Rush

YAOICO, right? You Are Only in College Once. 

This is what I told myself freshman year as I signed up for Greek Life Rush, a system oversaturated with negative stereotypes that I ignored for the sake of ‘the experience.’ Now as a Duke junior whose Rush is behind her, I can speak to how drastically my experience differed from everything I’d watched on tv. I, Nicole Park, an Asian American female, feel impassioned to write this half-hour, single-camera, comedy pilot entitled RUSH depicting the Rush process and college experiences of an Asian American female, a perspective currently lacking from the television college genre. 

My hope is to feature Asian American stories through casual inclusion, depicting characters as you would encounter them in everyday life while still acknowledging the experiences unique to their Asianness. This project pulls from my own experiences of the emotional toll and identity-questioning that can arise from a process as seemingly trivial as Rush. I began in January 2021 through an independent study with Joshua Gibson, finished draft #1 in June 2021 and continue to refine and think about it in the context of a series, similar in tone and style to Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever.