Episode 23: Justine Hung

August 12, 2019

I played a lot of piano when I was younger. I started when I was three and I did the typical “put your kid in piano lessons all their life”. I know one song now. I’ll play it in the student lounge sometimes. I love being on stage. I hated the five minutes before, when I was super nervous, but I loved it … it's such a different adrenaline rush, just being on stage. I will never forget the last concert I ever played in high school. There was this silence in the last song before you finish with the last chord. And I remember distinctly thinking during that pause, “I'm not going to forget this”. Knowing that this was my last performance, I took the time to reflect while I was on stage mid-song. 

I had a really scary moment in college where I really doubted my ability to read people. I did research from my sophomore to junior year of college, and, fast forward a little bit to the summer after my junior year of college, I read on the news that my former PI killed somebody. It doesn’t even sound real. It was worse than I could have imagined. It was all over the news and I couldn't hide from this story. News stations were calling me, the school newspaper was calling me, and the big part was that he was missing for a week. That week, I made sure I was never alone because he knew where I worked, and I kept thinking that I saw him everywhere I went. I had the worst nightmares even after he was caught. The thing that made me feel the worst was that I thought he was a good PI. I loved my experience there. There were five people in the lab, and, of course, we all knew each other. That really made me question my judgment. “How could someone who I thought was fine do something really terrible?” When someone you know does something bad to that extent, there's no manual on what to do. So for a while, I just thought I should have seen the bad, and I found myself assuming that I was missing something “bad” about everyone I met. Over time, I learned to regain trust in others and to really focus on the good in people, because in the end, I would like to think that most of the people we come across are inherently “good”. 

I went to college in Evanston, but I grew up in Downer’s Grove, which is a suburb of Chicago 40 minutes from the city. It was pretty quiet with not much to do. It's a predominantly white community, so, growing up, I was always one of the only Asians in school. As a kid, I was ashamed. I felt I needed to suppress being too Asian in order to fit in. I feel so bad saying that, but that was the root of a lot of teasing. I would bring in Chinese food for lunch in grade school and they would say “Oh, your stuff smells bad”. I felt I was encouraged not to do well in math and math was something I was good at as a kid. Not now, haha. People would make comments like “You're only good because you're Asian”. I've even had teachers who wouldn't let me participate in games because they would say “Oh, you need to let the other kids learn”. I would just laugh it off as a kid, but I realized that it made me ashamed. I knew how to speak Chinese because I went to Chinese school. I definitely didn't learn Chinese as well as I wanted to, as a kid. I resented going to Chinese school. Going to college, another shift happened where I felt like I wasn’t Asian enough. There were a lot of references and music and movies people would talk about and I would have no idea. People would tease me about being whitewashed. “Oh, you didn't live in a town with other Asians”. So, a little bit of a culture shock going from a less diverse town to this world of relative diversity. 

I think a big moment that made me realize how special my Taiwanese culture was to me was when my grandpa passed away. Two days after I graduated college, he got really sick. We were in the hospital every day until I moved to New York. That doesn't sound like a very happy time, but I really got to talk to him a lot, and he told me that he was really proud that I learned the language. During this time, he and my grandma told me so many stories about their experiences in Taiwan and moving here, and I realized that there was so much that they didn’t tell me as a kid even though I spent a lot of time with them growing up. They had a huge fear that we would be very Americanized and we would be ashamed of our culture just because it's different. Having this time to talk to my grandparents so much really solidified how proud I am of my background and everything my family has been though. 

Then I moved here. Things started getting really bad with my grandpa's health when med school started. I think I felt a lot of guilt for leaving because I was the only one who wasn't there. It was definitely a tough transition. My grandpa passed away right before our second exam of med school. There were times that I was just mad about being here, but then there were also times when a part of me was okay with being so far away because it was less real that he was so sick. It was a weird cycle. I honestly to this day still don’t know how I felt. 

I don't give enough credit to the people around here, whether or not they knew what was happening. I leaned a lot on my friends from home who live in the area, too. Seeing them was like having a little bit of home away from home, and I try to call home a lot to feel closer to my family. But it was after my grandpa passed away, that I really got to think about how I felt being here. He gave me a really great gift. I got to say a proper goodbye before I left. I'm not super spiritual or anything, but ... It’s probably so strange to talk about this, but I had a dream a few weeks after he passed away and I was this little kid at their house again. He had to leave and I told him not to go and he said that he was fine. After that, I was a lot happier. It gave me closure, even though it was just a dream. I would like to think that he's in a good place and that helps a lot with the guilt of being far away. He never went to college, and he was really excited to see me graduate college and start med school. The day before I left for orientation week, he said he wanted to make it to see our white coat ceremony. While he did pass away before we had our white coat, I like to think that he was somewhere watching us walk across that stage.

What are your 5 Most Recently Played Artists?
Kurt Hugo Schneider, Bea Miller, Billie Eilish, TOKiMONSTA, and fun.

If you could have any superpower, which one would you choose?
Teleportation - I can't drive, haha.

Pick something or someone from NYMC go give out a shout of to!
Pokemon Masters and Camp Yolk Sac – you know who you are!

If someone wanted to talk to you, they should lead with…
Smile!