To the boy whom I let get under my skin:

Over drinks, I sat across from you and let you insult everything about my life, meekly expressing my inner rage through ever-tightening smiles and pointed looks away when you tried to rib me for a response. After each time you denigrated my life, you said, "Ha, I'm just messing with you," as though that completely excused your insolence. I gritted my teeth and forced a tight smile - not wanting to be branded an "aggressive bitch" who "can't take a joke" - but I regret that now; I should never have sat there and let you presumptuously act as though you knew who I was as a person based on your tiny collection of stereotypes. Most of all, I should never have let you shake my self-confidence, or let you get under my skin.

You suggested that I was in some way unworthy because I chose not to go to a bulge-bracket bank, and instead chose a boutique. You asked if it was because I was rejected everywhere else. Fuck you. I chose where I went to because the people I met there GENUINELY cared, and because I felt like it was a place where I could grow and really take responsibility for projects, instead of being just a cog in a giant machine.

You said Stanford kids didn't know how to hustle, and therefore somehow were less deserving of the banking positions they got compared to others, who had to pound the pavement begging for work. Let me tell you this - I came here, on my own, without any connections in the States. I pounded the pavement. I begged people to teach me how to get into banking. I set aside all shame - hustled so hard to build up my own network here, and learned how to do it all without the benefit of cultural knowledge, or preexisting networks from friends/family.

You said all international kids were rich, and when I told you my dad worked as an engineer in his small business, you asked me which multinational corporation he ran. My family brought me up in a solidly middle class environment - my mother brought me to work with her on the weekends because there was no one to take care of me at home. I grew up feeling like offices on Saturdays were my home. My father struggled for 19 years running his own business, often working 3 jobs at a time. When other families were bonding over walks in the park, I sat at home helping out with his business - helping him stick tape onto thousands of widgets just so we could meet a deadline.

You said my accent was kind of "annoying but cute" and complained about how you only ever got to meet "FOBs" and finance chicks, of which I was both. To that, I quote Sofia Vergara in Modern Family: "Do you know how frustrating it is... to have people laugh in my face because I'm struggling to find the words? Do you know how smart I am in Spanish?" I've experienced people deliberately slow down and enunciate and speak in pidgin English to me just because my accent is unfamiliar. Over the years, I shed my native accent, trying to drawl and sound as Californian as possible so that people would finally acknowledge my contributions - which have remained exactly the same over the years, just in a different accent. And suddenly, now that I'm drawling it out and punctuating everything with "yeah, no" and "like" and "duuuude", I'm intelligent and educated. What fucking gives?

Am I proud of being a FOB? Hell yes I am - if that means I was strong enough to come here to a new country and face the trials and tribulations of moving and settling into an unfamiliar and new environment all on my own. You quickly tried to backpedal and said I didn't really count as a FOB, because I could speak English, but you know what? Yes, I'm FOBby and I'm proud of it. Being a FOB makes me strong - and it gave me the opportunity to overcome so much that you didn't even know about when you tried to judge me and paint me as some manic pixie dream girl. So, fuck you. Fuck all your premature judgments. I don't apologize for any of these experiences - I'm not sorry I chose to work where I did; I'm not sorry I hustled harder than you know; I'm not sorry I grew up always in fear of not having enough money; I'm not sorry you had to strain and use a little more effort than normal to understand me. I AM, however, sorry, that I let your comments get under my skin and diminish my view of myself - but no longer.