Being part of the 1.5 generation has been both a blessing and a struggle. Growing up, I wasn’t sure which culture I identified more with: the American culture I was living in, or the Mongolian culture I was born in.
If you are unfamiliar with what exactly the 1.5 Generation is, it is the generation of people who immigrated as children. Thus, those of us belonging to this generation find ourselves to be stuck in between cultures, kind of like we don’t belong to any specific one. For example, I sometimes feel like an outsider to some aspects of American culture, but too “Americanized” when I visit Mongolia, or see my older Mongolian relatives.
So when it came to applying to colleges, I initially wanted to move 2 hours away, to which my parents said I was too “Americanized”, and wasn’t thinking very frugally, realistically, or with my family in mind. In our culture, families stay together; it’s more normal for Asian American households to be multigenerational, as opposed separate. However, I just couldn’t explain that concept to my friends, so when I told them I was committing to GMU as a commuter, and living at home, my friends all shrugged and got these weird looks on their faces- almost as if they were judging me for putting my family life above my college experience.
On the other hand, my parents would not get on board with sending me away for school. While they wanted the best possible education for me, they wanted the most reasonable lifestyle for our family. We were lucky enough to be living just 10 minutes away from Mason, but if we weren’t so close, I don’t know where I would be today.
My family moved to the States when I was just 2 years old, so I consider myself to have had a much smoother transition into life in the US compared to my older siblings. I feel like I was able to grow with the new American culture we were exposed to much better than my brother and sisters. However, like most immigrants, I still faced some struggles that I harbored, unable to tell my American friends about, and I feel those dilemmas really shaped who I am and are now influencing my college experience.
Being in the 1.5, I learned English mostly from watching TV. Every morning I would get up and watch Cartoon Network. From it, I would pick up a few phrases here and there. I think by the age of 5, I was relatively fluent in English; but I remember mixing up words with Mongolian ones, because that’s all we spoke at home.
When I got to kindergarten, I remember being taken out of class by one of the language specialists, and I would sit with her every other day doing ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) exercises. While this was happening at school, I was being scolded at home for speaking more English than Mongolian. By the age of 6, I was between languages; not at a sufficient enough level of English or Mongolian. To this day I still find myself mixing up words. I catch myself substituting Mongolian words for English ones in conversations and vice versa. I think at this point it’s just how I learned to speak; while I speak perfect English, my problem now is losing my Mongolian. There is no real balance- for me, at least and I am still unsure of how to better myself.
Language barriers and family life aside, I am glad to be a member of the 1.5 generation. I like being a Mongolian-American, and being able to identify with different aspects of both cultures. I am grateful for the opportunities presented to me, the opportunities that my parents strived for me to have, like my enrollment at George Mason.
I think this generation has some of the most eccentric and hard-working individuals I have met thus far. It’s one filled with people who feel like they don’t belong to a culture, yet belonging to many, and that’s an asset in my book.