Talk to nice sleep.

The bare concrete floor of the basement stuck to my shoes.

Gray strands of something, maybe cobwebs or ripped insulation, hung from the rafters above.

The crowd was so thick I couldn't move, but even more masked, half-dressed people poured down the stairs.

As a pre-med student, I knew that standing so close to the speakers meant guaranteed

hearing damage, but I was just glad to be attending my first ever college party.

A shirtless guy with curly black hair gripped the sides of a keg and flexed into a perfect handstand.

He chugged so much beer that I felt sick just watching him. Then dive

rolled into the shrieking crowd. He was my roommate, Brett Harrison III, and he was the only

reason why I had been invited out that night. The truth was, I never felt like I fit at this elite

university, or even in this country.

My parents immigrated to the United States from Japan a few weeks after my ninth birthday.

I was just old enough to understand that I left my home and friends behind forever,

but still too young to think of the change as an opportunity.

Everyone was so much louder and more aggressive than I was used to.

The food was greasy or overly sweet, and most of my classmates didn't seem to care about school

at all.

Every night, I prayed that my parents would take me back to my home country, but their

minds were made up.

As far as they were concerned, my future was already decided.

I would graduate from a U.S. high school, study medicine at a top-tier university,

and have a respectable high-paying career anywhere that I pleased.

...