Yet if I didn’t learn how to write at Cal, it was certainly here that my literary life really began. A refugee boy from Vietnam at age 11, I barely spoke a word of English. I lived in a crowded apartment full of refugees where Mission Street ended and the working class of Daly City began. It wasn’t until I was a junior at Lowell High School in San Francisco, when a few of my Vietnamese friends were applying to Cal, that I first heard of the school. And I thought that maybe I, too, should apply. 

“NEED HELP ASAP ENG/125,” is a post by a student on StudentofFortune.com on Jul. 30, 2012. “Has anyone read the non-fiction stories?” the student asked. While it is flattering as hell to even be mentioned in the same sentence with these great writers, let alone having one’s work compared and contrasted with theirs, it is distressing to know that students are offering between $1 to $10 dollar for someone else’s work, so as to avoid thinking.