Having finished a book that addresses my cultural identity crisis, I am now in the midst of my ‘quarterlife crisis’ as a twenty-something in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I have settled for the time being. For two years out of college, I wrote business cases on retail marketing at the Harvard Business School, researched retail markets and industries, and worked on a book on department stores in the United States. I am still writing that book on the side, but my main gig is now Special Assistant to the CEO of Panera Bread Co.

While I work for the leading fast casual foodservice company, my entrepreneurial streak is alive and well. I am part of the founding team of Writers Street, an online tutoring business geared towards thought and writing voice development (rather than grammar correction). I enjoy my jobs and intend to keep them for the near foreseeable future, but the 'quarterlife crisis' abides as I feel out long term aspirations in career, love, and life in general.

People often ask "when" I will be returning to school. My answer is that I don't know if I ever will. I find that it's possible to do what I want now. (I've got the minimum that gives me access to the white-collar world, and I don't have an extra $120k for business school or law school anyway.) I have an undergraduate at Boston College, from which I graduated summa cum laude with one B.A. in Philosophy and Human Development, some experience in organizing student movements for choice causes, and a bit of notoriety for pushing the envelope in race dialogues.

Before college, I attended high school in Cupertino, CA with my co-editor John Hsu. Before high school, I was a middle schooler in Rochester, NY. Before then, I was an elementary schooler in Henrietta, NY as well as Athens, GA. Finally, I was born in Seoul, Korea and lived there till I was five. From having a charming southern twang (now lost, unfortunately), having Jewish holidays off from school, and having AP Chemistry with some 34 other Asian Americans (all the while having kimchi for dinner), my American experiences have been multifarious and have shaped my Americanness in ways I continue to discover now.

My current preoccupations include the poetry of C. K. Williams and T. S. Eliot (Four Quartets, as always), the music of Ken Oak, and the Boston real estate market. My bedside table is towering with books (as usual) with issues of The New Yorker and Vogue, Louis Begley's Shipwreck, a translation of Tagore's The Heart of God by my landlord and downstairs neighbor, and a copy of Orientalism--a book I've wanted to read since my first year on college. I've been listening to the Brahms Violin Concerto, Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto, and (can you believe it) the Love Actually soundtrack. Friends new/old, near/far have continued to enrich my thoughts and feelings in chats over great cuisine.

Sure, this quarterlife business can be confusing and disorienting, and sometimes I'm inclined to duck for cover in the academy. When all is said and done, though, I'm enjoying the things I love most--good conversation, good reads, good eats, and good problems--happily squeezing away at life's lemons in the beautifully chaotic whole called life.

Updated May 08, 2006.

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Contact Arar at arar[at]asianamericanx[dot]com