be born here well not necessarily in the
Shaw mosque but in Isfahan in Iran and
I’m gonna date myself to some of you
history buffs when I say that three
months before I was born my family was
evacuated from Iran the Shah was about
to be overthrown and the Ayatollah
Khomeini was going to be invited back
after 14 years in exile my mother
landed in Boulder Colorado and shortly
after that my father joined us see
apparently he wasn’t leaving Iran
without the Persian rugs
I was then invited into the world that
small blob in the middle there is me but
I don’t remember much of my Colorado
experience six months after being born
we moved to Saudi Arabia and one year
after that my parents accepted jobs at
the International School of Kuala Lumpur
in Malaysia this is where my story
really begins see I’m a third culture
kid more often referred to as a TCK and
the term TCK was coined by Ruth who
seemed herself a TCK in the 50s and
since then we’ve become we become known
by a myriad of other terms all use all
describing someone who has spent a
significant portion of their formative
years living in a culture other than
that of their parents so I’m here today
to share some of my experiences growing
up and also to hit upon three points
about being a TCK that have had a
profound impact on my life I should
start by mentioning my third culture
experience is very different from that
of normal T CK’s this is my yearbook
page the senior year of my high school
career and next to me is Kelsey Wagner I
know this doesn’t look special in any
way I can assure you that it is C of the
124 graduates of a scale that year only
Kelsey and myself were afforded full
pages in the yearbook
see full-page spreads were reserved for
students that had attended is kale from
kindergarten all the way through 12th
grade and that’s a pretty rare rare
thing for a TCK in any international
school most third culture kids jump
around from country to country every 3
or 4 years on average
following their parents postings but
that year Kelsey and I graduated from is
Cal spending our entire schooling career
in Malaysia and Malaysia is a pretty
unique place to grow up besides having
amazing food a mixture of Malay and
Indian and Chinese cuisine it also has
perfect weather 27 degrees every day of
the year
this is a little cold right now by the
way but it also afforded me some
opportunities that I probably wouldn’t
have had growing up in the United States
I got to coach golf at a fairly early
age probably by passing all sorts of
things you’d need to do to become a
teaching professional for the USGA I got
to engage in some activities that
slightly skirted the safety regulations
that were pretty stringent from my home
country I got to give concerts at
Christmas on fun-looking instruments and
I got to hang out with some pretty
unique people one spring break we went
to Sarawak in East Malaysia and spent a
week living in a longhouse and I spent
the whole week hanging out with this
lady and besides having a leaf that’s
slightly bigger than my entire body at
the time you might notice that she’s
wearing earrings that are weights and
her earlobes are down to her shoulders
which I had never seen at that time and
I probably would not have seen at the
time at least in Boulder Colorado see
Malaysia was a true mixture of race
language religion socioeconomic
backgrounds and all mixed together in
this nice blend that really made it a
true melting pot of humanity in case in
point in seventh grade we were
researching world religions and we took
a field trip in that field trip we
visited a mosque and a church and a
Buddhist Hindu and Taoist temple and
those last three temples were actually
all located on the same Road and what I
witnessed
were people weaving their way in and out
of each of these temples freely sort of
peaceful co-existence if you will as
experiences like this that changed my
way of thinking and my thoughts on
believing and my ideas of what made
people happy it was something that I
thought the entire world shared is a
viewpoint tcks although having a general
increased tolerance of differences also
are fairly naive with how the world
actually works and sometimes this
naivety is met with an awakening from
the least suspected source every summer
we would travel back to the United
States and I would spend my days with my
grandmother watching reruns of TV so
actually shows that never made it to
Malaysia it was actually this refill if
you will of pop culture that in my mind
truly was my stability of being an
American it truly was my identity of
America as this pop culture I remember a
summer between my tenth and eleventh
grade year my grandmother asked me mark
what do you like doing in school my
response grandma really liked playing
basketball she said to me why do you
want to play a sport with all those
sweaty black people every internal alarm
inside of me went off and I froze and I
heard my grandmother correctly and I
took one look across the room of my
father and I realized that I had his
eyes were closed and he was shaking his
head and a sigh was firmly planted on
his face see this was my context my
black people if you will
my hero at the time was a chemo Lodge
Awan and he’d just won his first NBA
championship
he was the NBA MVP he was the Defensive
Player of the Year and he was the world
ambassador of basketball just four
months earlier I had got to meet him in
KL so you can see how it was slightly
confused and my grandmother’s comments
there is a time in a ttk life when
they’re norm is shattered and this was
mine I remember back to that moments
many times in my life and I
really appreciate my parents ability to
talk me through my confusion and to
continue to raise me to see every color
as beautiful
I had to repatriate back to the United
States for University and I remember
waving to my parents uneasily as they
got on a plane to go back to Malaysia
for the first time without me
I was standing firmly on American soil
the land of my birthplace and the
country of my passport but definitely a
foreign land and the next three months
can only be described as comical I
assimilated back into Southern
California living in the same
inconspicuous manner as Eddie Murphy
blends into New York when he goes and
coming to America I didn’t know how to
get around I didn’t know what an ATM was
used for nor would an ATM machine would
ever look like I didn’t understand free
refills on soda and I sure as heck did
not know anything about parking see I
had learned how to drive in Malaysia
which is fairly saying but the parking
is a free-for-all and so when I got my
first ticket for parking with my right
wheels not Alexis I didn’t have a Lexus
back then but when I had when I got my
first ticket for parking with my right
tires more than eighteen inches from the
curb I knew that I had some things to
learn about my homeland and that this
whole reverse culture shock thing was
real
so I dipped into my TCK bag and I pulled
out my adaptability and my flexibility
see these are things that third culture
kids get by having wacky experiences all
over the world in random situations and
I combined it with my knowledge of pop
culture and so to me that meant Seinfeld
and Michael Jordan Snoop Dogg and
Nirvana and playing Nintendo 64
Goldeneye and this is really how I
negotiated the relationships with my new
American friends we’ve spent time
bonding over video game tournaments we
would play guitar in our dorm rooms and
we would spend hours on this basketball
court just outside of our dorm rooms
where I’m sure we were all sweaty see
the thing about tcks research has shown
that they tend to do better at adapting
in new environments in
cultures something about a tolerance for
differences combined with the fact that
we need to fit in we have to find our
role in some social structure and these
skills are transferable way past just
the social norm into the workplace see
one of the nice things about growing up
overseas is you can’t usually work in
the country you grow up this I didn’t
have a job until I was in university but
I did hold six different jobs before I
landed into my current career and in
each one of those positions I had to
negotiate completely different personnel
structures and I had to complete a
fairly esoteric set of tasks and my
adaptability helped me be successful at
that adaptability and flexibility will
be paramount in the workplace of the
future and I’m not talking about some
distant future Amazon four days ago
announced the opening of their new store
that doesn’t have the need for cashiers
the human employees at this store will
be tasked with customer experience and
since we’ve all been customers before we
know that that is not going to rely on a
static set of skills students and young
adults moving into the workplace will
really need to be able to adapt quickly
and undertake a wide variety of tasks
simultaneously the last piece that I’d
like to to mention is that of them now
this is a course from one of my favorite
songs from my favorite band and time and
time again I run into people who are
unable to move forward because they’re
holding on to something in the past
whether it be mistakes made or missed
opportunities or just generally a random
dumb turn of luck they’re unable to
think what they’re gonna go do because
they’re holding onto this past also I
see people who spend an inordinate
amount of time imagining and planning
their future and trying to fit little
pieces together to try to make it a
reality instead of just enjoying now the
moment you’re living right now
and I think that the most
powerful thing about growing up as a TCK
was it taught me how to live now see I
think it comes a little bit from having
no stability whatsoever my friends would
constantly come and go and my world was
constantly changing and I learned pretty
quickly that I couldn’t rely on the
future to stay the same and there’s no
point in looking back at a past that you
couldn’t change this has a fairly
valuable side-effect ctc Caves are
pretty good at dealing with change and
massive upheaval so if you said a little
better we generally have a pretty good
plan but were not very good boxers if
you asked a young mark where he was from
he would say America if you asked the
college-aged mark who was living in
America where he was from he would most
definitely say Malaysia and if you ask
the mark standing on stage right now
where he’s from well I’ll just say that
I’m from the same multiverse that we all
currently inhabit but I do know where I
belong and that’s right here right now
with all of you enjoying the TEDx event
parents take your kids traveling take
them all over the world and kids tag
along even if you don’t think you want
to I guarantee you you’ll gain some
insights that will be valuable later in
your life and who knows maybe somewhere
down the road in some far-off distant
part of the world you’ll run into
someone you haven’t seen for 20 years
since you shared a full-page yearbook
spread with them thank you [Applause]