A change to your life

By Alexa A

Have you ever felt left out before? It could be feeling left out and not being “cool,” or speaking a language you aren’t fluent in. It's one of the worst feelings a person can experience.

For Ryan Luu, a freshman at Yerba Buena High School, he sometimes feels as if he is not Viet enough and feels a little left out because he can't speak it as much as his family even though he really tries.

He felt excluded from it when he would go out with friends and their parents were there and while they tried talking to Ryan in Vietnamese, he wouldn't know what to say and he would be kinda awkward not knowing what to say. Two years ago at a mall, there was a time where he was feeling excluded when going out with his friend and their parents.

Luu said, “I do feel excluded, especially when I go out with friends and their parents are there and they try to talk to me and I'm like, ‘oh my god.’”

He is able to understand Vietnamese but not able to respond. He remembers one time when he was with his friend and his parents and they asked him what ice cream flavor he wanted and he already knew what he wanted but he couldn’t translate it to something they could understand. So what he did was point at which flavor he wanted because he didn't know how to respond and so he got his friend to help him out.

Ryan went to Viet school where there's only Vietnamese people there and they tried to teach students Vietnamese. He left a while after and felt that he got worse at speaking it after he left school. He didn't know as much anymore and couldn't really do anything about it if he wasn't learning anymore. Ryan struggled with understanding it a lot and as mentioned, he couldn't do much about it since he wasn't at that school anymore.

Though Ryan had ended his sessions at Vietnamese school he got trophies and awards for learning so much. It's been about five years since he has been to Viet school but in middle school, he was enrolled into a Vietnamese class that was a class mainly given to high schoolers and that helped him a little more for his understanding.

He was able to pass that class as well and even though he’s still not as fluent as how he wants to be or how he’s expected to be, he has improved so much. That is also a little reason why he likes school, because he gets to learn a lot from his own culture and things he needs for the future.

Luu said, “I wouldn’t really say I love school but I like how challenging it is, like how the teachers keep you engaged and that’s mainly what I like about school. The teachers and work.”

He has done so much to feel less excluded from his understanding of his own language and that’s really impacted his life. Everything he has done in the past and all he’s done now encouraged him into being something he wasn’t before.

Being excluded from something doesn’t always mean you have to stay like that forever. People can always change that no matter how long it takes and even if they can’t quite get where they wanted to be, they’ll always get something out of it to improve themselves just like Ryan Luu did.