I might stay 20 for the rest of my life.
Freshman Year
During my first year of college, I found out quickly that I was not as smart as I thought I was.
I thought that I was just going to do math for the rest of my life. But I kept doing well in my calculus, linear algebra, and statistics courses only to fail the finals, bringing my averages down to Bs (which really are Asian Fs). I underestimated how different college levels felt from high school.
I was so unhappy with math, and I knew that meant that I actually had to think about what I wanted to do with my future.
Sophomore Year
I then found the Interactive Media & Game Development department at my college, and in sophomore year, I took some 3D modeling classes.
Here are some models from that first semester.
I was so happy that I was building my portfolio and proud that I figured out how to sculpt these models (I have long since learned that these would in no way shape or form ever get me hired).
I was climbing the ladder, and the universe was about to shove me off.
Quarantine
Unfortunately, I had to spend my last term of sophomore year in quarantine, and I still had to take my final computer science requirement.
If you’re not a coder but need the class, imagine that your professor can’t show you what you’re doing wrong. Heck, imagine that she isn’t there to make sure that you have the software installed correctly. Honestly, she might have passed me not because I deserved it but so that I’d stop resubmitting my final.
On top of that, all of my friends lived out of state, so I was completely alone.
I thought that I had finally found my calling and was building a foundation for my future, and the universe threw the most unfair obstacle in my way.
Except, that wasn’t all.
Goodbye, Mom
In August of 2020, I remember that my mom and dad had a really nasty argument, and suddenly, my mom couldn’t speak.
She had been acting off for the past month: she kept forgetting where she put her phone, she set up the microwave for 30 minutes, she gave me bad directions to her new doctor’s office, and she texted me in Vietnamese.
The first doctor that my dad took her to couldn’t find out what was wrong, and that was because what she did have was incredibly rare.
The second doctor that examined my mom narrowed her condition down to two possibilities: an autoimmune disease, which could be treated, or prion disease.
For those of you who don’t know, prion disease causes proteins to maladapt in your brain until it completely shuts down.
There’s no treatment. There’s no cure.
My mom died of prion disease in October 2020.
Recap
The world as I knew it ended at 20.
Quarantine isolated me from my friends at 20.
My mom died of a disease that literally kills 1 (or sometimes 2) in a million people when I was 20.
What’s Happened Since?
Since my mother’s death, I have created art for 3 mobile game internships, presented at PAX East, and have continued to build my portfolio.
I’ll never stop building toward my future, but I also think that I’ll be stuck at 20 forever.
