The reality is that immigration has long been seen as a disease and disease has long been blamed on immigrants. In 1876, white labor unions argued for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 because China was thought of as “the sick man of Asia,” and that Chinese strains of sexually transmitted disease were more virulent. Haitian immigrants were blamed for the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

Hate crimes against Asian Americans increased soon after the disease reached America’s shores. While riding the N Train in New York City, a man sprayed an air freshener directly at an Asian straphanger in early March. On March 7th, Li Qianyang was stabbed more than a dozen times in Brooklyn. In April, the New York City Commission on Human Rights reported that they had recorded more than 248 reports of harassment and discrimination related to COVID-19 since February, more than 40% of which were identified as anti-Asian incidents. On July 14th, two men assaulted an 89 year-old woman in Queens and lit her on fire. And that’s just New York. According to the self-reporting mechanism “Stop AAPI Hate," from April to August nationwide, Asian Americans have reported more than 2,100 incidents of hate from March to June. I never reported what happened to me to the police or through other channels, so I can only imagine that number would be even higher by now.

Right before Thanksgiving, I went to get a COVID test and on my way home a man attacked me in the street. I was so absorbed in thought — running through a mental checklist of work still left on my plate, the apple pie I was planning to bake that night — that I barely registered the towering hand reaching for me, breaking the socially and scientifically acceptable six feet. The man screamed, “I want fortune cookie!” in a Mickey Rooney “Chinese” accent a la Breakfast At Tiffany’s. I tried to dodge under his arm, but he managed to land a wet glob of spit right in my face.

rump first called COVID “Chinese Virus”in a tweet on March 16th, immediately associating the global respiratory disease with China and by racist standards, all Chinese-looking people. By June 23rd, he was calling it “Kung Flu” to his most ardent supporters — only cementing the disease as uniquely Asian by conflating it with another trope.

I was so absorbed in thought — running through a mental checklist of work still left on my plate, the apple pie I was planning to bake that night — that I barely registered the towering hand reaching for me, breaking the socially and scientifically acceptable six feet. The man screamed, “I want fortune cookie!” in a Mickey Rooney “Chinese” accent a la Breakfast At Tiffany’s. I tried to dodge under his arm, but he managed to land a wet glob of spit right in my face.

Take a break when the pressure is high.

accept that you don't have to be an expert — it won't make you look weak.

And it has to do with not judging anything about ourselves ... [but being] aware of what we're feeling."

it will wane as you age

"impostor syndrome is ... influenced by the messaging that we've received from day one."

"They just right away internalize that 'there must be something wrong with me.' "

It's a sense among many high-achieving people "that they're not as intelligent, as bright, as creative, as able as other people think they are. And they live in a constant fear that somebody is going to find that out," she says.

they both felt like they weren't good enough to be doing their graduate studies, and many of the female students they were teaching felt the exact same way.