Personal Narrative Essay

Everyone turned to look at me with apologetic eyes. It was the single most uncomfortable moment in my life. Throughout high school, student council became my safe haven- that was not always the case. When I joined in my freshman year, I was the only Latina in the entire council, causing me to feel out of place from the beginning. As the year progressed, I began feeling more comfortable around the people there, but I still didn’t feel apart of the “council family.” On a chilly Monday evening in October, we were having our monthly meeting where the council was choosing the theme for the annual semi-formal dance. In order to come up with a list of themes for us to vote on, everyone who had a suggestion would raise their hand and present …show more content…
Right as he said it my friend, who was sitting next to me, turned and mouthed, “I’m so sorry.” My initial thought was, “Okay, it’s not exactly a conventional idea, but where could he possibly go with this?” At first it was innocent, he suggested we have a photo booth with sombreros and fake mustaches for props, stereotypical but not out of the ordinary. But then he said, looking right at me, “We can even bring in a real donkey like the quinceañeras have. You had one right Maria?” At that moment I looked around the room and almost everyone was looking at me with sympathetic eyes, I avoided their gazes and laughed it off. It was relieving to see that not everyone saw Mexicans that way. Personally, I have never seen a donkey in real life. I could have gotten mad, glared at the person, or even stormed out of the room, but that wouldn’t have solved anything. This surprised me, in any other setting I would have reacted in any of those ways. Instead, I sat through the meeting and contributed as much as I could for the remainder of it. That night, my preferred theme got chosen and no, it wasn’t Mexican