Belonging Part 2 - Reflection

• have there been courses or co-curricular activities that you have embraced or turned away from because you felt a stronger or weaker sense of belongingness?

• looking back, did messages from the environment play a role?

• if you were to revisit a decision to embrace or turn away from a course/activity, what would you tell your former self?

In my past reflections, I've mentioned lots of examples of skills, classes, or things I've turned away from. Music being a prominent one since I didn't have a growth mindset or felt the sense of belonging in spaces with students my age. I felt behind and not guided at all in how to enter a world that is very exclusive and classist. Not my first time dealing with an environment like that, tennis has been one of the most elitist, misogynist, and exclusive spaces I have ever been a part of growing up.

In that case, I want to write about a co-curricular activity I was introduced and embraced because I found a sense in belonging.

Being a first-generation Mexican daughter and older sister of many, growing up in poverty and climbing my way to a better life for my family and myself, I didn't get a lot of opportunities to try new things. Later, I would feel guilty if I asked to buy paints, or an instruments, or a skateboard, so I didn't. Math and English textbooks are of course things that would be investments and would be found.

At 16, I won a full-ride scholarship to a an international boarding school in the middle of nowhere New Mexico. With my plane tickets covered, and the bare necessities, I went to undertake the challenge of graduating with the highest grades possible, out of the hardest classes there were, make no friends since they "were a distraction", and get another full-ride out a prestigious university. I explain more about this in my next reflection. The school used the IB diploma, meaning we had 7 super intensive research level classes that would last for two years.

Arriving at this new place, I signed up for two science courses, physics and computer science, instead of one artistic and science course. If you remember my past reflections, you know what happened to those two courses. How I made my decision to leave both classes, was because my school had something they called Southwest Studies. For a week, student would go with their assigned group to different trips around the Southwest of the USA and study different topics around it.

When I saw my group in 2018, I had gotten my first choice. you see, I had come to the school with the idea to become a business major in the future. I didn't think there was space for me to spend time in things that "wouldn't serve me" in the future. Ha Part 6's topic! There was a project week designed around entrepreneurship... and I guiltily put it second.

Words and Images was the project I had picked first because my heart was longing to be around the arts and the universe agreed.

Words and Images was a week-long project studying the arts of the Southwest, mostly in New Mexico. I got to experience so many new sights, go camping, see snow for the first time in my life, meet my two best-friends to this day, and teach me that art is something worth putting time and effort in... even if it wasn't "productive", "beneficial", or "efficient". Going to the Georgia O'Keefe museum and hike the places she did taught me a lot of the beauty and strength in art.

Coming back to campus, the add/drop period was still open thankfully, and I changed my physics class to Visual Arts Higher Level and my CS class to Sports, Exercise, and Health Science. I knew I would one day come back to CS, so I wasn't really saying goodbye to it.

I embraced my love for art and its craft that I had been born with but only suppressed because of living conditions. It's hard for a mother to see their child want things they can't give them. So, now that I had the opportunity to pick up a paint brush for the first time, and have a whole art studio as my disposal I felt like I belonged. There were students who have been painting or drawing for years. There were students who were trying it out for the first time. We were all there with one goal, create 13 pieces of artworks by the end of 2 years, and create a progress portfolio to get graded by the IB.

Easy? Nope! Visual Arts ended up becoming my hardest class, even more than Economics. In Econ, I had given up and knew I would fail when even the teacher had given up on me. I didn't feel like I belonged there. In VA, I put my whole life into the class. If I had an extra minute, I would be in the studio. I had my own personal space full of tools and weird scraps I found around campus. I sometimes would sleep there or go there before the sun went up. It was the class I loved the most, and the class that took the most time and sleep out of me. But by gosh did I enjoy it!

I created animations, a self-portrait, a graffiti wall, glass bottle installation, stained window made by ink and alcohol, my first ever flower crown, paintings from different mediums, and more. Every day a new idea and creation to be made. My skills ended up helping me becoming the Backdrop Leader for a Cultural Showcase that was really important to the school and the community around us. Me and two other art students made the backdrop of a whole theater. Paint staining my clothes was a common occurrence, people would tell me I had paint in my face every day, and I definitely was a lot happier putting my effort in a place where I felt like I belonged.