Jiemin "Tina" Wei
Join our Mailing List!
Please click the link below to sign up for your community paper mailing list. Stay up to date with all the events going on in your community as well as the latest news.Sign Up Today!
Hard work pays off for essay winner
When Overland Trail Middle School eighth-grader Jiemin “Tina” Wei entered the junior division research paper contest to possibly win herself a trip to the University of Maryland for National History Day, she poured herself into the project.
“I’m the kind of person that would do something only if I thought I would be the best at it,” Jiemin said. “I worked really hard on my paper and spent hours and hours and hours on it.”
That work paid off when Jiemin won first place at the state competition in Topeka on April 26 for her paper “From Excluded to Included: The Ongoing Evolution of Chinese Immigrants in America.”
Jiemin decided to do the paper as part of a guided discovery project in her independent education plan for gifted Blue Valley students.
The paper has a strong personal connection for Jiemin, who was born in China, lived in Thailand and immigrated to the United States with her parents at the age of 7.
The paper is about the overall conflict and compromise between Chinese immigrants and America. Jiemin chose the subject after reading very little about the struggles of Chinese immigrants in her history books at school.
“I read like a paragraph about the Chinese Exclusion Act even though it was a huge deal,” Jiemin said. “It was the first law that prohibited a certain race from immigrating to the United States … but our social studies book only had like one paragraph on it.”
Wei said her mother, Yalun Zhou, and father, Youfu Wei, helped her with revisions and research, which mostly came from the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s library. The paper is nearing its maximum of 2,500 words, but Jiemin said she has more to add before the May 21 deadline.
She said her parents are proud of her and the paper.
“They always want me to hold on to my heritage and we talk about my heritage and culture a lot, and my language and (we) keep speaking Chinese at home,” Jiemin said.
Jiemin and her family first immigrated to Maryland, so the trip to College Park June 15-19 provides an added benefit. She said she hopes to see some old friends she left behind after moving to the Blue Valley School District as a seventh-grader.
printable version
e-mail this story
“I’m the kind of person that would do something only if I thought I would be the best at it,” Jiemin said. “I worked really hard on my paper and spent hours and hours and hours on it.”
That work paid off when Jiemin won first place at the state competition in Topeka on April 26 for her paper “From Excluded to Included: The Ongoing Evolution of Chinese Immigrants in America.”
Jiemin decided to do the paper as part of a guided discovery project in her independent education plan for gifted Blue Valley students.
The paper has a strong personal connection for Jiemin, who was born in China, lived in Thailand and immigrated to the United States with her parents at the age of 7.
The paper is about the overall conflict and compromise between Chinese immigrants and America. Jiemin chose the subject after reading very little about the struggles of Chinese immigrants in her history books at school.
“I read like a paragraph about the Chinese Exclusion Act even though it was a huge deal,” Jiemin said. “It was the first law that prohibited a certain race from immigrating to the United States … but our social studies book only had like one paragraph on it.”
Wei said her mother, Yalun Zhou, and father, Youfu Wei, helped her with revisions and research, which mostly came from the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s library. The paper is nearing its maximum of 2,500 words, but Jiemin said she has more to add before the May 21 deadline.
She said her parents are proud of her and the paper.
“They always want me to hold on to my heritage and we talk about my heritage and culture a lot, and my language and (we) keep speaking Chinese at home,” Jiemin said.
Jiemin and her family first immigrated to Maryland, so the trip to College Park June 15-19 provides an added benefit. She said she hopes to see some old friends she left behind after moving to the Blue Valley School District as a seventh-grader.