1. Risso's Dolphins 2026

America is often referred to as a melting pot of different cultures. Despite this, I don’t recall ever understanding the depth of that statement. As somebody who has lived in the Bay Area their entire life, I think it’s pretty reasonable that I haven’t witnessed too much of this American diversity. Part of the reason is the Bay Area in general is quite desensitized to this (when you’re constantly surrounded by people from varying backgrounds, it becomes easy to see diversity as ordinary); another explanation is that the people in Silicon Valley keep themselves so busy that it’s hard to notice anything else. I don’t know if it’s only me, but the undeniable pressures and expectations of success seem to constantly weigh on my shoulders– now more than ever as college applications steadily approach. That alone is enough to make me cancel plans with friends, sacrifice outings to study, or prioritize work over creative and physical outlets. With all of that going on, it seems hard to fit in ...

  Dusty roads, lone cacti, rolling tumbleweeds, and most of all, the cowboy hat. What do these things have in common? They are all iconic symbols of the Wild West, cowboy culture in particular. Popularized by early 20th century Hollywood films and movie stars such as Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, these films became instant hits in the US and across the world. The wild cowboy became a physical representation of our stars and stripes, so much so that many people thought of the whole US as the ‘Wild West.’ But did you know that those famed, horse-riding, bandit-roping legends aren’t truly our creation? ‘Cowboy culture’ actually stems from Spanish colonial ranching, and the men (and women) themselves were modeled after Mexican vaqueros. Spanish explorers reintroduced horses to America in the 15th and 16th century after their extinction from the continent thousands of years ago. Vaquero is a Spanish term, meant to describe the men who work with livestock. The Indigenous and Mestizo com...

Growing up, I’ve never really thought about what it means to be American. Probably due to my normalization of the environment I grew up in and my lack of exposure to other countries and news around the world, I had always treated my current lifestyle in the Bay Area as a given. When I thought about America and the American identity, I would just loosely label it with catchphrases like “freedom and liberty” or “land of opportunities” without thinking too much into it. Moreover, I had solely perceived this characteristic as a label I can apply to someone else; after all, we’re each the main characters in our respective lives, and I hadn’t really reflected on what others might label me as like I do to them. As such, I couldn’t confidently answer the question: What makes me American? More recently, with my increasing knowledge and experiences with different cultures around the world, I started to notice more and more things that make me American—most notably the holidays that I celebrate...

One thing I notice at school is how fast a word can become part of everyone’s vocabulary. A phrase can start as an Instagram reel, show up in a small group chat, and somehow be used by half the people in the hallways the very next morning. Sometimes I get it. Other times, I just stand there and say to myself , “what has gotten into this school this time.” I would have to manually go and figure out what the word even means, and by the time I learn to use it too, some other word gets added to the dictionary. This cycle has become a sort of normality at this point, but who knows what the next word will sound like. As I got older and ended up eventually getting a phone (not a good idea), I was able to really indulge this lifestyle of getting back from high school, scrolling my feed, and getting to my homework when I “felt like it.” Then one day, I started seeing this random grandpa pop up on my videos every few seconds, and that really made me wonder; why in the world does he keep saying “...

America is often known as the “melting pot” of different cultures and languages—a place where it wouldn’t be weird to hear somebody speak in Mandarin, then Hindi from another person a second after. I remember when I was younger, I was always fascinated by the idea that while I spoke my language, Mandarin, there were hundreds of other languages filled with complexity that other people have mastered as their mother tongue (that I could barely understand.) However, what interests me more is the language that we share—no, I’m not talking about English, the language that around 90% of America’s population speaks—I am talking about the handshakes, the palm to the face, and the hearts made with your pointer finger and your thumb. In sociology, these gestures would be categorized under “symbols,” which includes “gestures, signs, objects, signals, and words—[that] help people understand [the] world,” according to Lumen Learning. Additionally, they carry out meanings with the shared cultural me...

  I remember being in kindergarten, sitting criss-cross applesauce on the rainbow-squared carpet that our teacher used to get us to settle down. I remember being told to stand up and move to our desks, signifying that we had work to do. I remember the topic of middle names coming up, and being unaware of the fact mine somehow sounded different. I remember someone turning to me and asking what mine was, to which i replied that mine was “Jiajia”, or “佳佳.” I remember the chuckle that came from across the room, and the sinking feeling in my stomach when I realized they were laughing at my middle name. Not because it was something to be laughed at, but because it was strange, rare, and ‘un-American’. Lastly, I remember the pride that I held in being able to have a middle name in another language turning into burning shame because I wasn’t more similar to my classmates.  As I progressed through school, my shaky relationship with cultural identity often swayed back and forth. In the...