Woman Who Could Not Forget (14 page)

The year of 1986 was an extremely exciting year for me professionally as well. In January 1986, I found that the protein sequence of a bacterial enzyme with which I had worked for several years had a strong homology (similarity, affinity) with the protein sequence of another enzyme. The discovery of the homology of these two proteins explained several things about their unique properties. I attended two national meetings to report my results. In March, I went to Washington, D.C. for the annual American Society of Microbiology meeting; and in June, I went again to D.C. for the annual Biochemistry meeting. I was busy wrapped up in my own research. I had been working full-time in the lab since 1984, when Michael was in his sophomore year at Uni High. I was sure the children did not need me when they came home from school. I now had a number of papers published in scientific journals, almost one paper a year.

The second semester of Iris’s freshman year, the spring of 1986, Iris had some difficulty with her Physics 107 course. She often came home to ask Shau-Jin for help, but I could see that her heart was not in the physics. At the time, she told me she was going to start a student literary organization called the Illini Literary Society. She found out that she could apply to the University for financial support if she submitted a budget for the organization. Eventually she did get some funds that way. She later used the funds to start a magazine called
Open Wide
. She was talking about recruiting literature-loving students to submit poems, fiction, or original musical compositions and artwork for publication in the magazine. Again, she was enthusiastic about the new magazine and talked about it with passion, just like her high-school days with the magazine
Unique
.

In the final few weeks of the second semester Iris was struggling with Physics 107 and eventually got a C for that course, which made her unhappy. Maybe she secretly blamed her dad, who had advised her to take the more difficult physics course for engineering students. When her freshman year ended, that summer she wanted to take a summer-credit math course: differential equations. We thought it was a good idea. In our family, taking classes was always encouraged, and this was no different.

In that summer of 1986, our house needed some repairs and maintenance work, such as painting the outside wooden trim and replacing the rotten wooden deck above the garage. I was too busy to use my one-month vacation in the summer to carry out the house repairs. We told Iris, a college student, and Michael, a rising senior in high school, that they should share some responsibilities while they lived under our roof.

Both Iris and Michael, just like average teenagers, were reluctant to do any household chores without enforcement and reward. Iris in particular was constantly reminding me while we were working outside, such as painting the siding of our house or mowing the lawn, that humans should invent more machines to substitute for manual labor. It was clear that Iris believed she would do better with her brain than she would laboring with her hands. That summer was the last one Iris spent at home. She looked for jobs that required her brain, not her hands, ever after.

In the fall of 1986, when the first semester of her sophomore year started, Iris moved to the university dormitory, Illinois Street Residence Hall (ISR), which was so close to the campus that Iris essentially needed only a few minutes to walk to her classes.

This second of Iris’s college years was the year she tried to figure out what her real passion was. In the fall semester, she took a required math course, Abstract Algebra, which she had been struggling with from day one. After a few classes, one day she came to see her dad and complained that she had spent a whole afternoon trying to understand the first page of the textbook, and she could not grasp the meaning of it. She was frustrated, to say the least. Shau-Jin took the textbook and read it and agreed with her. He said that he did not understand why the mathematician had made the statement so hard for students to understand. Shau-Jin started to explain the content of the mathematic theory to Iris in his way. Iris seemed to understand this time, for page one; but there were many new theories as the class went on. On the first exam, she did badly, so she dropped the course immediately. This discouraged her and made her reconsider whether she really wanted to be a theoretical mathematician. She told us that she had previously found math fun, but now she no longer felt that way.

One of the reasons that she failed her math course, in my opinion, was due to the fact that she was doing so many other things at the same time—she had many, many interests! She joined music chorus, recruited students to join her literary society, read books she was interested in—plus she liked to go to parties, as any college girl would. She told me that she wanted to taste all kinds of college life. On Halloween night, for example, she showed me a number of the pictures she had taken at a party. She had dressed as a Hawaiian girl and posed as she was dancing Hawaiian dances. She said that in the ISR, there was a party going on every night if one wanted to go.

When Iris dropped the Abstract Algebra course, it shook her. She started to ask herself whether she should continue to major in math and computer science. She came home to talk to us seriously one day. She said that she loved math and computer science, but she loved writing and psychology even more. She was thinking about transferring either to English literature or psychology. We had a long talk that night. We told her that we had no objection if she wanted to change majors. We told her that we understood that only when one loved a subject would one spend time on it and consequently succeed in that field. Iris was quite relieved—she had thought we would be against the change. Shau-Jin and I loved science and no doubt we encouraged our children to study it, but we stressed to her that we believed that she would succeed only in the subjects she was interested in and wanted to spend time studying. In later years, Iris had expressed her gratitude to us for allowing her to follow her own interest in choosing her career path. In contrast, some Chinese parents, Iris said, forced their children to study subjects, such as medicine or law, instead of their children’s true love.

Then she started pondering whether she should major in literature, journalism, or psychology. I encouraged her to find out by gathering information on each field and talking to the students and professors in each of the departments. Finally, she decided she would like to transfer to journalism after speaking with several friends in both the English and Journalism departments. In journalism, she said that she not only could write, but she could also get in contact with many interesting people who would enrich her experiences.

After she decided to transfer to the Journalism Department, she went to see the Dean of the College of Communications. Iris reported to us that when she saw the dean, he asked her to think twice before transferring. He told her that the students in the Journalism Department had difficulties getting jobs after graduation, but that, on the other hand, computer science students had no problems getting jobs. He asked Iris to think further and come back again if she still insisted on transferring. It took Iris another semester to decide whether she should transfer to journalism or not. Actually, Iris did very well her sophomore year; she was on the Dean’s list for both semesters. She was taking not only math and computer science courses, but also rhetoric, psychology, philosophy, and music courses. She took far more courses than were required for graduation.

In January 1987, Professor John Cronan’s recommendation to promote me to Visiting Assistant Professor was passed in the departmental meeting. The whole family thought it was great. Iris, in particular, felt very happy for me. She thought that I should have been promoted long before this date. Very early on, Iris and I had discussed the role of women in society. We agreed that although women in this country had gained equality with men in many aspects, there were still places unfair treatment existed—such as the pay in the workforce. Women’s salaries and promotions still lagged behind men’s, not to mention the fact that it was still quite difficult for women to have both a family and a career, whereas men usually did not have to make such sacrifices and were not expected to “choose” one or the other.

Iris had read many feminist books; she was influenced greatly by Betty Friedan. She told me she shared the same view as Friedan. She felt that there had been a lot of injustice for women in the society of the past. We had a number of discussions whenever we touched on women’s issues, and I shared her views. From very early on, she had been aware of all this, and she did not want to fall into the trap that most women fell into. She had a strong desire to have her own identity. She was ambitious and determined to have a career of her own.

Iris’s second year in college ended in May 1987. As early as January, she had already started to look for a summer job. She told us that she had met a classmate, James, in her computer science class. James had worked in a computer company in suburban Chicago the summer before, and he was going to work in the same company the coming summer. James was nice to Iris and said he could introduce her to the same company. The company, called Microsystems, was located in Hoffman Estates in suburban Chicago. So, on one Saturday in January 1987, Iris asked us to take her to Chicago. She was introduced by James to the head of Microsystems for an interview. Several weeks later, Microsystems accepted her application for a summer job as an intern. She was very excited and immediately started looking into summer housing near the company. She posted an advertisement on the bulletin board of her dormitory. Very soon she got a call from a student in her dorm whose family lived in Palatine, Illinois, which was close to Hoffman Estates. Her family had an extra room for rent. Iris never thought she would have such good luck and was amazed that she could resolve everything in such a short time.

This was the first time that Iris left home to live independently for a paid job. She was very excited about it. She was paid $300 a week for forty hours. For overtime, she was paid more. After working at Microsystems for ten weeks, she was able to save a net of around $1,400. She deposited her paycheck each month and showed me the bankbook proudly.

This summer job for Iris at Microsystems was supposed to involve writing software for the company, but very soon they discovered that Iris was also a good writer—of words. Iris found that the manual for teaching employees how to use the software in the company was badly written and not easily understood. Because of Iris’s complaint, the company asked her to improve the manual. She made sure that she understood the whole system first, and then she rewrote the manual as if she had never used a computer before. She worked hard and wrote fast. She finished the first assignment on schedule. The president of the company was very impressed and asked her to do another manual. She was able to finish the second manual before the summer internship ended. Iris showed us the thick manuals she had helped to write when she got home. The company loved her, and the president wrote a superb recommendation for her and told Iris that they would welcome her back any time and would guarantee her a job after her graduation.

During her ten weeks at Microsystems, she also enjoyed her life with her co-workers. She showed me the pictures she had taken at a party at the president’s home where she was swimming in the pool and laughing wildly. She was no longer the same shy girl as before; she was very happy and got along with everyone.

On August 7, Iris finished her job at Microsystems. Two weeks later, she moved back into her ISR dormitory and started her junior year at UI. She had made up her mind that she wanted to transfer to the Journalism Department. She had found that her love was writing, and the job in Microsystems had given her the confidence that she could do it.

One more thing that firmed up her decision was the magazine
Open Wide,
which she was able to publish in August 1987. Throughout her sophomore year at UI, alongside her coursework, she was publicizing the Illini Literary Society, which she had founded, and asking for contributions of original works for her magazine. She met a number of literary friends from different departments at UI and finally the first issue of
Open Wide
was published—financed by the UI office for student activities.

In this first issue of
Open Wide
, Iris wrote one poem titled “End of the Mirror Tunnel.” The poem reflected her impatience and restlessness:

. . . .

I was searching for the world

Where anything=possible

Where infinite ends as

parallel lines kiss

and time is a rolling wheel

Where

Life is a hologram

shifty, swirly rainbow of

infinite possibilities

infinite dimensions

infinite way for intuition to see it

. . . .

She still had so much to learn, to know, and to experience. It seemed as if she was always racing against the clock to learn something new or experience something different.

When the new semester started in the fall of 1987, since Iris had decided that she was sure that she wanted to transfer into journalism, she went to the dean’s office and talked to him again. This time, he agreed with Iris when he saw she was so determined. Iris told him that she loved writing and that she had been able to write two technical manuals for a computer company in ten weeks over the summer. She told him that she wanted to combine science and writing, and felt that journalism training would help her in her future science-writing career. The dean was convinced. For the formal transfer to the Department of Journalism, Iris had to wait until the spring semester of 1988, the second semester of her junior year.

Once Iris had determined that she was going to be a student of journalism, she did not wait. She threw herself full force into the field. She immediately went to the office of the
Daily Illini,
or
DI
for short, the official student newspaper on campus. She talked to the editor and introduced herself to the staff there. Most students working in the
DI
were journalism majors. Iris told them she would like to write for the
DI
and told them that she would be a formal student of the Department of Journalism the next semester. She also showed them that she was the founder of the Illini Literary Society and published the magazine
Open Wide
. People seemed to respect her once they learned that she came from a double major in math and computer science. Iris joined the
DI
as an important contributor.