It's pre-freshman preview weekend at college. I'm excited yet overwhelmed to be here. My host, a Hispanic girl from my hometown, takes me to a gathering in her friend's room. A Mexican flag hangs in one corner of the room while Dominican bachata music blasts out of a speaker in another.
The students surrounding me dance and laugh and scream in Spanish. Someone proposes a toast and everyone gathers into a circle. "To being under-privileged at the most privileged school in the world," he screams in Spanish while everyone in the room raises their glasses and cheers. I'm half Hispanic but I've never felt so out of place.
It's the summer before freshman year and a copy of Puerto Rican Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor's memoir arrives in the mail. We're given it as a summer reading assignment, as a book that's supposed to promote acceptance of diversity and inclusion in a historically exclusive university. Sotomayor discusses her own educational journey at Princeton University and her struggles as a low-income Hispanic girl from the Bronx. However, I'm half white, so I know I won't feel out of place.
It's the first weekend of college and freshmen are ready for their first taste of college social life. My roommates invite me to a pre-game in their friend's room. The friend's walls are covered with pictures from a gap year trip around the world and her open closet looks like it was stocked from a 5th Avenue window display. People sip on wine and seem to all have previously met at prep schools , and if not, can at least relate to each other through their similar experiences in the hallowed halls of those secondary institutions scattered throughout New England. I'm half white, but even though the dim lighting attempts to hide my slightly brown skin, I've never felt so out of place.
It's the first week of school and the Hispanic clubs and societies gather together for Hispanic food, Spanish conversation, and a Hispanic-style welcome back to campus grounds. Everyone squeals over the platanos maduros and meat empanadas I've never tasted in my life, and I struggle to piece together the bits and pieces of Spanish I can understand. I'm half hispanic, but I still feel so out of place.
It's the middle of the semester and I sit inside my class on American presidential elections. It was a highly sought after class, and I'm one of the fifteen who made it in. I thought my experiences and stories about growing up with a corrupt government in a Mexican border town would leave me with something to contribute to these class discussions, but all I can muster up is silence surrounded by my classmates. There's kids who have parents in the Senate, kids who know politics better than I know my own name, kids who have interned for presidential campaigns, and then there's me. I am half white, I am half Hispanic, and I have never felt so out of place.
