My Low Wage Life - Sarana Chen

I was not born into a rich family. My parents are from the huge portion of the middle class in the U.S, though we're probably at the higher end. We don't have a lot of extra money, but we've never really had to worry about there not being enough to pay for basic necessities.

Even so, I've never had an allowance, and I've seen how hard my parents work, so I've never asked them for one in my entire life. But I'm still a teenage girl. I like going out with my gal pals to watch movies and go shopping occasionally. So since the beginning of high school, I had a job as a babysitter. Pay was pretty good, so I didn't have a problem at all about not having enough “spending” money.

Now I'm in college, and Santa Clara University is a private school with high tuition fees. If I haven't gotten the SCU grant, I doubt I would have chosen to come to SCU, because my parents would not have been able to afford it. I don't live on campus because that would make money even tighter, and my little brother will go to college in a few years too.

I got a low wage job on campus to help pay for books and take care of my own “spending” money. Working in the library gets me minimum wage, so just the book fees would take up a huge chunk of each paycheck. Even though I have a low wage job, I still don't have to go day by day worrying about whether or not I could afford to live in a room or get enough to eat the next day.

I want to find out more about low wage workers. Since I'm proud of my ethnicity, I want to focus on low wage workers in China. I've visited China a few times, and I've seen the poverty stricken men and women and children on the streets. They tow around their illegal merchandise, and scramble in different directions when they see a police car drive by. They sit in groups at each tourist attraction, jumping up when they see a tour bus, trying to sell you their goods. Fruit, vegetables, umbrellas, hats, t-shirts. The list goes on.

I want to find out more about how they can find the hope to live on every day, when they have so little.