autobiography

hello everybody! the following is an autobiography that i was required to write for class. conveniently enough we're all required to keep blogs throughout our stay in vietnam, so that means i am thereby obligated to write entries (good news for you!) [: reflection/photo posts are coming i promise! in the meantime, please dont read this. being coerced to be introspective and write about myself for 2 pages is terribly embarrassing...

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My name is Chau Bao Thi Vuong, born on August 29 1987 in the quaint city of Fountain Valley, California. I didn’t know it at the time, but my birth inadvertently put an end to my dad’s education, a struggling road to attain a PhD in Economics in pursuit of a better, more financially stable life for the family. With one more mouth to feed, in addition to my older sister’s, my parents had to drop all of their educational aspirations in order to find work to sustain their family. And thus my dad, a born scholar, was reduced to finding work alongside immigrant Hispanics in Southern California, driving in a sputtering, beat up Toyota truck and manicuring lawns in affluent neighborhoods to barely make minimum wage. When I was around 3 years old, my parents invested their entire bank accounts into a tropical plant nursery business. Scala Nursery was agonizingly slow to pick up, frightening my parents for 6 weeks straight when they barely made any sales. But sure enough nostalgic immigrant Vietnamese families eventually began filtering in to find plants from their homeland to bring back to their own yard. Memories of my childhood predominantly trace back to Scala Nursery, where for years my older sister and I would run around, finding entertainment in making mudpies and playing tag with our older cousin, who was like our brother, in the tall forests of guava trees. We didn’t realize it then, but while we were naively running around under the sun, our parents were slaving away to maintain the nursery and their household.

When business began to really pick up later, my parents bought their first house in a different part of Long Beach. My sister and I waved good-bye to our childhood friends and were subsequently transferred to go to school in a more distinguished and prestigious school district in Los Alamitos, a wealthy neighborhood in the northern most part of Orange County. In the cusp of adolescence, not only did my sister and I battle self-esteem issues, but we also struggled to fit in with a different set of friends who were on an entirely different socio-economic level than us. If there was any period in time in my life that I would never like to repeat, it would be middle school. Saying that I was awkward and confused would be a terrible understatement. I remember stealing lipstick from my mom’s vanity and plastering it on my lips in order to gain some kind of leverage among the catty group of girls I wanted to fit in with. I don’t suppose it worked, and furthermore I dug myself a deep hole with my parents, who didn’t find any importance in my pursuit of social acceptance and rather me focused on solely academics.

Fortunately, when I entered high school, this all dwindled down significantly. In high school I discovered my love for writing, manifesting my passion into contributing to the school newspaper and editing the annual yearbook. In accordance to my parents’ standards, I consecutively enrolled in honors and AP courses. I excelled in English courses, but conversely dreaded going to my math classes (to my dad’s utter dismay). I ran cross country and track for years, and was involved in various different extra curricular activities such as Conflict Mediation and Student Government. Senior year was a bittersweet culmination of my high school years; I had solidified relationships with some of my best friends today and was taking a set of relatively easy courses to make up for past years of hard work, but it was all rapidly coming to an end to usher in a new chapter in my life. In the end, not much thought went into my decision of where I wanted to go to college. I was rejected by the one school I had my heart set on, and I had decided to go to UC Irvine out of the sake of convenience and partly because my older sister had had such a good experience there. When the last couple of acceptance letters rolled in through the mail I was already so intent on going to Irvine that I completely disregarded anything thereafter. I’ve always wondered what my life would have turned out like had I chosen another path. Nevertheless I think I was happy with my choice at the time.

The summer after high school, I landed my first job and internship at Rhythm & Hues Studios, a privately owned visual effects studio based in Los Angeles. It was my first experience with a full-time job and despite having to wake up at 5:30 every morning to battle LA traffic, I loved it there. My internship kept me busy and made the transition into college easier. In the following September I moved into the dorms at UC Irvine and began the next phase of my life that would focus primarily on obtaining my degrees in Literary Journalism and Sociology. Of course, there were several distractions and detours along the way. I didn’t begin taking classes specified for my first major until sophomore year, and I found out then that Literary Journalism is vastly different from conventional journalism, which is what I thought I had signed up for. Literary Journalism warmed up to me though, and ultimately I fell in love with the art and the level of skill and intimacy it required to excel. I met wonderful professors from all different spectrums of the newspaper business, all of who have inspired me. I’ve produced some of my best work through these classes and am grateful for all of the people that I have met.



During my first couple years of college, I took up a job at a Venezuelan chocolate café to help pay for my expenses. My parents protested against me working while simultaneously going to school, but I did it anyway. It was certainly a step down from the internship I had at R&H, but it was a job and at times it was enjoyable. I learned to make mochas and americanos as professionally as how i learned to deal with irate customers. My next job was as a Marketing and Events Coordinator Intern for the on-campus career center. In all of my activities on campus, I was most involved with SAGE Scholars, a competitive program that helps its scholars develop leadership and professional capabilities and to find internships. Through SAGE I met many other highly motivated students who have constantly inspired me. I ended up working for my SAGE advisors and for the SAGE Program during my senior year, where I TAed two undergraduate classes and helped managed the program’s efficiency and their website. Aside from SAGE, I also wrote occasionally for the school’s newspaper, tutored and conducted academic workshops for local underprivileged high schools, and was involved in several social organizations.

In a turn of events, I decided to apply for the study abroad program in Vietnam for the Fall of 2009. I had always wanted to go abroad and I knew that this would be the last opportunity to do so, but up until the very last second before I boarded the plane I was filled with trepidation of what was to come. I had been offered a reasonable job, had a boyfriend whom i loved, and was beginning to develop new hobbies and interests, had a group of amazing friends whom I adored, and was simply just living a stable live that i was more than complacent with. But therein lay the problem, it was a life which with i knew i would always be comfortable. Hanoi would have been different. I understood that this would change my life, and although I knew that I would only be beneficial to my self-growth, I was still nervous.

I walked in the Humanities graduation ceremony in Spring 2009 alongside two of my best friends, even though technically I don’t graduate until after I come back from the Education Abroad Program in Hanoi, Vietnam. I’m still unsure of where I'd like to be and what I’d like to do afterwards; part of me still wants to pursue the Law path that I had been contemplating for years, while a different part of me wants to continue my writing streak and attend grad school for Communications and try my hand at PR. Whatever the case, I just hope Vietnam will help me to further grow and find my way. [: