During my teenage years, I got my first wig in October of 2014. While all the girls my age were trying to dress like cute cats and flirty foxes, I was really trying to be Dora the Explorer. I thought it was funny. Growing up in the same house as my brother and my four male cousins, I was always pushed into the kitchen. But, what’s new? As a Latina, that is all I saw in my family and the closest representation I saw of me on television was Dora, and she was not doing much besides losing her way in the forest. 

Nonetheless, getting to finally be her, even if only for that night of Halloween, meant a lot. After discovering my inner explorer in my short bob wig, I was curious to see if other wigs would let me express myself in different ways. So, I decided to get more and started to use them as part of my daily one-woman show, also known as my life. 

When I was happy, I used my blue wig. When I felt like annoying my mother, I wore my pink wig with the short bangs. When I felt like goofing around, I wore the orange one with glitter. When I was narrating my Snapchat story, I left it up to how I was feeling. I never wore these in school or out in public, but my friends loved to see it on social media and always ask me for more content. 

As the only girl in my house, I had to sweep, wash dishes, run to the store whenever needed, and then do more house chores. Juggling these responsibilities throughout high school was challenging, especially with schoolwork, which sometimes made it difficult to schedule creativity. 

However, in my free time, I sometimes used to watch Disney Channel when we had the year free trial on our cable box, but not many characters were representative of Latin culture. 

Later on, I finally got my first iPhone sophomore year of Highschool. I was extremely happy and I did not have to use my Obama phone anymore! Props to Obama for holding it down.

I finally had my own phone! I did not have to ask my mom for her phone anymore. I was able to see what my friends were up to. I made a Facebook page immediately after my mom specifically said not to. Then I came up in her friend request list and she took my phone away for a day, but I did not care because nothing was compared to a high schooler without a phone. 

During my senior year, my parents started asking me what was I going to study in college and I started freaking out because I knew that I did not want to study what they had in mind but my parents believe that they immigrated to this country to see their daughter be a doctor, or a lawyer, not a comedian. Explaining these interests to my family was not always an easy task. 

Every Halloween, I am the only one who still finds the courage to clown around. Every Thanksgiving party, my cousins gather around to listen to a story about why I could not cash in my twelve-dollar check from work. Long story. 

Every Christmas, you can count on me to dress like a tree. I am getting older but I still want to keep on using my humor and eventually have more than my family and my Snapchat viewers laughing. 

Aside from the jokes, I have been able to see the ways in which comedians, actors, and influencers have used their platforms to talk about important issues. Recently, artists have spoken out about problems that our communities face, such as racism, while covering them with humor, especially on such a strong platform like TikTok. 

This is when I noticed that I was fascinated by the field of communications. The field covers anything from news reporting to improvisation. I am happy to say that I will be finally graduating from Communication Studies and will pursue a career that I like.