little alisha.

Perché?

After an hour-long intimate dinner with my mother at a dimly lit Italian place, I finally managed to convey my future aspirations for my life…and for college. And sweet, darling Jesus. I think she actually understood where I was coming from and accepted everything I had to say.

The first bombshell to drop was that despite her Asian tendency to push me towards pre-professionalism in college (i.e. do pre-med, economics, government, etc.), this was not going to fly with me. And she was completely fine with it. “Just specialize in something,” she said. (Or at least, this is what she would have said if the very long spiel accompanied by her trademark seemingly-belligerent tone and vibrant hand gesticulations were to be distilled into a one sentence summary.) I told her about my growing interest in the History & Literature concentration, or just History. “And I can always add Economics as a secondary field,” I lied with a wink.

The second shocker I dropped was that I didn’t really want to take Chinese. “Take Italian,” she said with complete gravity. Um…what? This was almost too good to be true. I dared to venture further. “Russian?” “Russian is good too.” Then she proceeded to give yet another ardent (and equally hand-gesticulated) and apocalyptic speech about ancient Rome as the cradle of civilization, and that one day it will again return to its position as superpower of the world. I only listened half-heartedly while poking at my rigatoni. I was still reveling in the fact that I could at last pursue my dream of learning a non-Asian language in college! Grazie, mamma!

“I wish this grilled salmon came with some white rice,” my mother said with a grimace.

human evolutionary biology