So far, I’ve discussed how being Indian has affected so many aspects of my life, but I want to address the prejudice that I had in my own head in my final blog. As a result of the stereotypes I saw on TV and the cruelty of some of my peers who did not know how to treat people who were different from them, I adopted the same racist mentality as the very people who I’m criticizing. This led me to deny myself, my family, and my Indian friends the respect that we all deserved. While I do regret my previous lack of appreciation for my culture, ever since I got to college, I have been able to fully embrace it in many ways, and it has made my life so much more rich and fulfilling.

For example, as I’m writing this post, I currently have henna on my hands, courtesy of my incredibly talented roommate (who happens to not be Brown). At one point very early in my life, I would’ve been embarrassed to be seen with henna, but now I can fully enjoy the beauty of the art, and I will try to get it done more often. Additionally, only after I left my house and was no longer being constantly exposed to the Bollywood music that my dad always has playing in the background did I realize how much I actually enjoy the music. I now go out of my way to listen to Hindi music because it brings me comfort and familiarity, which is something that I never would’ve thought to do a year ago.

My name is another topic that I’ve written about extensively, but the greatest takeaway for me has been that it has value and as a sign of respect, people should make an effort to remember it and pronounce it correctly. I’ve started correcting people who accidentally mistake it instead of just letting them learn it incorrectly like I did in high school.

Finally, I’ve learned the importance of sharing personal experiences and actively listening to those who are different. On my part, I always try to answer questions that my friends here ask me about my culture and my traditions with enthusiasm because I really appreciate their curiosity and openness to new ideas. In turn, I try to practice active listening and keep an open mind whenever I’m talking to people here who have different backgrounds than me. Returning the same respect of asking questions when I am curious about something and putting effort into remembering their names has helped me learn so much about new people at Penn State. Additionally, I try to remember my friends’ holidays and customs so that I can help them celebrate their culture like so many people have helped me do here. Even if that just means going to a cultural event to support them, sending them an “Eid Mubarak” or “Happy Easter” text, or trying a new food, I know that littlest effort can really touch someone who is feeling alone. Cultural acceptance is definitely a journey, but it is one that has already made my life so much more fulfilling.

When I checked the Penn State academic calendar for this semester, I was shocked by the lack of days off, especially around Easter. It seemed unimaginable and unfair to me that my friends celebrating the holiday didn’t get a day off so they could spend a long weekend with their families. After all, growing up, spring break was always centered around Easter. It only took a couple seconds of reflection to realize, however, that I never question the fact that I don’t get days off for my religious holidays. After reflecting on it, I’ve come to the conclusion that because I’ve never known anything else, I’m desensitized to spending holidays in school, but coming to college has definitely changed how I spend those days.

My holidays growing up always looked the same; I’d go to school during the week and then over the weekend, all my family friends would have a party. I’d dress up in my favorite lengha and eat good Indian food in one of my friends’ rooms. It was familiar and comfortable, and I was scared that coming to college would make those days of celebration a lot more isolating, especially considering that I don’t have nearly as many Indian friends here.

Late last month was a Hindu holiday called Holi, the festival of color, love, and spring. This is one of my favorite Indian holidays because of how we celebrate. As I described it to my friends, it’s basically a snowball fight with colored powder. I thought I’d have to celebrate all alone, but I found out that Penn State has a big Holi event on the HUB lawn that I’m planning on going to with my friend who is also celebrating the holiday. It’s so wonderful to have a community here of people who are like me, but what has surprised me even more is the support I get from my friends who aren’t Indian.

On the actual day of Holi, which was a random Monday in March, my friends and I went to celebrate by eating Indian food at Kaarma downtown. Despite the fact that neither of them is Indian and has any reason to know about my holidays, they both wished me and came with me to enjoy a comforting meal. I’ve experienced this support countless times since I got to Penn State, especially during Diwali, and it is always so heartwarming. Back home, I never experienced this kind of appreciation for my culture, and I was lucky to have such a strong community of Indian friends there, which more than made up for it; however, since I don’t have that network here at Penn State, having people being open to my culture and the things that make me different than them has made it so much easier to adjust to being away from my family.

Overall, my relationship with the Indian part of my identity has flourished ever since I got to college, and I think that the supportive environment and the wonderful people I’m surrounded by on a daily basis has been a huge reason why. I will probably have to celebrate holidays away from home for a long time, but I think that with the right people, I can still make them memorable.

Eye-lah, ill-ah, il-ee-ah, ella, ah-leah, leah, lla, ee-ah, and even Elijah. These are amongst the most memorable versions of my name that people have mistakenly called me. That’s right, Elijah. Like so many other people, I grew up bracing myself when substitutes paused before calling my name during attendance, and I’ve long been accustomed to having to correct people when they try to read my name for the first time. This has never been an issue to me; my name could have several different pronunciations, so when people make honest mistakes the first time they meet me, it doesn’t affect me at all. However, this phenomenon of people not knowing how to say my name has evolved since I got to Penn State, and for the first time in my life, it really, really bothers me. Ever since I started college, I’ve realized that people don’t even try to learn my name.

I’ve always considered myself to be bad at names, which made the first couple of weeks in college incredibly stressful. Meeting new people everyday and not knowing if I’d ever see them again meant that I had to really prioritize who I actually put energy into remembering. At the beginning of the semester, I could not, for the life of me, remember most people, and I took absolutely no offense when they didn’t remember me.

I started noticing something weird, however, well into the first semester. If I were in a group of my friends, and we met someone new, they would learn everyone’s name except for mine. I started suspecting that people in my classes, who I spoke to every day and had introduced myself to multiple times, had no idea what my name was. They’d learn all kinds of personal information about me, but for some reason would never care to find out my most defining characteristic. It started bothering me when I realized that I could tell when someone didn’t care at all to even try, when I could see it in their eyes as I introduced myself to them that they made no effort to process what I had just told them. Of course, I’ve always been guilty of forgetting names too, so I really only started caring when I realized the alarming rate at which it would happen to me, in contrast to my friends.

I have tried to figure out the root of this problem as I become more aware of it everyday, but the only thing that really differentiates me from my friends is my race. I don’t think I have a particularly hard name, considering that it is only three letters, and I’ve found that the important people in my life who I met at Penn State had absolutely no difficulty learning how to say it properly. While it is extreme to say that this behavior is targeted, I feel that I can absolutely consider it disrespectful. For that reason, I continue to call people out, especially when they are recurring characters in my life who have no reason not to learn my name.

Despite how much it annoys me, one great thing has come out of this situation: I’ve become great with names. Using one of my friends, who seems to never forget a name or face, as a model, I’ve started making an active effort to mitigate this flaw of mine. Now when I meet people, I do my best to encode their name using whatever mnemonic devices are necessary. I also try to use their names more in conversation because I believe it’s a huge sign of respect. This situation has forced me to reflect upon my own behaviors and improve myself, and for that, I’m very grateful. A name is a reflection of someone’s identity, culture, and heritage, and I cannot stress enough how important it is to respect people’s names like you would respect the individual themselves. A name is more than a label; it is a story, and especially the most unique names can tell the most interesting stories.

I’ll never forget the pride I felt in 2020 while watching Kamala Harris’s face flash across the TV screen, captioned with the words “first female Vice-President” and “first South Asian Vice-President.” I had never experienced that feeling before, and it had very little to do with Vice-President Harris as a politician, and a lot more to do with the fact that I never expected to see her name on that screen. It was in that moment that I realized how little representation I had seen until that point for girls and women who looked like me, and I also finally understood the value in having figures similar to myself to look up to.

It was at that point that I reflected on Indian characters who had appeared in the TV shows and movies when I was growing up. There was Princess Jasmine, who was supposed to be Middle Eastern, but actually presented as a strange and inaccurate mix between Indian and Arabian. As much as I loved her, I never really resonated with her story or saw myself in her. She was, however, the best I had when I was little. At least Princess Jasmine was an effort to increase inclusivity; the only other examples I can think of were proof that representation can be just as harmful as it can be beneficial. When I think of children’s TV show characters who promoted stereotypes and probably fueled prejudice more than they increased anybody’s sense of belonging and inclusion, one name comes to mind immediately: Ravi Ross.

Ravi Ross from the Disney Channel show Jessie was a paragon of Indian stereotypes. He was nerdy, unathletic, socially awkward, and an easy target for bullies. Similarly to Princess Jasmine, my friends and I never related to Ravi at all growing up, so it was easy for us to discount the narrative the show was forcing upon us about what Indians are like; however, it was easy for us to see the damage that the show was creating in the minds of people who weren’t Indian. It was common for our classmates to hold negative opinions about minorities in our school, so the media cannot fully be blamed for any of the prejudice we faced, but shows like Jessie and Phineas and Ferb, which featured another Indian nerd, Baljeet, certainly made the situation worse. Many of our peers expected me and my friends to behave the way that these fictional characters did, and so we were treated with the same lack of respect that was given to Ravi and Baljeet. Even shows for adults perpetuate these stereotypes with characters like Raj from The Big Bang Theory, and while I understand that characters like these are supposed to create humor in the shows, they can do a lot of damage, especially when they are the only examples of Indian characters that people are exposed to.

The good news is that we have undoubtedly come a long way in terms of representation since I was watching Disney Channel. Since Vice-President Harris’s election, I have watched shows like Never Have I Ever, which follows a character named Devi Vishwakumar and highlights how her ethnicity has impacted her life. I also really enjoyed watching Quantico, starring Priyanka Chopra, a famed Bollywood actress, which doesn’t ignore her ethnicity but also doesn’t fixate on it, allowing her character to develop a real personality instead of just being Indian. Even Kelly Kapoor from the Office provided me some sort of comfort, because despite the fact that her character was created for comedic purposes, the humor was centered around her personality, not her ethnicity. We still have a long way to go in terms of creating sufficient representation for both Indians and other underrepresented groups, but I think the increasing amount of diverse creators who are gaining platforms is a sign that we are heading in the right direction. Having someone to look up to who looks like you can completely change someone’s self image over time, and every child deserves to see themselves in someone inspiring as they’re growing up.

One of my most vivid memories of my grandfather takes place in the kitchen of his Mumbai apartment when I was around 7 years old. Seated at the dining table, we had just finished one of my grandmother’s exquisite meals, with my grandfather’s plate cleared off and mine still containing the last remnants of the dish, which I did not plan on finishing. As we cleared off the table, he kept looking at my plate with disappointment, and I couldn’t figure out why. There was nothing out of the ordinary for me – it was all but custom to toss a bit of your meal at my lunch table back home, and if anything, my grandfather’s refusal to leave even a crumb was strange to me.

That’s when he launched into a story about how he had worked in a textile mill when he was younger and had known men who had nothing. My family in India, in comparison, is relatively well-off, and as I learned during my most recent trip to Mumbai last December, to even have one room to yourself in that particularly overcrowded city is a privilege. That’s why the idea that some people who had worked the same job as my grandfather and lived in the same city as him had such different living conditions was foreign to me. These people, as he explained to me, were lucky to be able to afford even a meal for their families, and he pointed out that the amount of food I had planned on throwing out could be enough to provide a small child dinner that evening.

To be honest, I don’t remember all of the details from that conversation, but one key point has stuck with me ever since: don’t waste food. I’ve learned that it’s generally not that hard to do. It can be as simple as packing leftovers or just going back for seconds if you finish your first serving instead of overestimating what you will want to eat and wasting what you don’t get to. Of course, I’m not perfect, and I’ve learned the hard way that it’s sometimes better to waste a little than to force yourself to finish everything even if it means you’ll be overeating; however, these exceptions cannot justify the majority of food wastage that I witness here at Penn State.

That American custom of always leaving a little food on your plate is more noticeable than ever to me since I started college. Maybe it’s the fact that our dining halls are intentionally designed so that you can go back and take more from the buffet during your meal without paying again, but the waste I notice here is distinctly irritating because it’s so widely practiced. Can you imagine how much food could be saved if the 40 thousand people on our campus started being just a little more mindful about their eating habits?

This is not an issue that affects only children in Africa or workers all the way in India. My mom and I once volunteered for a non-profit organization called 412 Food Rescue that is designed to transport food scraps from restaurants and donate them to food banks so that they can go to people in need. It was such an important reminder that injustice exists everywhere, and being deprived of food is perhaps one of the most tragic situations to be in. I’d love to volunteer for a similar organization again in the future, and until then, I urge you to join me in being just a little more mindful about what we put on our plates everyday. The smallest change in our lifestyles can make the greatest difference in someone else’s.

By now, I know the conversation like the back of my hand. It usually happens when I’m speaking to men, and even more so when those men are STEM majors. The exact wording varies but it goes something along the lines of “you’re majoring in Psychology? Oh, so no science classes for you” or “what are you complaining about? You’re a Liberal Arts major!” It’s at this point when I usually clarify, “I’m studying Psych with a focus in neuroscience,” and then I revel in watching their faces fall as they take back the demeaning words they had just shamelessly said to me.

As much as I’m proud that I am studying a STEM (or at least STEM-adjacent) subject, these interactions bother me every time they happen. Throughout my life, I’ve always been considered smart. Even if I wasn’t at the very top of my class or taking the hardest subjects, people generally never questioned my intelligence when it came to school work, and I didn’t realize how much of a privilege that was until I got here. While at home, I was branded “smart” as a result of stereotypes about Indians excelling academically, here I’m labeled “less intelligent” before people even know me because of a different stereotype, centered around my major.

What the people who are questioning my intelligence fail to understand, however, is that even if I were in a field that was purely artistic, chances are that I could still outperform them in an essay contest or any communication-based exercise, just like they could beat me on a chemistry test or an engineering assignment. So why is my intelligence only being operationalized by the level math course I’m in and how difficult my major sounds? While I believe that STEM education is absolutely essential to helping people succeed in the future, I also think that our movement to enhance STEM studies has completely taken the importance off of artistic education. As wonderful as it is to be able to build a robot or write a new code, if the people who are in charge of these projects can’t critically think, then they risk their invention being applied wrong or failing to reach its full potential. The arts, humanities, and social sciences teach a whole different set of equally important skills, like writing and speaking, creativity, logic, empathy, social intelligence, and political literacy. Without these skills, even if someone is the best surgeon or programmer in the world, it would be difficult for them to succeed.

I love neuroscience and the concept of uncovering the intricacies behind every thought, movement, and feeling that we experience; however, I’m also grateful that my major also allows me to dedicate some of my education to learning about the struggles people face and how professionals in my field have tried to ameliorate those people’s conditions, including the times that they have failed. I think Penn State does a great job combining the natural sciences and critical thinking courses for students of all majors, but this is a much broader issue. While I believe that we should continue to push for STEM education from a young age, I think it’s equally as important that we place some emphasis on being well-rounded and that we recognize that every field provides its own value.

Without people studying a broad range of subjects, our society would not be able to function the same. Liberal arts education helps to preserve our morals, history, language, and culture, as well as placing a continuous emphasis on helping people, and for that reason, it is just as valuable and important as STEM education.