Three years ago in my high school classroom, I watched as a college student mocked an entire language in the halls of my future university. My 11th-grade teacher projected the video for the whole class to see, the audio loud enough that the words rang through our minds.…

One of the first articles I read from Pacific Ties Newsmagazine was the Roundtable Talk: Coronavirus, published in April 2020. I read it later that year when I was admitted to UCLA, exploring the ways UCLA’s publications addressed the pandemic and comparing others’ experiences to my own. Looking…

I slept on every ride to Chinese school, and every ride back. It was part of a weekly routine, a well-remembered Saturday morning sequence. Tumbling into the car and watching the rolling hills pass the window, the burnt-black trees on the roadside after the wildfires. Drifting in and…

There is something strangely sad about watching cars drive away, especially ones you know well. It is that feeling of an almost-loss, like you are teetering at the edge of the realization that the car is too far away to call back. Soon, it will turn the corner…

TW: body image, weight You are afraid of numbers. Specific numbers—numbers in context, numbers with meaning. A strange fear, one endowed with a weight given by labels and measurements, given teeth by what they represent. Made larger, more threatening, by what they mean. You are scared of size. …

In the light of early adulthood, students leave childhood dreams behind and reach for more practical career paths. Often due to societal and familial pressures, many in the APIDA community gravitate towards jobs with greater stability and prestige rather than those closer to their creative passions. Chelsea Tran,…