The central theme of this episode is growing up, coming to age, and a lot of the things that that entails-- whether it be getting your license, moving out, figuring out your fashion sense, or losing your virginity. My friend since middle school, Angie (@gel.bells on Insta), and I talk about the sense of urgency that she felt to grow up and become an adult ASAP when we were still in high school. We also share our thoughts on glow up culture and a little bit about our unfortunate makeup mishaps that we have gone through on the way to "becoming hot". In the final third of this episode, we talk about the virginity pact that we had in high school and also the unfortunate sexual education experiences (or lack thereof) that we had from public school and/or our parents.

Justin and I talk about our respective experiences going to UCLA and UCSD, and the expectations that we held about what college life would be like as 17 year old kiddos. We reflect on how college changed us, whether it was becoming more open minded or becoming better at dealing with our emotions. We also talk about growing up with Asian parents and touch on the stereotype that Asian parents are very academically demanding-- and also how they say they love us by telling us dinner is ready instead of saying the actual words.

In this episode, Nancy and I talk about the similarities and differences between our individual experiences growing up Asian American. We talk about things like wearing shoes in the house, watching Chinese dramas, and having both Chinese and Vietnamese roots. Other topics range from racial encounters to feeling incompetent as women in STEM at UCSD.

As someone who does Youtube and posts on Instagram, I can't help but feel a little bit hypocritical when I talk about social media negatively. I do think that social media does have some really great aspects but also some bad aspects as well. I talk about that in this episode and touch on the topics of validation, body image, problematic behavior, hate comments, and more.

Will is the most grown-up friend I have-- he has a job that pays him a freaking annual salary. How cool is that? He didn't get where he is immediately after graduating though, and I definitely saw him struggle in his job search. Now that I've graduated, I'm exactly where he was two years ago, and it sucks butt. He talks about his quarter life crisis and his journey from being unemployed to having a full time job that he greatly enjoys. We also discuss the pressure to accomplish stuff by a specific time and also how to handle the inevitable rejection that has the potential to cause crippling depression.

Angela and I talk about some of the struggles of making friends-- specifically, when someone you have a friend crush on doesn't want to be friends with you or vice versa, the portrayal of friend groups on TV, and toxic friendship experiences that we've both undergone. Overall it's a jolly good time and it's just half an hour of us being hyper crackheads.

Angela's ig: @angela_huu (she's not single-- sorry lads)

My old friend Jeyson and I talk about the importance of having platonic friendships, our experiences with everything that comes with being in the field of engineering, and our respective interracial relationships.

Jeyson's ig: @jaegontargaryen

Emily and I are best friends, but we have nothing in common. One big difference between us is her Christian faith and my lack thereof. We have an open conversation about it.

Also-- some parts may be a little choppy or might not flow as well due to editing. Sorry about that! I am learning hehe.

Wesley and I talk like gym bros for half of it. We also talk about how we were both little jerks in our teenage years (especially me). Then we talk about glo-ing up, online dating, and ghosting. Our thoughts on sugar daddies are also mentioned at one point.

The beginning of my podcast.