I never understood how to talk to kids.  Most people could do it naturally, but it never came to me, and I had difficulty forging relationships with children. I figured my best bet was to avoid them...

Last summer, my cousin visited me during his summer break from college. He showed me a picture of him with his roommates, but the photo was in black-and-white. I asked him what was wrong with his phone,...

On the first day of school, I never knew what to say when my teachers asked what I did over the summer. I didn’t have anything worth sharing. My summers were all the same: I would witness my peers galavanting...

In early 2019, partway through fourth grade, I went out with my family for sushi, which was not an unusual occurrence. Unbeknownst to me, my parents were figuring out how to break some news. That day,...

Growing up, I thought there was no way a high school Spanish class could ever challenge me. As a Colombian with parents from Bogotá and Spanish as my household language, I was confident in my language...

As soon as I heard the ring of the school bell on a Wednesday afternoon, I raced to the cubby corner of my classroom, snagged my backpack and waited impatiently at the door for my teacher to dismiss me....

As dawn spreads across the sky, a dim room awakens with the sweet aroma of freshly baked treats and the laughter of families gathered around cramped dining tables. Eid al-Fitr, “the feast of breaking...

It’s 4:00 a.m. on Sunday, and I’m wide awake. Not because I can’t sleep or because I’m worried about an upcoming test, it’s because I have my computer and notepad beside me as I watch college...

In first grade, I loaded into a “Minecraft” world for the first time on my mom’s computer. I’d already spent countless hours on YouTube watching other people play the game, and I was bursting with...

As my family and I browse the grocery store shelves, we hear someone behind us speaking the familiar flowing sentences of the Albanian language. Instinctively, we all look at each other and knowingly smile,...

When the summer sun beats down on a hot June afternoon, one thing always comes to mind: the pool. I started swimming nine years ago, hoping to expand my horizons and stray from more popular sports like...

Staring at a screen, I sit and wait for the letter X to pop up. My doctor instructed me to hit the spacebar every time I saw an X in a sequence of flashing letters. It seemed so simple — all I had to...