Harvard sweatshirts are displayed for sale in a school store window on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 15, 2025.

My father did not speak to me for four days after I got into Harvard University last month.

On March 27, I joined approximately 385,000 other high school applicants around the world, holding my breath, closing my eyes, and clicking the ominous “View Application Status” button in my Harvard portal.

My body reacted before my brain did, dispersing a breath of disbelief from my lungs as I fell back in my chair. My mother screamed, and my father simply stared at the screen.

All I felt was elation in that moment... until I realised my father was not staring because he shared my joy. As I waited for the spell he was under to break — for him to jump up and tearfully congratulate me as I had seen other dads do in the countless “college reaction” videos online — I came to understand that, for him, my acceptance evoked more complicated feelings than just pride.

I grew up in a family of staunch Republicans. My mother, a very traditional lifelong Republican, voted against Donald Trump twice after observing what took place during his first administration. My father and paternal grandparents, on the other hand, followed the Republican Party and Trump down the MAGA path and continue to support him.

I remember becoming acutely aware, even at age 8, that my family had divided itself. Before Trump, visits to my paternal grandparents’ house were characterised by spending time on the lake learning to swim, my grandpa teaching me how to fish, and early morning runs together. After Trump was elected, Fox News blared in my grandparents’ living room as my mom and I cooked ramen in their guest house so they would not be provoked by our “smelly food.”

Everything that they had celebrated before, like my dreams of becoming a writer and my mother’s obvious Asian immigrant identity, became politicised when Trump became president. They even began to distrust something as innocent as my new Amazon Alexa, which they thought was a tool that the “deep state” was using to monitor our conversations.

Our visits became less frequent and less cozy and warm, and I watched my grandparents become socially isolated from us and the rest of our family and their friends. Eventually, I made it past their growing contempt and bitterness for previously accepted ideas and people, into a quiet, if uneasy, acceptance of what they now believed. When they talked about their politics or made ignorant comments, I would smile uncomfortably and say nothing, afraid of putting more strain on my already fractured family.

Over time, I had to let go of the childish belief that I could bring them back. I suppose the helplessness I felt in this situation is what inspired my passion to reach out to those with different political views and, later, to try to understand and master the skill of diplomacy through participating in Model United........

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