Linus Hsu - Class of 2018
When I was four years old, my family moved from Hsinchu, Taiwan to Massachusetts. The change wasn’t as drastic as you’d think it would be. I settled into American life pretty well, picking up basic English in a month or so (according to my parents my first full sentence in English came from me yelling at other kids to give me a turn on the slide, preschool elitists smh). I had to start going by the English name I had picked out during daycare, Linus, because apparently Yuan-Ting is too hard to pronounce. And then they had the audacity to judge me when I didn’t say Hermione correctly on my first try. Like boi, you taught us to sound out long words your way, when you sound out Hermione you break it into Her-mi-one like any logical person would do because it’s the most even syllable spread, of course people are going to say it wrong, JK Rowling. Anyway, I chose Linus because I liked the character from Peanuts. He would suck his thumb and carry around a nice blue blanket everywhere, and had all these idioms he would preach at people randomly. Sounds just like me amirite? Plus, it’s not a common name, and people tend to remember it better than Tim. Tim is what my parents were going to name me. Timothy Hsu. Glad I got out of that one. Anyway, after living in the Residence Inn in Danvers for 3 months and finishing up preschool, my family moved to our first real home in America: a little townhouse in Beverly where I did kindergarten and first grade, then hopped over to Andover, where I completed second, third, and fourth grade. In fifth grade, we moved again to Ipswich, and that’s where I’ve been since.
