too. So it's amazing that I'm actually an educator because I I failed out so many times. I could have failed in high school. You know, I went to three different high schools by the time I got to San Jose State. I got on academic probation my first year, my first semester, got kicked out, had to get myself reinstated. And but all along there was always somebody there, you know, in addition to just the support of my family, which I always had, but just that one teacher or that one supporter who believed in me, or when I didn't, or guided me back. And so then I went to pharmacy school, right? When I got out of pharmacy school, that's what I thought I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to be a pharmacist, but I didn't intentionally desert pharmacy. I think I just started to choose where I felt right. And at the time when I was working at Eli Lilly doing pharmaceuticals, I lived on the street from Mission College. And I wasn't feeling that great about what I was doing, almost a little bit disenchanted of what I thought I was gonna be doing. So many of us probably have that, right? Where we come out, we're on this career path, we're on the straight and narrow, and we come out, we're thinking, oh, I'm gonna be helping old people with their medications and with their ostomy products, and it's gonna be so awesome. And then learn that no, that's not actually what it the work entails.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

The corporate world comes in and you realize what's underneath all that.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

It's not always for for the good of people, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

And you know, and being young and idealistic too, right? I owned up to that, and who knows what my path could have been if I wasn't so idealistic and decided to, you know, what I want to go look for something else. And so at the time I just stopped into mission, and there was a dean, Phil Pabish, who was just he was so great, and he was trying to start up a pharmacy program. And so he he invited me in to do some consulting and help him build a program. And you know, from the moment that I stood in front of a class and taught a class, just oh, so if there is a moment, so I mean, I guess you're you're you're helping me answer this question for myself, is that yeah, that was the moment. And then thereafter, starting to feel like being around this community that I'm seeing that just takes such fulfillment in their work, right? This community here at Mission College and all the faculty and staff who just take so much pride and joy and fulfillment in helping students. I'm like, wow, what? So they're on to something, and I, you know, so and I'm feeling it too. Even then, I didn't think I was making that this conscious decision to be an administrator or be an educator. Or I just followed my heart and I said, okay, I'll do that. And then one thing led to the next, and there was another opportunity to become a director, and another opportunity then to become a dean. And at every turn, I just I chose education. And so, in that respect, it hasn't been a surprise. And I think now as we reflect back on my educational journey, I do see it, I do see that arc of like, you know, every time that I got into some trouble, anytime that I doubted myself, anytime that I was kind of going off my path and getting into stuff that I should, the education always kind of took me back. It always took me back, and it always gave me that opportunity to reinvent myself and give myself another chance. And so I just love that fact that now I'm able to do it. I feel so blessed that I'm able to continue to do this work that gave me so many opportunities and then just trying to find ways to give back and connect with other students that may be feeling, you know, and experiencing what I experienced.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

You said you had great support from your parents and family, and that you also did have whether it was instructors or other people along the way that helped in your journey and kind of picked you up when you were feeling down. You mentioned one person, the dean from Mission College. Are there any other people that you want to mention or point out that were really instrumental in that journey for you?

SPEAKER_00 28:24

There was Mrs. Alkyr back in Sylvandale. Shout out to Sylvandale Middle School. She was she was this amazing, beautiful soul, my music choir instructor who saw something in me that I had no idea was there and invited me into um singing group. I'm not a singer, right? You know, but looking back, thinking about the work that she did of taking some inner city kid who just didn't know anything about this world and trying to show him the beauty of music and just what it means to be able to express yourself and finding a way to fit in, even though you don't think that you fit in. And just through that experience of being in front of people and feeling like I belong to a group, a singing group, and then getting in front of the class and gaining some popularity and doing that, that really helped me to connect with my school and my peers. And she was just an amazing, amazing person. And I just wonder, right, like she's just one teacher. I am I mean, I throughout my whole life, I've had plenty of teachers like that. And I know out there, all of our, you know, our listeners and students out there, I'm hoping everybody's got that one person on their journey that can help them and support them and really believe in them because it's sometimes it's just we don't believe in ourselves and we don't feel like we belong. And so having that teacher or something in our lives makes a world of a difference.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

Thank you again for listening to International Student Stories. And thank you to our team for putting together this episode. Stories are meant to be shared, so please pass the story on to a friend or family member who needs to hear a good story. A few other quick notes. I invite you to check out the show notes if you want more details on some of the topics discussed in this episode. For all the latest podcast news, stop by our website, studyintheusaglobal.com forward slash podcast. That's S-T-U-D-Y in the USA Global.com forward slash podcast. Subscribe to the International Student Stories Podcast to be alerted on new episodes. And contact us if you know of a current or former international student whose story needs to be shared with the world. Goodbye for now, be well, and much love to each and every one of you.