Andrew Stephanus Week 2 SS1

Reading the poem "Who Killed Soek-Fang Sim?" brought me back to when I first went to United States for college. Months before I got up to the plane, all I did was trying to calm myself and make myself believe that I would be accepted to the American culture. Negative thoughts described on the poem entered my mind, what if my accent is funny, what if I'm not ready, what if they discriminate me. I did my best during college to put my head down and work as much on my own because of the fear of working with other people that is "better" than me because they're Americans. Fast forward to when I transferred to Davis as a junior. I thought a big research university with high Asian population would be a great fit for me. I still remember one particular class where I was paired with a group for the whole quarter, one Asian american, and I am not sure the ethnicity of the other person. I realized that in order to excel here I have to become more active and speak up. I became more active in group discussion and I put forward all the ideas that I came up with. My Professor thought my ideas were very good and original but yet my group never listened to me or kept finding ways to prove that my ideas were not as good as theirs. They kept me out of all the planning and work to minimize the impact I had to the group, it got to a point where I cant even help them because they did all of the work without me. At the end of the quarter, they gave me a bad evaluation because I was not active enough, and I did not put much effort to the group. Because of this I kept thinking on what I can do besides worry and blame myself. This is a great poem because a lot of mix race, international students could relate to their personal experience. I also think that it is ridiculous how the college could take away almost all of the salary of a faculty member. And how could this happen?
Question: As a student, what can I do when I face situation like this in the future? I refuse to stay idle like last time.

Reference:
weekly reading 2 (Poem by W.P)
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/35q0nu