We’ve crept into May, which is coincidentally Asian Pacific American Heritage Month on the diversity calendar. But as Helen Hsu sees it, there’s not much to celebrate if you’re an Asian American student.
The virus has upended your life and the lives of others you care for. You’re sheltering in place, and when you’re not, people accuse you of bringing the virus to America. Didn’t Trump call it the “Chinese Virus”?
It’s all made Hsu, the past president of the Asian American Psychological Association and a licensed clinical psychologist, a very busy woman at Stanford, where she’s a counselor and advises a now far-flung student body that is 22 percent Asian. That’s second only to Whites at 32 percent. (The school’s undergraduate demos are 17 percent Hispanic, 7 percent Black, 11 percent International, 1 percent Native Indian, 9 percent Two or More races, according to the school website).
Amid that kind of diversity, Hsu sees the full spectrum of reactions from students who had everything from study abroad plans to personal relationships all disrupted in recent weeks.
“Some didn’t get to say goodbye appropriately,” Hsu said.
And some are still hoping to sneak in an education online– if they can only focus.
“It’s been hard, “ Hsu told me over a Zoom call. “People have to give themselves permission to feel discombobulated. Students right now are feeling, ‘Why can’t I concentrate on Spring Quarter?,’ or, ‘Why am I not being productive, in theory? I have so much time.”
