My Vietnamese heritage has fueled my passion for research. As I scrolled through social media two years ago, I saw videos from children of Vietnamese immigrants who wondered about their family’s conservative political views. I was shocked. For years, I had silently listened to my relatives talk from the table next to mine, wondering what influenced their political conservatism. Now, I saw others asking the same question: What influenced this conservatism? I immediately knew I needed an answer. Not understanding this part of my ethnicity felt like I was missing a piece of my cultural identity. As I looked for existing literature on Vietnamese-American political values, much of what I read didn’t feel personal enough. Statistics on voting habits were helpful, but that didn’t explain the why. I decided to interview people from my own community. I contacted family members and friends I hadn’t talked to in years, asking to interview them. At first, initiating deeply personal conversation with people who were practically strangers was intimidating. The questions I wrote were carefully scripted, asking my interviewees about their news consumption habits, opinions on sources they believed had misinformation, and political leanings. Perhaps, just as I was influenced by the online videos from children of Vietnamese immigrants, the news media could influence their beliefs. I worried about taking too much of my participants’ time. I told them my interviews would be short. Under ten minutes, I had said. I stressed about the wording of my questions and how poised I would sound. I obsessed over timing, dividing ten minutes into ten equally short responses. In general, I struggled with simply listening and observing. My communication style was that of bombarding the listener with questions and relating their experiences to my own. I did not expect that people would share a lot when given the opportunity. One relative told me she had worked for Tiếng Dân, a Vietnamese news site, before leaving for another job. Before I could ask why, she offered the explanation unprompted: the staff's own biases were apparent in their publications, and Tiếng Dân was untrustworthy. One woman told me she had escaped Vietnam as a child by boat, just like my mother. The connection I made with her was instant. Another family friend kindly invited me to attend temple. Since then, I’ve joined their Vietnamese youth group, practicing Buddhist teachings and new Vietnamese words with teens like me. I wasn’t just hearing answers in my interviews, I was witnessing childhoods, careers, and histories. This, more than scripted questions and timed conversations, was the real way to reach the heart of my research question. What I wanted all along wasn’t just the answers, but a connection with the community of which I was a part, but had never entirely understood. As for my initial research question, I did come to a conclusion. Vietnamese immigrants’ escape from communism influences their current conservative voting patterns. This, in combination with misinformation on Vietnamese media sites and YouTube, contributes to polarized political views. Because of my experience as a second generation immigrant, I’ve been motivated to continue to research my own community, and hope to do so at UC San Diego. I will continue to research Vietnamese immigrant communities, which are often overlooked in qualitative research. I would love to research how mental illness is treated in immigrant communities and why it may be left untreated. I have seen how untreated mental illness has affected others, and hope to use my opportunities as a college student to better understand how mental health treatment and the immigrant experience intersect.