Defining Moments
If life was a game, I’ve never found easy mode.
Last year, during a virtual get-to-know-one-another event with my coworkers, we took turns answering the question: What’s a defining moment in your life? I was stumped. I gave some vague answer about finding the courage to pivot away from my major during college. But since that day, I’ve thought about this question some more, and although I can’t pinpoint a single one that defined my entire life, here were moments that have defined my career, my life, and my personal values.
2006 · Learning Photoshop
As a child growing up in the early internet age, I was fascinated by computers and the things you could make with them. I remember learning 2D animation software Flash in the 4th grade. My parents had guests over for a new year’s party and I was cooped up in the family computer room with the door locked, working on a surprise for everyone. I’d never been so excited to show off a simple “Happy New Year” text animation to a handful of my parents’ friends.
Photoshop was a whole other beast. In 6th grade, my dad found me a bootleg version and bought me the Photoshop CS2 Bible. I picked up a few tools from the book, but once I learned a little bit, I was ready to play. I was headswapping photos, liquifying portraits, changing colors of objects, and placing cutouts of myself into fantasy scenarios. While other kids were playing sports and piano after school, I was logging onto my Windows XP and opening up the blue and green feather software to play with the magic wand tool. This was foundational to my future in photography and digital design.
A self-portrait from 2010. I clearly had not gotten into the color curves chapter yet.
2007 · Subscribing to my first fashion magazine
During the time of weird corporate-sponsored “fundraisers” we participated in during middle school, I was roped into subscribing to a magazine. As a 13-year-old with no money, I didn’t understand the concept of subscriptions and blindly signed up. I ended up ordering Seventeen magazine and fell in love. This was fashion magazine era at its peak, and I wanted more. I found a way to hack the magazine subscription website and ended up adding Teen Vogue, CosmoGirl, InStyle, Glamour, Lucky, Harper’s Bazaar, Allure, and Elle to my monthly subscription list. (Afraid my parents would find out, I addressed all these magazines to my alter ego — first name Current, last name Resident.) I spent my nights flipping through the glossy pages, learning about fashion trends, hair and beauty hacks, and admiring my favorite celebrities pose in the most glamorous photoshoots. (Anyone remember the insane annual prom issue of Seventeen?) I never wanted anything more than to be a part of this world.
2010 · Getting a Flickr account
Even though I picked up my first DSLR in 2008, two years later was when I truly madly deeply discovered a love for digital photography. My Media Productions elective class taught me the basics of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, and from there I was off, dreaming up my own photo creations every night and making them happen with my pal, Photoshop. Flickr was active back then, and where I discovered my favorite photographer at the time, @shesjack, who uploaded surrealist self portrait creations. Studying her work encouraged me to learn color grading, and from there my photo processing improved. Flickr was the place where I showed my work to the world for the first time and met an internet community of photographers who just wanted to learn from one another. It leveled up my imagination and inspired me to work harder at my craft.
At school, I tried to apply my photography skills into extracurricular activities, namely, yearbook club. I got rejected. I was completely crushed but it was a blessing in disguise. In my spare time, I got to explore, play, and make the art I actually wanted to make.
Levitations and butterflies, 2011. One of my earliest (and favorite) photo creations. Our backyard was almost always my set of choice, and Shirley was my model.
2012 · First group fitness class
I didn’t play sports growing up. I hardly moved as a kid. College was the first time I stepped into a gym. My first group fitness class was Pilates, and it was insanely hard. In my first yoga class, I trembled holding a downward dog pose. But I kept it up, and tried all the classes I could manage in order to find ones I’d like. Ultimately I gravitated towards a mix of cardio kickboxing, yoga, and strength training, forms of exercise that were fun to me. Since then, fitness classes have become the mainstays of my week. It’s the one hour a day I get to disconnect from the world and enter a state of flow, pushing myself to grind as hard as I can while staying focused in the moment. It’s easy to rattle off all the physical benefits, but exercise does just as much as for my mental health.
Sweating up a storm kickboxing at the local 24-Hour Fitness.
Building a habit of exercise into my weekly regimen.
2012 · Joining Cal Poly CSA
With college came a lot of opportunity and change, as I finally had the freedom to spend my time how I chose to and write my own identity from scratch. Chinese Students’ Association (CSA) was a social club for Asian-American kids like me trying to find friends in a predominantly white school. Through this club I got opportunities to meet some of my closest friends and lead a group of people for the first time in my life. I discovered a true passion for bringing people together and building community. To this day, I consider that membership fee to be the best $25 I ever spent.
2013. The week I met Simon and a ton of other lovely people who became some of my closest friends.
2014. I led the club for two years with these silly gooses.
2015 · buying a domain name
Early 2015, mid-college, I made an account on Squarespace with a student discount. A few weeks later I launched Studio Sophy into the world, and since then it’s become my creative space. Even though I was stuck studying a major I didn’t like, I created this space for myself to dream, play, and discover what I loved to do. I decided my resume and school experience alone wasn’t going to define my career; I was going to show to the world what I could do by forcing myself to practice and share everything. This was around the time internet presence and personal branding became vital to anyone working in a creative field, and I was marketing my skills as a photographer, graphic designer, and art director even though I had no formal experience. (You fake it til you make it.) It totally paid off.
2015 · Traveling alone
When I studied abroad in Rome for a semester, I got the opportunity to travel through Europe alone. I embarked on adventures that have not only showed me how different the world was, but also who I was without the familiarity of home. I met lots of strangers I couldn’t even converse with. Most of them were kind. Exposing myself to a foreign place taught me to not be afraid of going out there alone. I finally felt what it's like to feel free, depend on only myself, hear my inner voice, and trust my instincts. For the first time, I made big decisions alone with confidence and listened to myself without so much noise around me. It also instilled in me a deep curiosity for the world unknown.
Solo adventures (and 10-second timer self-portraits) in Salzburg, Austria.
2017 · Failing at the career fair
I had been studying architecture for five years, and walked into the annual career fair with a shiny new resume and well-designed mini portfolio handout addressed to each company I was interested in. Maybe it was because they could smell my lack of passion, or maybe career fairs were designed to favor extroverts who were good at small talk and bullshitting, but at the end of the night, I felt like I’d completely failed at everything. I had an existential crisis that night, but this failure was a blessing in disguise. Thinking back, thank goodness I didn’t get a job offer at an architecture studio. I didn’t know it at the time but the universe decided it was going to spare me that misery. That career fair was a turning point for my career aspirations. I decided I’m definitely not pursuing architecture. I knew I had talent, but for more than just construction documents. And thankfully that slap in the face gave me the courage to pursue the path less traveled.
I designed a mini portfolio handout addressed to each firm I was interested in, but got no leads. (Clearly I was more cut out to be a visual designer, ha!)
“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”
2017 · Quiting social media
Somewhere around the end of 2017, my life hit an all-time low and I quit social media, namely Instagram. I couldn’t stand everyone on the app trying to sell me their unattainable fake lifestyles and destroying my mental health along the way. More importantly, I couldn’t stand having to curate my life into this perfect fabulous thing when in reality it was in the dumps. Since then, my bio has read “Reel to real.” I left this highlight reel version of my life to live my real life. I pivoted from likes to self-love, embarked on a journey to learn about happiness, and never looked back.
2018 · Moving for a job that laid me off almost immediately
Late 2017, when my life was at an all-time low, I found a light at the end of the tunnel that validated my talent and gave me purpose: a job offer. I moved to the Bay Area, ecstatic to start my new adult life with a stable income and colleagues I actually liked. Less than two months later, I was laid off. The universe wasn’t going to let me off that easy.
I wiped my tears and got back to work. My plan was to teach myself and pivot into the field of tech. I was a scrappy hustler who came from nothing, and I knew I had it in me to reinvent myself into a product designer. (One with job security.) I drew from my previous experiences, explored my interests, and successfully pivoted into a career that allows me to be creative, lead, solve interesting problems, and design the future.
I made myself at home at Philz on weekdays, working on personal projects and building my portfolio.
And spent weekends doing hackathons. You hustle hard when you’re hungry.
2018 · Trying my first salad
Ending on a lighter note. In 2018, I had a salad from SF salad joint Mixt and realized that healthy eating doesn’t need to come at the sacrifice of taste. Even though I consistently went to the gym, I ate whatever the heck I wanted (aka lots of unhealthy snacks). This salad was a turning point in my health and wellness journey, which has become one of my prioritized personal values these last couple of years.
This orchard salad changed our lives.
A week later, I made my first salad. (It was mostly kale and it was bad.)
Looking back at these moments, I failed a ton early in life. I was never comfortable. But life begins at the end of that comfort zone. I always dared to try, and with every failure, I found a silver lining. These were the brutal lessons, the defining moments in life that allowed me to grow, thrive, and create the beautiful life I have today. If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change a thing. Hard mode all the way.
