Growing up, my family and I would take evening trips to the playground and duck pond behind Timber Creek Elementary. Over the years, these places have lost their allure, but now I get to watch my brother...
Change: a six-letter word I despised.
My whole life, I’ve hated change. The smallest amount of change would send me into a panic. I could never accept it, rather I would whine and complain until normalcy...
When you’re a racial minority in a mostly White school, you get used to feeling out of place.
You feel it when you walk into a new class and see that you’re the only student of your race there....
Be advised that the content in this story contains self-harm and suicide, and may be triggering to some readers.
My mom cried when she saw the scars littering my arms and stomach for the...
Hundreds of people cram into the small, humid Granada Theater in central Dallas after standing outside in the blazing Texas heat for hours on end. I’m next to all the other teenage girls packed together...
Editor’s note: This story won third place for personal column in the 2024 ILPC contest.
“If you don’t convert to God, you’ll be sent to hell after you die.”
Religion had never played a...
One of my favorite memories of my childhood was when my mom and I used to go every other weekend to a small frozen yogurt shop. Just the two of us would drive to the shop when it first opened to beat the...
Eraser crumbs covered the desk. I stared down at my tear soaked paper and the empty spaces I couldn’t fill. Everyone in my second grade class had finished their work and gone to lunch, but...
On May 24, one of the most publicized mass shootings occurred at Uvalde's Robb Elementary School, when a gunman passed through the school’s unlocked doors and killed 19 kids and 2 teachers.
This tragedy...
Editor's note: This story won first place for personal column in the 2023 ILPC contest. It also won a 2023 Tops in Texas.
Resting at the bottom of a box buried below an old preppy school uniform and...
Let’s be honest, high school is boring. So why on Earth would you spend your formative years studying and sober when you can give into peer pressure? Have the time of your life breaking the law and stunting...
The 2022 Texas General Election is on track to be one of the biggest in state history. Over half a million people turned out on the first day of early voting. Candidates have raised hundreds...