The first time I stepped onto a football field, I was clueless. I felt like I could not do anything right — what route to run, what formation to be in, and what any of the signals meant. I had never played organized football before. In retrospect, I had no high school football highlights, no recruitment, and no formal training. And yet, after joining the Harvard football team, wearing football gear and taping my ankles before practice, I was a part of the team. While I often feel like I am still catching up, I remind myself that merely being here at Harvard is a privilege that I have earned. And as a result, I work even harder.
But, in a way, I have been training for my entire life. The field, no matter how unforgiving and hard, reminded me that this was exactly where I was meant to be.
When I was nine, my family moved to Beijing. Throughout my childhood, the challenges I faced were unrelenting. From elementary school on, I was competing — first for the exchange program that sent me to Los Angeles for ten months, then for middle schools, summer programs, and then high schools. And once I got in, the competition only intensified. Everyone had top SAT and language scores on top of demanding extracurriculars. My high school prided itself on its college acceptances, and students walked in with perfect GPAs, publications, and Olympiad medals like they were standard issue. Naturally, the fight for the coveted international admission spots in each top college became inescapable and invisible, a force that shaped every weekend, every conversation, every decision. Just when I thought I had cleared one hill, I realized I was only catching up to those who had climbed it much earlier. And so the proverbial rock kept rolling back down.
Still, I never felt that drive as something imposed on me — it was something I carried. When I was a child, my father spent a great deal of money on a calligraphy piece that read “志存高远” — “Aspire to great things.” He hung it where my sister and I would see it every day. My mother would always ask us how we wanted to be remembered by our friends: as the ones who tried their hardest and followed their heart, or as the ones who gave up. My parents worked tirelessly to give us the chance to live up to those words in calligraphy. To them, success was not about survival or appearances, but about becoming the best version of ourselves. That lesson seeped into me early. Even when the competition felt suffocating, I found myself fueled by the idea that each challenge could bring me closer to that version of myself.
So I was never anxious — not really, at least. The mindset I carried made me realize that the prestige of going to a top college was not everything. Schools were not looking for a fictional super-student who has perfect scores while being a varsity athlete or the first chair violinist who cured cancer as a side hustle. That is not what Harvard, and many other schools, are looking for in their students. I think what they look for is someone who is fundamentally themselves, someone who understands who they are and what they will bring to the community. It is not just about a student’s achievements, but also their story.
I started to see this more clearly when I looked around at the people who impressed me most — they were not the ones padding their resumes with every possible accomplishment, but the ones who had real quirks, passions, and personalities. They might not have had the flashiest achievements, but there was something unmistakably genuine about them that drew people in.
So I decided that high school would not just be about grades. It had to be about the things that made me feel alive. I spent my nights doing stand-up alongside comedians twice my age. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would go to an Irish bar in Beijing to tell jokes about school and my childhood. It taught me how to hold an audience, recover from a bad set, and laugh at myself. One night, a man walked up to me and said that he admired my courage. He said that the way I carried myself on stage and the way I dealt with challenges through humor had inspired him to do the same. I never saw him again. But that moment gives me enough fuel to keep going. I can bring people together with stories as simple as an awkward encounter in high school. So, even in my own small way, I could make an impact.
It was also on the court and the field that I found a different rhythm in high school. I had built relationships with teammates that mattered far more than any scoreboard. I remember the weekends and the quick games squeezed in between classes. We had a chance to laugh and forget — for just a moment — how heavy everything felt. These small, everyday things, which probably did not mean much to an admissions officer, shaped me far more than any certificate ever could.
After matriculating into Harvard, I kept doing what felt true to me. Performing in front of larger crowds in the Science Center and Smith Center pushed me out of my comfort zone and sharpened my material — I could no longer rely on the easy laughs that came from being the youngest comedian back home. Poker, music, and late-night basketball also made me feel alive, teaching me how to listen, read others, trust teammates, and carry myself under pressure. That same drive to push past my comfort zone is what eventually led me to walk onto the football team.
Many of my friends tried to talk me out of joining the football team. They knew how much I was already juggling, and they were not wrong that football demanded a level of sacrifice that I may not have been ready for. And for a while, it did not seem realistic even to myself. If you had told me my freshman year that I would be going to math class with a jammed shoulder, running on four hours of sleep right after the worst conditioning session of my life, I would have laughed — but that ended up being my reality for a year.
But the longer the thought sat with me, the more restless I got. In fact, it became clear to me that it would be the regret of my life if I let the opportunity slip away. I had always wanted to play, and see if I could hold my own in a sport I had never played, and on a stage I never imagined stepping onto. So for my sophomore year, I was a football player. But to me it is more than just the jersey: It is about showing up, taking hits, and continuously testing myself in a space that I once thought was beyond me.
Attending Harvard did not feel like the end of a journey — it felt like I had just changed languages mid-conversation. The hustle did not stop, but now, it is layered with more choice, more freedom, and potentially some more absurdity. Yet, even halfway across the world, I still feel right at home. Every part of me — the kid from Beijing who sprinted through the school system, the high schooler landing jokes in a pub, the math nerd, the first-generation athlete at Harvard — is still here. I am still figuring it out.
And if there is one thing I have learned, it is that this is not a story that ends with an admission letter, a football jersey, or a job offer. It is a story I am still writing each day. Every exercise repetition. Every joke. Every class. It is a story that began in Beijing, carried me here to Harvard, and continues with its complications — and with a voice that has always been my own.
