Belonging in "Accepted" Anonymous 12th Grade

In Jessica Hua’s “Accepted,” she examines the idea of belonging through the story of Elaine Park, a Stanford reject attempting to break into the school community. Elaine is fooled into believing she belongs where she does not, and as she discovers more and more that she does not belong she reaches a point of desperation. The story shares an interesting message about minorities in America, that the pressure to belong or fit in is heightened by physical and cultural differences.

From a very young age, Elaine is convinced that she belongs at Stanford. In fact, she is convinced that Stanford is the only place she belongs, as she does not apply to any other colleges, trusting that she will get accepted to the one she feels is her place. Not only was it “the only school [her] parents imagined her attending, this belief traces back to her culture. As an Asian-American girl, she feels the culturally normative pressures from her family to achieve academic success. She says of her father, “my vocab drills, which begun nightly when I was in kindergarten, had fallen to him.” (82) She received so much encouragement from her family and others in her school and church community, that what was once a dream to chase became an expectation, and a...