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CHICAGO – At the side of the popularity and celebration of Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, UChicago Athletics might be that includes a number of student-athletes all through Could. Within the first installment of this sequence, hear from UChicago Males’s Monitor and Subject’s Michael Han as he discusses his experiences in a Q & A format.
Han is a third-year student-athlete from Westlake, Calif., who competes in Sprints for the Maroons. He was part of the 4×400 medley relay that received the UAA title in 2022 and has earned All-UAA standing 5 instances in his profession. Han has additionally been named UAA All-Educational every of the previous two years.
Do you’re feeling you battle any assumptions/stereotypes in each your athletic profession and customarily being of Asian-American or Pacific Islander descent?
Each one who belongs to an ethnic minority group has had assumptions made about them at one level or one other. Two generally made assumptions about Asian-People are that we solely care about college and that we’re unathletic. After all, each are concurrently very true and really false! There are Asians who would pay you to do your math homework and there are Asians who would not contact their very own math homework with a ten-foot pole. There are Asians who actually bounce out of the gymnasium (my buddy Alex Lee, a excessive jumper on the staff, can dunk and he is 5′ 10″) and there are Asians who could not run a 10-minute mile if their life relied on it.
My (unsolicited) recommendation for Asian-People studying this: do what you like and have an affinity for, consider you may be the very best, and bear in mind that you’re outlined utterly by WHO you’re, not WHAT you’re. Everybody has their very own distinctive strengths and weaknesses; to let any blanket assertion affect the way you view your self can be doing your self a disservice!
On a extra severe word, I feel we’re shifting in the direction of a world by which the burden of battling stereotypes falls much less on these they’re directed in opposition to, and extra on those that maintain them. Folks from all teams are reaching excellence in all fields, and their excellence is demanding recognition.
Two examples from our personal UChicago neighborhood: Victoria Oladipo simply graduated from the Pritzker College of Medication and would be the first black girl within the Mayo Clinic’s orthopedic surgical procedure program. Particular to the Asian-American neighborhood on campus, Lyndon Hu scored the game-winning objective within the NCAA quarterfinals after which led our males’s soccer staff to their first championship title.
Individuals are recognizing that if they need the very best up-and-coming physicians on their staff, or in the event that they need to win an NCAA championship, stereotypes haven’t any place in any of that. Any group that wishes to succeed on the highest degree should see its folks as people with their very own distinctive strengths and weaknesses. And people will hunt down these organizations which create an atmosphere that fosters their private excellence and collective achievement.
My very own sense of empowerment comes from working to enhance myself day by day, whether or not or not it’s in my downside units or at observe, realizing that with each new factor I study and each tenth of a second I shave off my private greatest, I’m, as my fellow Black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, and different minority group members are, making myself into an individual who calls for recognition.
Who would you describe as your position mannequin in your life and why?
Two individuals who encourage me on the observe are Liu Xiang, the Olympic Champion over 110m hurdles (Athens, 2004) and the previous world file holder in that occasion, in addition to Wang Junxia, the Olympic Champion over 5000m (Atlanta, 1996) and the present world file holder within the 3000m.
What’s your favourite reminiscence in your athletic profession?
Setting the college file within the distance medley relay with Joe Lemna, Jabari Owens, and Cy Chittenden. After which going to Sasquatch Jack’s to order a pork tenderloin sandwich the dimensions of my face.
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