Check Your Privilege - Blog Posts

Can we please normalize not asking people about their family, their origin, their ethnic background when doing small talk?! Not everybody wants to talk about their family. Not everybody with a "foreign"-sounding surname or first name cares to talk about their origin and, side note: Many people have been born in the country they live in now and do not enjoy constantly being reminded of their backstory! I am constantly being told that my German is perfect - well, guess what? It's perfect because it's my mother tongue, just because my father's from another country doesn't mean I personally grew up elsewhere!! For many people, these topics that are somehow deemed "small-talk appropriate" by others, are a constant source of stress and "othering", some might have had traumatic experiences in childhood/youth/have no contact to their biological family anymore/have been adopted ect. It's plain rude and nosy and unnecessary to ask such personal question - think before you talk for God's sake

As a student of color in STEM, that scene perfectly describes what I think about everyday. Here’s a quick list of everything that I am doing:

I have a 3.71 GPA

I volunteer 10+ hours every week

I am a part-time researcher on campus (at some point I’ll make a post about my research)

I am helping to develop a CubeSat as a part of an team of undergraduate students

and I am developing my own educational outreach student organization to bring more students of color into STEM

and you know what?

I probably still won’t get as far as rich, white students who haven’t worked nearly as hard as I have. I grew up just above the poverty line, so I don’t have the connections that those students have, it sets me apart, and it sets me behind.

The students who have those connections were able to get internships and research positions in high school, without even trying. Meanwhile, I got my first research position half of the way through my second year of college because I worked my ass off during my first year and the first half of this school year. My story is in no way unique. This is the experience of thousands of students of color around the country. We have to work so hard to get half as far as our white counterparts, and it’s just bullshit.