April 12, 2026

by Dr. Plastic Picker

The two photos above are separated by 13 1/2 years. The first I was holding our youngest who was 3 after her Saturday ballet class in Liberty Station, and we jetted over to a Harvard Club of San Diego admit event for early admitted students at a Chinese Restaurant in town that has since closed. She was obviously exhausted and I’m sure I was exhausted too, because I was (and am still) a working doctor mother. The 2nd image is our daughter at the Harvard College San Diego Club admit event we attended yesterday.

Most of her college journey is her story to tell. She was a reaction video that would 100% go viral! But we are saving it just for family and friends and not even sharing it (you never know these days about other people sharing your videos), because she doesn’t want to be remembered for a funny reaction video. It’s really heart warming though especially her father’s response at the end. If you know me in real life, I’ll show you on my phone. She won’t be sharing her essays nor her application, because they are so intensely personal to her. She’ll just go to college, and continue her journey and figure out life.

But I did want to share a fun moment yesterday when I think I won in life! The event was at the local public library in a very nice part of San Diego. The kids were mingling and sizing each other up, and the parents were more relaxed in the corner. I was sitting with the other Asian mothers or different variations, and actually most of them were more recently immigrated. This makes sense because the immigrant work ethic is a very real thing. It was super fun for me because I got to speak Korean with someone who is fluent, and Vietnamese with another mother. I talked to another “Asian Auntie” who drove one of the students over (her parents were out of town) and she was a physician too, so we talked about doctor things. One mother is married is my older brother’s high school best friend. San Diego is a very small world when you are born and raised here, and doing community focused advocacy. I really like that small town feeling.

The parents were chatting and the students were mingling, and my daughter came over to hug me. She is a quieter person than the typical Harvard student. She said her MBTI is Introvert, Intuitive, Feeling and Perceiving. I think she is the polar opposite of what I was in high school. Now that I’m reading about this personality type, that is her precisely.

So my INFP daughter after hugging me, brought me a plate of food and she whispered something to me and we had a quiet mother-daughter moment. When she brought me a plate of food, there was a collective moment of quiet when the other Asian parents noticed and smiled. That’s it! We chatted about raising kids afterwards and I told them, that her Korean grandparents live with us so she’s a quieter person because she was raised by older grandparents. It was a beautiful moment that I wanted to remember.

I really can’t take credit for her being an INFP, or for her bringing me a plate of food. But I can take credit for yielding to a quieter personality type as I was raising her, and realizing that often the INFPs in the world are the ones who need to be heard. The rest of us just need to quiet down a bit, to see them and give them room to express themselves. I never thought I’d have an artistic daughter, and it has been one of the biggest gifts climate work has given me – the ability to recognize how special every single being in this universe is. To quiet myself to try to understand better others, and to realize that just existing is enough. Does that make sense? She brought me one brownie, a cookie and a tangerine. She was very impish afterwards when we were talking about the gathering afterwards, that she purposefully added that fruit to make me look healthy in front of the other parents. The girl knows what she is doing! LOL