Not long after I returned to school to begin my undergraduate degree, COVID-19 shut down all in-person teaching, forcing my fellow students and me to transition to online learning. As I was adjusting to this new and uncertain environment, my mother contracted COVID from an unknown source. Within 48 hours, she passed away. The shock and sudden grief that consumed me were unbearable, and many times, I considered withdrawing from my classes and giving up on pursuing an education. Physically isolated and overwhelmed by my grief, I turned to my father to talk about my mother. A lifelong Buddhist, he had dedicated his youth to an ascetic life as a monk. Though he was mourning his wife, he was able to channel wisdom from his Buddhist beliefs and studies to comfort me. He reminded me that this life is not our only one, and how we choose to live in it will carry on into the next. My father spoke of my mother’s very large life that had impacted so many but also of her quiet strength and humility. She had lived through one of the darkest chapters of history—the Khmer Rouge regime—witnessing decades of cruelty and brutality. Yet through all that she had endured she managed to maintain her humanity. Even in the depths of horror she was willing to risk her life countless times to save the lives of others, especially children and infants, because she continued to believe in the goodness of people. My father spoke about merit, or good deeds done in life that increase one’s positive karmic energy. He believed that my mother’s generosity and selflessness to save the lives of others during war and genocide had built up an incredible amount of merit for her soul and she would be existing on a plane with angels in her next life. Yet her selflessness and kindness to others were not motivated by her desire to gain merit, but rather because she truly cared about people and believed in seeing the humanity in them, even in the most difficult scenarios. Reflecting on my father’s words, I found comfort in my mother’s memory. Before she passed, I had returned to school intending to enter public service to help others. My studies focus on how people communicate and how our interactions shape our identities. Talking to my father about my mother’s life reminded me why I chose this path. The way she carried herself and the lessons she left behind continue to be my greatest inspiration. I am more determined than ever to pursue a career in public health, where I can honor her legacy by serving and uplifting others.

When I learned about the infamous Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments, I reevaluated my own judgements of those who had committed atrocities historically and concurrently under orders. His experiments showed 65% of participants would knowingly administer a fatal voltage shock to a stranger when under pressure. As an outsider it is easy to prejudge and think one would behave morally under similar circumstances but as this experiment and subsequent similar experiments have shown most individuals have the instinctual disposition to not want to change the status quo. There is no way to predict whether we will be part of the 65% of people who would commit horrible acts when pressured to do so or if we have the disposition to be the minority 35% who would resist authority figures when pressured to something that goes against our personal ethics. We can try and categorize people and their acts as morally good versus morally bad, but as this experiment has shown, people and their behaviors are hard to predict. One would have to be full of hubris to say that they know that they would not administer the fatal voltage shock and be part of the minority who would resist authoritarian pressures. Learning about the Milgram Experiments has shown how much I should consider the contextual circumstances that informs the behaviors of individuals and refrain from instantaneous judgements based upon my personal belief systems. Instead of focusing on individuals, I now choose to look more critically at larger systems that have been put in place to propel negative behaviors within individuals. In pursuing a degree in psychology at UCLA, I hope to continue to gain more insight in human behavior and focus my studies on larger structural reforms that would promote more positive behaviors and mitigate the worst.

The Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse has long been a painting that has resonated with me. When I came across the image of the woman with a long staff overseeing smoke flaring up from a cauldron, I immediately latched onto the image and saw a reflection of my inner self, or aspirational self, in the woman. The woman seems to be no specific character but rather an amalgamation of several figures in history and literature, such as Morgan Le Fay or Circe. There is the theme of a woman who does not cede to the societal parameters of a “respectful woman” but instead embraces her inner strengths and powers through sorcery. She does not allow herself to be societally repressed by outside menacing forces represented by the crows and the half buried skull. The circle she draws is to create a barricade between herself and those figures. The circle can also be symbolic of the feminine forces that she is embracing and actualizing. Through the smoke emanating from the cauldron, there seems to be a ritual of self-actualization. From this painting, one can draw conclusions of the strengths one must have to actualize the identity of one’s true self in face of such obstacles such as outside expectations of what one should be.