May We Say Goodbye to Meylina Tran
Wherever Meylina Tran is, her laptop is not far behind. Adorned with a bounty of stickers depicting her favorite pop stars, characters from the movies she loves (hello Anakin Skywalker!), and even one of a dog named Frodo — a pal’s furry companion from her “home” in Portland, Oreg.
As her usually colorfully painted nails — today they are baby blue, but who knows what next week brings — type away, she is a construction worker. Tran builds worlds, or rearranges the one she already knows, all through the written word. The laptop is her Swiss Army Knife — a multifunctional tool/weapon (depending on her mood) ready for anything. A concentrated look, legs poised and crossed, back straightened in her baby blue sweater (matching her manicure),Tran is building Whittier College into what she wants it to be. Despite this however, the College was not her first choice.
Tran describes her home of the Pacific Northwest as a typical resident would. “Wet,” “narrow,” “green,” “white,” and a “faux pas,” are a few words that come to mind with one common message — get out. But California was not the budding graduates’ first dream. “I wanted to go to New York so badly,” Tran firmly states, head held in hand, looking out the window like she’ll see the Big Apple just outside. But sadly, the East Coast elite of NYU and Columbia turned her down.
So to California she went, thanks to a Whittier College scholarship, and due to a prior interest in being in the movie-making business as a screenwriter. “I was really invested in being in the film industry, and I still kind of am, except now I’m at a different point,” she continues, firmly. Due to some unfortunate circumstances (and classes), Tran’s interest in being behind the camera dwindled, but not to an exact zero.
No, the 22-year-old still loves movies like life itself, even calling her favorite directors by their first names, like an old friend would. Howl’s Moving Castle, Star Wars: Rogue One, Dog Day Afternoon — “Hello, young Al Pacino!” Tran exclaims, batting her eyelashes — and the 2019 Little Women are just a few of the films that define her eclectic taste. The latter even being the subject of her senior thesis, titled “(also becoming): An Evolution of Little Women’s Emergence into Postmodernism,” which was completed in her favorite class at Whittier — English Senior Seminar, which she calls a really “masochistic answer.” “But I had a lot of fun in that class. We’re all buddies,” she continues, laughing at the insanity of what she just said. Liberal Arts is the name of the game with Tran, getting her degree in English Literature, with a double minor in Film Studies and History, because she wants to be the “worst person in the world.”
School is not all Tran uses her trusty laptop for. Even though Tran did not want to be a part of anything after being burnt out due to high school, she is doing quite the opposite. Tran is President of Whittier’s chapter of the English Honor Society Sigma Tau Delta — a “fake organization,” she says with love, respect, and a smile — Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning literary and arts journal The Greenleaf Review, along with being a two-time award recipient for the pieces she wrote in said journal; four-year employee and Student Manager in the Office of Student Engagement, to which she thinks the Office made the “position for [her], which is weird,” but thanks to people in the Office like Director of Student Success and Belonging Brittney Plasencia-Saldana, and past Associate Director Kia Diaz-Torres; along with a slew of positions at the Quaker Campus.
Tran did not expect any of this for her, especially involving journalism. Tran was approached by current Editor-in-Chief of the Quaker Campus Emily Henderson to write a review on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in the Fall of 2022, and then Henderson (in her words) would not stop asking about articles. “[Emily] would find me in the hallway, and be like ‘Can you write this?’ And I’m like, ‘Sure?’ And [Emily] would be like ‘Cool. I’ll send you the details.’ And I was like, ‘Huh?’ And then [Emily] added me to the Discord, so I was pushed into the QC!” Tran recounts, a smile on her face, while simultaneously working on one of her many articles she is writing for said newspaper. Tran says that she did not even sign any paperwork for the Quaker Campus, but was given a Staff Writer position anyway. “And I was like, ‘I don’t think this was legal,’” Tran states with fervor. (Editor’s note: It was not.)
Despite some legal proceedings, Tran has been at the QC ever since. Tran was the Campus Life Editor in Fall 2023, eventually moving to become the Arts and Entertainment Editor and Social Media Manager in Spring 2024. And like how she is typing, typing, typing on her laptop now, chugging away at an article, Tran has completed a plethora of pieces during her time at the QC, to the point where she can not even remember most of them. “I mostly do Arts and Entertainment or News. I don’t like writing News articles. There is no fun, but I do them, because we have to help [News Editor] Sarah [Licón]. I am more than happy to help Sarah,” Tran laughs.
Meylina Tran closes her laptop, just like her chapter at Whittier College. Tran is not sure where the future will take her, saying that she has about “five different career paths [she] wants to go down,” which can include working in the publishing industry, making a magazine with her friends, working on a literary and arts journal, being a film critic, having a film podcast, or being a stereotypical early 2000s column writer à la How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Tran also tells how she would like to “try the whole ‘going off the grid’ thing.” “Not in a serial killer way,” she continues, “but just for like six months. Like, I go off the grid and I come back and I have a book.”
But wherever Meylina Tran goes, know that words will guide her — one keyboard click at a time.
Photo Courtesy of Meylina Tran / Quaker Campus
