Now that it’s around that time where I am starting to look for position for my post-PhD life, I have had a disconcerting suspicion that my name may be partially hindering me. (I acknowledge that there are something like 41,000 PhD’s about to hit the meager job market annually.) As I apply to positions that I am perfectly qualified for and would bring ample experience and passion, I can’t help but feel like those scant pieces of paper bearing my name, prior work history, academic achievements, etc. are a terrible representation of who I am and what I can do. More terrifying, that all those black and white words touting how capable I am are reduced to two words in the human resources department: my name.

The funny thing is that I love my name, and think it has a nice, succinct ring to it. However, the alliterative aspects of my Russian name and Chinese surname belie a more subtle beast. I am clearly Asian with a given name that sounds more like that of a porn star (so I am told jokingly by friends) than a well-rounded PhD candidate with a penchant for creativity and art. Reading this article on the ‘Bamboo Ceiling’ (http://nymag.com/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5/), I am forced to confront the reality that what I thought was merely my imagination borne of some strange latent immigrant humility and insecurity mixed with the feeling of outsider-ness while growing up in a predominantly Jewish and Caucasian middle-class neighborhood in a Los Angeles suburb. My fear for a while now has been to be a nameless, faceless Asian; kind of a race-defined existentialist fear, I suppose.

In his article, “Paper Tiger”, Wang points out the meager distributions of Asian in leadership positions and cultural mores that may have contributed to Asians being passed over and being self-selected out of the ‘game’, whether it is in the context of the corporate ladder or social relationships, but what I found most troubling was the underlying idea of social structures erupting from his discourse. To me, his article showed that the typical Asian upbringing was creating intelligent Asian young adults unfit for success in the western world, and that the western world is unfit to cultivate successful Asian leaders.

I find that the idea of the Bamboo Ceiling is frightening to me, but at the same time, exists as a challenge instead of a restriction. Who’s to say I can’t be a leader, a Chinese immigrant, a woman, beautiful, intelligent, and successful?

Reality interrupts and reminds me I’ll still reduced to a set of electronic detritus including my name for the resume-trolling bots in the job search game. Of course, I can always change my surname when I marry my fiance. Then, as my Italian-Polish-French Canadian-Irish fiance points out, I’ll just sound like a different type of immigrant with a whole new set of stereotypes.