What’s the best gift you ever gave?

Stuck on gift-giving ideas? Low on money, but still want to show someone that you care about them during the holiday season? Have no fear! Luckily, from surveying different students on campus, it’s usually not the price tag that counts. You don’t have to buy anything fancy, so long as you plan ahead and get creative!

This is the second of a series of questions to come under a new survey started by Pacific Ties. Our goal with this project is to collect a variety of responses that represent the diversity of Asian Pacific Islander students on UCLA campus, providing insight into the present lives of API students and how cultural influences or other factors play a role in their lives. We seek to de-stigmatize students of color and to challenge common stereotypes surrounding Asian American identity. Our purpose is to form a strong connection with and between different Asian American communities and to project the voices of Asian Pacific Islander students at UCLA.

Question of the week: “What’s the best gift you ever gave?”

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Here are the responses we collected:

	“A sense of pride for my family for being the first one to go to college. But if it was a material gift, it would be Roshe shoes.”
	“In my staff, we were having Secret Santa. [The person I got] she’s the kind of person that always wanted to start card-making or scrapbooking, but she never had the time to go out and buy it. So, [for me] it was the perfect time to actually buy everything. I went to Michael’s and got a box and filled it with stamps, card-making, and scrapbook making stuff. And then when she got it, she was very surprised. It was so cute ’cause you could tell now she could start it. That would be the best present I gave. It was the thought that was in it.”
	“I folded a thousand cranes to my girlfriend, and I gave it to her in a really big jar. It was for Valentine’s Day. I started folding from Christmas to Valentine’s Day, and I finished it in two months.”
	“The best gift I’ve ever given was a blanket that I made (so it’s the first time I ever made this blanket). I’ve always wanted to make it, so I made it for my boyfriend for Christmas.”
	“I think maybe a computer. I gave it to my friend as his birthday gift. I just knew he wanted a new computer. His old one was broke and no good.”

We’re also interested in hearing what you think! Leave a response in the comments below, or suggest a question to ask. The question(s) can be something you want to ask the current Asian American population on campus (what they think about a certain issue or topic). If we choose to use your question, we will credit you at the beginning of that post. Stay tuned for our next round. This is a bi-weekly project and survey of Asian American students on UCLA campus.

**In order to produce a more accurate representation, we collect all responses to show the diversity and/or uniformity of Asian American students at UCLA and what they think about a certain issue or topic.