For my final post of the semester, I find it fitting that I write about the one thing that has been holding me back the most recently, and, if I am being honest, for the past few years. “Artist’s Block” is a phenomenon that has been plaguing me for years…

Coming into this semester, I was unsure of which topics intrigued me the most among the options we were offered for WRIT 150. If I remember correctly, I was stuck between Sustainability and Identity & Diversity. Hailing from Washington, D.C., where I was born and raised, I grew up surrounded…

While I spent the entirety of my life from zero to eighteen years old living in Maryland with my Korean mom and grandparents and constantly surrounded by our Korean extended family members who also live in the States, I was never taught Korean in the way that my mom, who…

Being biracial, non-white passing, and growing up with my mother’s South Korean side of the family meant that, in a lot of ways, I was never truly afforded the luxury of white privilege. Where people of color (POC) groups have been historically discriminated against in every realm of life, including…

Growing up, hiking was not something that I was particularly knowledgeable about or even that interested in because I did not know anything about it. However, since then, I have managed to mold my entire identity around being outdoorsy, backpacking, hiking, camping, you name it. I like to get outside…

PART TWO: OVERCOMING

Clopper Lake — Gaithersburg, Maryland — 3.3 mile loop, 167 ft of elevation gain

In 2018, the National Census Bureau reported that a measly 2.4 percent of the American adult population report belonging to two or more racial groups. When it comes to my own life growing up next to Washington, D.C., one of the most progressive and diverse spots of the country, the…

I am not a religious person. I was raised by a mother who teaches yoga, waves burning sticks of palo santo around the house to “cleanse the energy,” and tells me to place my crystals on windowsills to charge their healing powers. She strongly identifies as a Christian, despite her…