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TI: I'm curious, as you're pursuing this sort of focus on art at Yale, how supportive were your parents in this direction for you?

JO: You know, they didn't really, they've always been very hands-off. I don't know what they thought. And I think it was also a different era then. It seems like young children, young kids, now are very -- and probably for a good reason -- concerned about their career. I think, I mean, I started college in 1980 and it was still, sort of, the '60s were still in the air at that point, and I think I was -- or maybe the students that I'd been friends with in college were all sort of very idealistic and, and I had no idea what I wanted to do. And my parents didn't ever push me in any one direction. I mean, I remember when I was a kid for a while, I just fell in love with my pediatrician and I thought -- Dr. Dr. Klein or Dr. Kleinman was wonderful and I wanted to be a doctor for a while. And then I guess that wore off, and I just didn't, I really didn't know. And I think that I'm glad that I didn't know, it was just very open and very naive, I think. But they, no, they never said, "Look, how are you going to support yourself?" They, they never, they never really asked that question. I think, I think that in a way, even though my mother is Nisei, they were sort of typical immigrant parents in that they really didn't know the lay of the educational land. They didn't really, I don't think they understood what it meant to go to an ivy league school, I don't think... I feel like I didn't have a lot of information going out there. And then when I got to Yale, then you run up against some of these kids who have just gone to the best prep schools on the East Coast, and a lot of very savvy, very cultured New Yorkers and that was just, that was a shock and a little intimidating for me in the very beginning. People, just kids who had grown up just steeped in the world of culture, which I had not been. And yet, I don't regret having grown up in California. I had very outdoorsy -- and then once we moved to Southern California, I spent, every summer I was at the beach and it was just a freer time. I think childhood was, and I could leave the house in the morning, go bike riding all day long and my mother wouldn't -- as long as I was home for dinner, it was okay. And parents didn't really know where we were, what we were doing, and I think fortunately we were good, we were fairly good kids, so they didn't really have reason to worry.

TI: I was just curious, so when you chose your art, so it was kind of hands-off. So was it a case where they didn't even necessarily encourage you? It was just sort of like it was up to you, Julie, in terms of what you wanted to do?

JO: Yes, that's exactly how it was. They didn't encourage or discourage.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.