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From the great minds of Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel, the movie Hush receiving an average rating of 60% creates a new method when it comes to pulling the viewers into the eyes of the victim in thriller/horror. The film was first premiered at the SXSW Film Festival a month before its release on netflix where it grew in popularity by those who wanted a new style in the art of thriller and hopped to receive it through only independent cinema. The 82 minute film felt longer as they successfully kept myself and others to the edge of their seat wanting the movie to never end as we watched this seemingly helpless woman fight for her life. The movie stayed interesting as the use of loud music cues to shock the audiences stayed to a minimum and the use of jump scare tactics seemed nonexist

The movie sticked to an old fashioned feelings with modernizing technology such as iphones and mac pro laptops to bring the playing field to an even level for our victim who was both mute and deaf while our murder stayed true to an old timed weapon, a bow and arrow with a small modernization of it being in the form of a cross bow. I use the word “was” to describe the main character, Maddie played by the co-writer Kate Siegel due to what I believed to be an open ended interpretation of the ending of the movie, where they leave the viewers to decide how exactly the cops arrived to her home when all she had was a cell phone with the telephone feature opened the very last time we see her with the phone in her hand.

The main character/victim Maddie (Kate Siegel) is a deaf-mute writer, living in small home secluded in the words with one couple as neighbors who live right down the road but too far for hear shot. Some may say the setting is too convenient and is a set-up following the arts of Stephen King, I how ever feel the movie’s location makes the most sense due to Maddie’s intentions of finishing her book that she spent a good 20 minutes trying to overcome procrastination to do while the murder who hasn’t been named, sets up and and checks out the area.

The films work of using the senses to immerse us into the story through Maddie's POV surely kept me locked in my seat and amplified my enjoyment of the ride. We mainly focus on touch and hearing as the movie starts with the gained volume sounds of eggs cracking, onions being sliced, asparagus sizzling on the stove as Maddie cooks diner. When the camera draws to her face, the sounds then balance bringing us back to the way we would hear things. The movie continues these acts where the killer stands outside her window in his introduction where he knocks and scratches her glass door with his knife and we don't get to hear anything but a high pitch noises as we release we are back in Maddie’s POV as the killer stands confused trying to get her attention by banging on the glass.

As we learn more about Maddie, we find out that when she writes, she explores multiple endings with her mother’s voice coaching her in her mind as she makes a decision. So as she tries to survive her attacker, by thinking about each action and choice wisely by examining the outcome where almost everything she chooses her mother tells her will lead to death. At some point, I believe she began to make decisions blindly or that from the point in the movie where she she stops examining possible future is where she was living a future at which I mean, the ending wasn't really the ending but just a vision due to one of her decisions which would explain the absurdity I explained in the beginning of this review where she somehow called the police even though she is mute [and must I add, one minute prior to the “call”, she was being dramatically strangled by the murder].

On a standards or morals and political lenses. I can say the movie Hush passes The famous Bechdel test and my own test, The Mayhem Background Check. In the beginning of the movie Maddie has two different conversations. She has one with her neighbor sitting on the step and one with her sister via facetime. The conversation she has with her neighbor consisted of book talk, Maddie’s cat, and sign language. The conversation starts with the neighbor raising Maddie over her book and praising her. She then ask for the location of Maddie’s cat causing Maddie to sign the cat’s name, “Bitch”. The rest of the conversation consist of Maddie teaching her how to say “Bitch” in sign language. This exchange passes the Bechdel Test. As for The Mayhem Background Check I created, the test is to eliminate the constant twist of the male or female victim on stalking/murder to be an ex from the past. The Mayhem Background check ensures that the constant stereotype of a male killer who is unmasked is an ex boyfriend. However if the killer stays masked throughout the whole movie it's an automatic pass. In the movie Hush, the kill does unmask himself. The killer’s name remained a mystery as it is revealed to us that there is no real motive of the killer because there is no present or past relations between the two when these events unfold. So the movie is considered a pass when the test of The Mayhem Background Check is applied.

The movie “Moana” is Disney's newest Princess to grace the silver screen and there has been a lot of excitement drawn to her movie due to it being placed in the islands of Polynesia and having another woman POC. Historically, Disney princesses main goals have gravitated towards having a prince charming and living happily ever after, but Disney has had a good track record as of recent of allowing their princesses to have their own story arc that isn’t solely about having a prince or man to be loved by. Will they continue that trend? The main question here is does the movie pass the two feminist tests? We are here to find that out.

“Moana” is not only the name of our movie but also the name of our character and we find ourselves in the middle of a conflict not too long after the movie has started. Moana loves the ocean but her father wants her to stay focused on taking over the throne once it’s her time to become the first woman chief of her Polynesian tribe. A conflict that fuels the movie all the way to its peak. She finds her island to be slowly dying and has decided to find out why after a touching moment with her grandmother, the main person who has encouraged her love of water and venturing out of the reef. A rule that hasn’t been broken by the tribe up until now.

In her adventure past the reef she meets Maui, a historical demigod to her people who is responsible for her island dying because he stole the heart of a god. Maui has an interesting backstory that is usually more than that meets the eye but it isn’t thrown at you right away. He matches that of a person who is slow to trust and reveal their past, so to stay true to his character it is like he slowly trusts the audience to reveal who he truly is. The two have not quite an instant connection but grow to have chemistry that is hard to match in this movue.

From the stunning visuals that this movie proudly shows to the interesting story it tells, “Moana” is a must see for everyone. Not only does the Mako Mori test not stand a chance towards it with there being a lot more than one female character, this is also a movie that is centered around a woman who never gives up but has a male partner and isn’t just in the movie to support his cause. It is actually her who is determined to get him to support the cause and adventure they both share. One of the historically harder feminist movie tests the “Bechdel test” can barely ride “Moanas” coat tails either because of the many scenes of women empowering Moana to take her adventure, to not be afraid and to never give up. Her conversations with her grandmother were always my favorite part because she always had no hint of negativity for her. She always encouraged her to be great, and do what she was destined to do. When Moana was ready to give up it was her grandmother who was there to turn her around. And with the new feminist test the “Saa test”, Moana smashes that test with the evidence shown above that it is also no match. “Moana” has been a hit in the box office, has smashed even the hardest of feminist movie tests, has an amazing story, and some of the best animation of the year to boot. There is little to no reason to not see this movie and I recommend it to everyone and thing who can either hear, see or both.

Storks is a disney movie that tackles the topic of babies and answers the question of where they come from. As presumed from the title you can see that the movie is focusing on the idea that storks deliver babies. This movie is very well animated and highly entertaining. Across numerous review sites it has scored very high with a 7/10 on IMBD, a 63% on rotten tomatoes, and a 89% from Google users. These ratings are well deserved by the movies comedy that is able to not attract children but also able to keep the adult audience interested. However it is 2017 and movies cannot be looked at on the surface anymore. We need to analyze them on a deeper more conscious level. This is why there are tests such as the Bechdel and Mako Mori test exist. For those of you that are not aware the Bechdel texts proposes the question if a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The Mako Mori test analyzes to see if there is at least one female character, this female character must also get her own narrative, and this narrative is not about supporting a man’s story. For this review of the movie Storks I will be using the Mako Mori test.

In short sense the movie Storks does pass the Mako Mori test. One of the two main characters is a female dubbed Tulip. Tulip is in search of her home as to her being a failed Stork delivery, and she is also on a mission to deliver a newborn baby to a home. This narrative arc given to Tulip allows her to pass the Mako Mori test and in the eyes of the Mako Mori test be considered a non gender social stigma conforming movie. However I feel as though the Mako Mori test is not the best way to test a movie on this level, therefore I have created my own test. The Social Stereotypes test.

The Social Stereotype test analyzes the main female characters in a movie and to pass this test they must be able to go against the stereotypes that have been assigned to females. When Storks is looked at through these eyes the movie fails horribly. Throughout the movie the main female character Tulip is deemed unfit for a real job, that is done by men, and is given the job of managing mail, because it is a simple task which she cannot mess up. This aligns with the stereotype that a woman cannot correctly do the job that a man will do. However this is not the main thing that causes Storks to fail this test. Tulip’s constant emotional instability and breakdowns cause her to conform to the stereotype that females are weak and unstable. However this doesn’t make this movie a bad movie. It must be kept in mind that the target audience is small children that most likely do not even know what sexism is and for that audience the movie does a superb job.

INTRODUCCIÓN

Ellos son tres chicos y una chica. Ella acepta invitaciones from all tres chicos at the same time and same place. Selena needs to figure out who to chose. Who will be successful in getting la chica. Stay tuned for the special premiere episode of ¿Tres Novios?

PERSONAJES

Charles como Carlitos

Alex como Juan

Sal como Jesús

Michaela como Selena

What I’m really trying to say is  I feel like high school was a big burst of freedom in my life, but I have problems adapting to the amount of freedom. It's like going from prison to a beach in hawaii. I was so amazed at the simple fact that I could have my phone out during lunch, because at my old school, it was run by a bunch of strict catholics and I wasn't even catholic and as soon as something happened, they all tried to blame me for it. We had lunch for 20 minutes then a 20 minute recess, and sometimes recess before lunch. Never could we have our phones out, not even during the after school program where they babysat us. It was so strict, they had this fake holiday every year called mercy day AND IT WAS ON MY BIRTHDAY EVERY YEAR. I swear they made it up just to piss me off. Some kid wrote graffiti on the bathroom walls, and the teachers called every boy in the school up to the office and told them to write who they thought it was and why on a piece of paper. 5 out of 60 kids wrote that it was me, because they wanted to get me in trouble, not because i did it, but because they didn't like me. The teachers called me in the office and said that they knew it was me because 5 FRICKIN KIDS SAID SO. We had strict rules. Detentions were given out for anything.

Here's where the real story starts from my point of view.I'm in Language Arts class, and my teacher is lecturing us on something, but i'm not paying attention. I start zoning out and falling asleep when I hear a loud announcement over the P.A. system. “ Will every boy from 5th to 8th grade please report to the conference room NOW!” “This can't be good”, I say to my friend myles as we all head for the conference room. “No it can’t.”, he says back. We all arrive at the conference room confused and we see out principal and 4 staff members looking very upset as they usher us in. We take up the entire room with no space to spare, most of us are sitting on the floor, and then the principal starts showing us some pictures. They are pictures of the bathroom stalls, but they have graffiti on them. “Good god”, I think to myself someone wrote F*** the principal. We all look around. Me and my friend Vaughn exchange concerned looks. The room starts to hum as we all talk to each other about how dumb we all thought this was. “QUIET!”, Our principal yells. We all snapped back to the quiet and we are all edge. The staff members start handing out index cards to all of us and when everyone had one, the Principal yelled for silence. “Now , I want everybody to write the following on their index card, Dear Principal, I am deeply sorry about what has happened. Then we had to write if we saw anyone do this, or who we thought was the culprit. We all took out our pens and wrote. I thought to myself about how stupid this was.

“People could literally lie and blame the kids they don't like, and sure enough, I was called to the office 20 minutes after we were dismissed. It rang out in L.A. class while I was mid nap. I woke up to the loud words of, “David Williams report to the office NOW”, this made me regret not telling the teachers why this was a bad idea. “Maybe my enemies had all decided to report me like that”, I thought to myself, “maybe they're doing this to every student. “Maybe they're calling me in to tell me who really did it. When I got there, I was about 8 teachers sitting at a round table. “Grab a seat”, one of them said. “This doesn't feel right”, I think to myself. “Why are they all looking at me like this?”. Then the Principal held up a picture of the graffiti and said, “I have 5 papers that put you here”. “You’ve gotta be frickin joking”, I said in my head, careful to keep my cool. I said to the teachers, “how does 5 kids saying that I did this mean I did anything. They probably just want to get me in trouble.” “this is no form of real proof, and I don’t think it’s fair to accuse me like this.”, I said, “and I'm not the type of kid who writes these kinds of things. Now here's the part of the story that hasn't been relevant until now. You see, earlier that day, me and a few kids happened to be in the bathroom and we were all bored, so we started throwing a washable marker at the mirror, making small blue dots on it.  We found it fun compared to class. Now the graffiti was written in red permanent marker, so obviously us and the person who wrote it had very different intentions. But that's now the point.

The point is that the teachers tried to use that against me, just because I was reluctant to tell them about it, and of course my friends ratted me out. So basically my teachers didn't trust me and I didn't trust anyone, except for my only 2 friends. I really hated my middle school for 2 main reasons: I could barely trust anyone, and my teachers never trusted me. It took the help of my parents for me to win what my teachers turned into a whole court case.  

What I’m really trying to say is  I feel like high school was a big burst of freedom in my life, but I have problems adapting to the amount of freedom. It's like going from prison to a beach in hawaii. I was so amazed at the simple fact that I could have my phone out during lunch, because at my old school, it was run by a bunch of strict catholics and I wasn't even catholic and as soon as something happened, they all tried to blame me for it. We had lunch for 20 minutes then a 20 minute recess, and sometimes recess before lunch. Never could we have our phones out, not even during the after school program where they babysat us. It was so strict, they had this fake holiday every year called mercy day AND IT WAS ON MY BIRTHDAY EVERY YEAR. I swear they made it up just to piss me off. Some kid wrote graffiti on the bathroom walls, and the teachers called every boy in the school up to the office and told them to write who they thought it was and why on a piece of paper. 5 out of 60 kids wrote that it was me, because they wanted to get me in trouble, not because i did it, but because they didn't like me. The teachers called me in the office and said that they knew it was me because 5 FRICKIN KIDS SAID SO. We had strict rules. Detentions were given out for anything.

Here's where the real story starts from my point of view.I'm in Language Arts class, and my teacher is lecturing us on something, but i'm not paying attention. I start zoning out and falling asleep when I hear a loud announcement over the P.A. system. “ Will every boy from 5th to 8th grade please report to the conference room NOW!” “This can't be good”, I say to my friend myles as we all head for the conference room. “No it can’t.”, he says back. We all arrive at the conference room confused and we see out principal and 4 staff members looking very upset as they usher us in. We take up the entire room with no space to spare, most of us are sitting on the floor, and then the principal starts showing us some pictures. They are pictures of the bathroom stalls, but they have graffiti on them. “Good god”, I think to myself someone wrote F*** the principal. We all look around. Me and my friend Vaughn exchange concerned looks. The room starts to hum as we all talk to each other about how dumb we all thought this was. “QUIET!”, Our principal yells. We all snapped back to the quiet and we are all edge. The staff members start handing out index cards to all of us and when everyone had one, the Principal yelled for silence. “Now , I want everybody to write the following on their index card, Dear Principal, I am deeply sorry about what has happened. Then we had to write if we saw anyone do this, or who we thought was the culprit. We all took out our pens and wrote. I thought to myself about how stupid this was.

“People could literally lie and blame the kids they don't like, and sure enough, I was called to the office 20 minutes after we were dismissed. It rang out in L.A. class while I was mid nap. I woke up to the loud words of, “David Williams report to the office NOW”, this made me regret not telling the teachers why this was a bad idea. “Maybe my enemies had all decided to report me like that”, I thought to myself, “maybe they're doing this to every student. “Maybe they're calling me in to tell me who really did it. When I got there, I was about 8 teachers sitting at a round table. “Grab a seat”, one of them said. “This doesn't feel right”, I think to myself. “Why are they all looking at me like this?”. Then the Principal held up a picture of the graffiti and said, “I have 5 papers that put you here”. “You’ve gotta be frickin joking”, I said in my head, careful to keep my cool. I said to the teachers, “how does 5 kids saying that I did this mean I did anything. They probably just want to get me in trouble.” “this is no form of real proof, and I don’t think it’s fair to accuse me like this.”, I said, “and I'm not the type of kid who writes these kinds of things. Now here's the part of the story that hasn't been relevant until now. You see, earlier that day, me and a few kids happened to be in the bathroom and we were all bored, so we started throwing a washable marker at the mirror, making small blue dots on it.  We found it fun compared to class. Now the graffiti was written in red permanent marker, so obviously us and the person who wrote it had very different intentions. But that's now the point.

The point is that the teachers tried to use that against me, just because I was reluctant to tell them about it, and of course my friends ratted me out. So basically my teachers didn't trust me and I didn't trust anyone, except for my only 2 friends. I really hated my middle school for 2 main reasons: I could barely trust anyone, and my teachers never trusted me. It took the help of my parents for me to win what my teachers turned into a whole court case.  

Emmett y Simone tratan de hablar con el padre de Emmett. Ellos hablan con el fantasma de Serenity. What does the ghost of Serenity do to them? Watch to find out!

Two good friends, Julia and Janet make plans to go to a party after school. Before the friends get to go anywhere, Janet is shockingly kidnapped. Meanwhile, Julia tries to get help from a cop that doesn't seem to be doing his job right. Watch to find out what happens in Un día normal.

-Shaheed como Policía Robert

-Ivan como el secuestrador

-Ruby como Julia

-Madison como Janet

When I first came to SLA it was very different. The people were a lot different, the work load was crazy, the strange rules, having an internship that I can’t get paid for, and a bunch of other stuff. The teachers seem like they’re all about teaching rather than raising a family or trying to be friends with the students. I don’t personally like it because not all students want to even be in school let alone...  I came from School of the Future where teachers acted like real people. People you could tell were going through their own struggles. Here at SLA it seems like the teachers are always happy and jolly which doesn’t seem real to me. It's like the twilight zone and the teachers are cheerful zombies.  I feel like some of them are hiding how they really feel or who they really are to the point that their personality doesn’t seem possible. Like if someone close to them died but the very next day they’d be at school and would still make us write 3 papers and make 2 videos about some unnecessary topic. I feel like their partly emotionless in the sense that there's no slowdown in the work output and they just push on, forgetting it ever happened. For example recently my aunt died and my cousin was really close to her. My cousin is a school teacher. She took off from work for about a week and when she came back she wasn’t assigning a crazy amount of work because she knew she still had to grade all of it and she knew she didn’t feel like doing a lot when she got home.  The people on the baseball team seemed like they actually wanted to be there to win rather than just be there...

I walked into Ms. Martin's health class not knowing anyone and sat at the end of the table by myself. I had to switch chairs with the one to the left of me because the chair I sat in had a bad back piece.It bent back way to far almost to the point where you would fallout. There were health related posters on the walls but nothing crazy, it was everything that you would expect to be in a health class. A few about the body, a few about what you should eat, and a few of the play 60 posters about how much exercise you should get a day. No one had a reaction to me being the new kid. They didn’t talk to me or anything. But luckily no one spoke to me because I don’t like to start talking to people until I’ve known them for at least a week like a break-in period. I don’t want to make friends with people I barely know. I like to watch how people react to day to day situations because I hate people that blow up or make a huge deal about little things.

Before I came to SLA I had already started High School Three times before at different schools. The first time I started was at a homeschool program called Claritas. It was absolutely awful. My family and I found out about the homeschool from a kid named Jacob who was on my summer baseball team. I hated him, he was a dick and a bad sport. He always had to have his way or else he’d throw a weird tantrum and rant about how you were wrong and he was right. But at school he was same way. One day the whole school played a game of kickball at recess. Jacob decided to be the pitcher. The school went from K-12. So it was a little 4th graders turn to kick the ball. So she got up and kicked the ball right back to jacob. So since he just has to win every game he plays no matter if it takes the fun out of it for others, he decides to peg the kickball as hard as he could at the little girl. Luckily he missed and the ball got lodged in the bushes. But he was a dick of a kid. But everyone else that went there seemed to have something off about them. One girl said she had never seen the matrix because her parents wouldn't let her since it was rated R. But rated R movies are drastically different now than in the 90’s. All of them listened to their parents word for word. No one had there own personality. They never wanted to step out from under their parents to see what the world was like. Everyone had a 10pm bedtime and everyone went to bed at 10 pm. Everyone was a bunch of squares and it got to point where some days I didn’t talk to anyone at all. And on some of those days when my dad came to get me and ask about my day that would be the first time opening my mouth all day so it would almost be glued together.  So I Ieft when they went on christmas break.

The next day my dad looked up another homeschool online. My dad found out about this homeschool called connexus by doing some research online. It was a much better homeschool than claritas. It was a homeschool program that you could either do it by yourself on the computer or go to a center close to you and have teachers teach the material like a regular school. At first I was doing it by myself but a couple weeks pass and some things on the website started to confuse me, so I told my dad I needed to go to a center instead. So me and my dad looked up the closest one and found one downtown. I was happy there was one downtown because when I needed money I could just go to my parents jobs and get money from them. The next day me and dad went down to the center for our meeting and told the people what I needed help with and they told us they could help starting tomorrow. They also told us that there were two times I could come in which were eight to eleven and twelve to three. For obvious reasons I chose the twelve to three schedule. I hate waking up early. So after we had the meeting my dad went to work and I went back home. The next day I went to the center and got the help I needed and also did my classes. The people at this homeschool were a lot more relatable than the last. They weren’t extremely competitive or crazy they were just all really chill, laid back people. About six of them were on house arrest but they didn’t seem like they would do anything to be on house arrest. I found out about a program called fruity loops. It’s a music making program, I used it in between classes when I was bored. I probably made about fifty beats that semester. Then the summer hit and baseball started up which is how I got into my next school.

The next school I went to was school of the future. I found out about school of the future from one of the coaches of my summer team. He said he worked at a school similar to mine since both schools mainly used laptops. He said I would be a great addition to the baseball team. So I happily said yes to joining future. But future was a real school with a building, windows, a lot of students, fights, lunchroom, everything a regular school has. On my first day I walked in and a guy told me to go sit in the gym. I sat in the gym by myself listening to music then after about 20 minutes the principal stood in the middle and told which grades where they needed to go, where to get there schedule, and from there the teachers took over. My teacher's name was Mr. Uthman, he was an african guy. He bought us up to the class and we did a couple ice breakers to learn each other's names. After we finished our ice breakers the period was over and we went to our next class. In every class that day it was just ice breakers. The people at future were okay. There were some I liked more than others to say the least. The rest of the year was a good year. My dad helped start a fundraiser for the baseball team and we were able to afford a batting cage in the gym. We also went undefeated in the regular season but lost our first playoff game.

Dear SLA community,

… I need you to hear a few things

My first day of highschool was suppose to be one of my greatest memories, but it was the day that I realized my word would change. On my way to school I caught the el, a train that I was terrified to get on. It was the way to my new life. The el was this huge clunk  of metal with blue seats inside. We sat down and I sat next to the window. As I look out the window I can feel the anxiety bubbling inside of me. She hugs me and says it will be okay. She was someone I was comfortable with. I’ve known her for years, it was already like she was a part of the family. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine, it’s honestly a great school.” She was a junior at SLA, the best coincidence. On our way to school she was explaining to me the “unique” dynamics of my new school. I remember her telling me all about SLA and how I am going to love it. “It’s pretty diverse in a way but you will be that token spanish friend.” Those words stuck with me, I never thought that they would be so accurate. I was wrong.

As I walked into the building I watched her as she scanned in. The cafeteria was made of windows which I loved, I thought it was so cool. There was a hole in the ceiling which was strange but it didn’t seem to matter to me. The cafeteria was filled with people I did not know what to do.  I was so nervous, it was if I was a mouse in a world filled with giants. Everyone looked the same. Someone yelled out her name “Melissa, come here!”, she ran to her and hugged her. I scanned the building as I waited by Melissa as she hugged all of her friends. I am glad to see the same walls I saw from Summer Institute. I couldn’t help but look up at what, at the time, was missing part of the ceiling. I saw people poking their heads down and waving to people, that seemed so strange to me. Melissa finished saying hi to all of her friends and walked me to my advisor’s room. She gave me a hug and said “Have a good day, text me if anything.” As I walked in I sat next to Emily, a girl I remembered from Summer Institute from the previous week. I looked around the room and all I saw was white. There was some color in the room, but barely. I put on a brave face hoping no one sees my discomfort. We transitioned to our first class, and once again I saw a lot of white. I have never been so uncomfortable in a place that I am supposed to love. I see a girl I went to I knew. As I sat down and looked around I saw of white people sitting together and I knew we didn’t know each other yet, but I wondered as to why they all sat together. Fast forward three years and I am sitting in my history class and it has even come to a point where our history teacher said something. “It seems like all the white people sat together and all the black people sat together.” That’s crazy I thought, even our teacher notices it. Everyone laughs...

My life at SLA has been pretty great, better than most but I sometimes feel ostracized by just looking the way I look. I cannot deny the fact, even if I tried, that I am Latina. I look just like a typical Latina girl. I have caramel skin, brown eyes, brown hair, and I am short. I am filled in a school with giants. These giants vary in color, but all the same they are giants. I never see any caramel skin giants. I really miss seeing similar faces. I miss people being able to properly pronounce my name. My name is meant to flow off the tongue Elani Belen Gonzalez-Ortiz. It took me a long time to come to love my name and SLA has made me hate it. Whenever I tell someone my entire name they tell me that it is too long and they are going to call me something different. Then when I tell them, “No, you will call me by my name,” they look at me as if they are offended. I have come to accept the fact that people are just going to butcher my name. Also by coming to SLA, I have realized that I am that one token spanish friend. Melissa was right. Everyone came to me with questions asking if I could read over their spanish essays or if I can do their homework. Then once again, they get offended when I tell them no. Like I do not have my own things to worry about. SLA has honestly made me just want to forget the fact that I am a Latina. I have heard people butcher my language and not even wanting to fix it. They also like to point out the fact that they are giants like I already cannot tell, that I do not realize that I am not one of them.

I tried to be friends with the giants, and I was for a while until I met people with color. They weren’t caramel, but all still the same it was color. Don’t get me wrong, I am still friends with the giants, but the creatures with color understand me more. They sympathize with what I am going through, they try and try to say my name but it still isn’t the same. Everyday I wanted to come home just so I can be reminded how beautiful being Latino really is. That our caramel skin is beautiful and that my brown hair is not dirty but vibrant. That the curls and frizz in my hair is not nasty but lively. No one understands it though, the giants, the creatures, and not even home.

Home doesn’t understand what it is like to constantly be asked questions about your culture every single day, just so they can get a good grade not even for them to understand. My mom understands though, she is in the same world I am. These giants and creatures don’t seem to understand why questions suck. It sucks because it is as if I am an animal in the zoo, like if everyone wants to constantly take pictures with me. I wanted to be normal but I couldn’t with everyone always wondering about me.  Why being constantly pointed out because I am Latina is annoying. “Yes, I understand I look different but you can stop pointing it out thanks”, I thought all the time.

I miss my old life. Once you meet another Latino it is as if you are instant friends, you automatically have something to bond over. Latinos are a very tight nit community and I was pulled from that. I remember everyone always being able to say my name correctly and I never felt strange about my name either because all of our names were sort of similar in a sense. No one ever questioned me in my old life. I was just the average latino kid just like everyone else was. I never felt like an outsider in my old school. We all spoke spanish and all came from the same place, it was diverse in the sense that we had all kinds of latinos but nothing else.

Science Leadership Academy the best innovative school for the kids who don’t think like your average teenager. We are diverse! Everyone will love it. SLA is a non-Latino school. We are diverse, but not diverse enough.

Sincerely,