Guanajuato, Mexico is known for its agriculture, an industry which requires a lot of putting things into the ground. However, as the oldest member of the Harvard-Westlake maintenance staff, Gregorio Hernandez...

I am mixed race, or, at least, I am trying to be. It is not easy when everyone around me expects me to be black. I walk around school with a red, black and green Africa necklace hanging down to my belly...

I felt like crying right there in the middle of the baggage claim, and it wasn’t because I was happy to see my mom, who was hugging me now, holding me tight as though she believed that, if she squeezed...

School Year Abroad China, the high school foreign exchange program I am participating in, took me 16,000 miles away from my home and didn’t give me a place that I could call mine. They gave me a host...

Everyone keeps asking me to say something about Justin Carr ’14’s death, but, in all honesty, I’ve been trying to forget about it. It’s surprisingly easy to do when, like me, one is thousands of...

What am I most afraid of? Change. I would not consider myself a conservative person. I like things to be different and evolving, but, at the same time, I am frightened by change. I am currently living...

I find it a little disconcerting that I am having trouble figuring out what to write. I think the problem is that I am trying to put my feelings into words and, at the moment, words just don’t seem to...

I am an orphan, but only for two weeks. Besides me, there are about 10 other orphans, and we have all banded together and made a Skype group, which we have cleverly titled The Orphans. Our namesake is...

I am starting to become the stereotypical, American teenager. The weird part is that I’m in China. I have been a teenager for four years, and I have been living in Beijing, China with the high school...

“In Section 6b, enter our school name and address,” said the proctor for the P.S.A.T. With my yellow, #2 Dixon Ticonderoga pencil I wrote School Year Abroad China, 12 Xin Jie Kou Wai, Beijing, and,...

Have you ever felt guilty for eating a submarine sandwich? I have. It happened in Beijing, where I am spending my junior year of high school with the foreign exchange program School Year Abroad, at a...