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rell dumlao (11) We moved from the Philippines when I was pretty young, and my parents didn’t initially have the best impression of America. We weren’t from a super nice suburb, and the Phillipines is really different from America. We didn’t know if we wanted to move here for a long time because of it. For a while we didn’t have a permanent home - we were kind of just bouncing from place to place until we eventually found one. I’ve never really felt different from anyone because of it though. To me, wealth is just a statistic - it’s not something I consider when I talk to people or when I make new friends. I guess I understand where it could be something that’s really impactful for other people, but it hasn’t ever effected my relationships with my friends, teachers or family - I don’t think it’s that closely tied to my identity.
My freshman and sophomore year, I felt less comfortable in my own skin and more generally with who I am. By now, I’ve kind of adjusted to being one of the only black girls in a lot of my classes, but it wasn’t easy. Clubs like BSU helped me to feel like there were other people like me at Oakton - like I didn’t have to compromise parts of my identity and could act and speak and live fully authentically. I think most minority students feel like they have to be “less-black” or “more-white” in a lot of situations, which has always really frustrated me. It’s not that it’s anyone’s fault, but when everyone else acts different from you, you tend to want to fit in. People used to tell me that when I spoke I sounded “white,” which I’ve never understood because I can be educated and speak like it and be black all at the same time.
sydney chen (10)
From a student-to-student perspective and a teacher-to-student perspective, Oakton has always been incredibly welcoming, but from an administrative standpoint, it suffers more. Every time I walk into the women’s bathroom, I hope that all the girls just think that I’m a girl with short hair. I’ve had experiences where I’ve been yelled at in a bathroom or people are taken aghast, which makes sense because they think that a guy’s in the girls’ bathroom, but they don’t know that it’s the administration that is requiring me to be in there. It’s always a huge thing of anxiety for me. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable, and I don’t want to be uncomfortable. Being trans I also have to allocate a lot of time to things that cisgender people don’t. For example, to transition, it’s required by the state that I go through gender therapy and my endocrinologist only meets during school hours, so I’ve missed a lot of days of school for hormone therapy. There was also a problem this year where I qualified for All-State band under the wrong name, and my incorrect name was in some of the concert programs. It was really defeating because after this year, when I legally changed my name, I thought that this wouldn’t have to happen anymore. I was just really disappointed because it’s not like any kid whose name is Samantha but goes by Sam has that happen to them, so why does it happen to me?
maria amare (12)
The “model minority” myth has impacted my life in so many different ways. Growing up, I was always taught that you had to love math or be in STEM in order to be successful. I always felt like I had to conform to this model of an “ideal asian,” in the sense that I always felt like I had to live up to someone else’s expectation for my success. People that I barely spoke to would ask me about my test scores to see if theirs were “good.” I felt like my worth and identity was tied to my grades, and anything short of living up to that was failure. I felt like I had to be taking 6 APs or choosing my grades over everything else in order to satisfy other people. Eventually I realized that my passions aren’t in STEM, they’re in humanities, and that choosing a courseload that’s healthy for me is more important.
devon petrecca (12)
