I hurt myself in college by studying math and science instead of following my actual interests in the humanities, like languages and art.

I wasn’t the first kid who succumbed to pressure to study something I wasn’t actually very interested in, and in the end it all worked out. In my case, I was the one who put the pressure on myself to do that.

I’ve known Asian Americans who felt like they absolutely had to study technical subjects, because of the model minority myth, because they felt tremendous external pressure to follow a career path they didn’t want and were possibly not all that talented in.

That’s just one way the model minority mess hurt some age in Americans, I think.