Quotas

It's one of those questions that I think that will bug me for the rest of my life. I don't think there's any real way of ever getting a definitive answer. It's times like these when I'm contemplating dropping out after I get my Master's that it pops up. Sure, it subsides, but like a cancer it always has a chance to come back:

Did I get into MIT because I'm Hispanic?

I recall when I went there as a pre-frosh (see my blogs from April of '05 for the saga). God, "pre-frosh" is such a white term. As I remember walking down aisles, meeting with students, attending classes on contour integration and economics, it never really struck me how few Hispanics I saw there. As each day passed and I realized that Cambridge life wouldn't be for me (no matter how badly I wanted to fight it) I only managed to find one spot on campus where I could feel at least a little comfortable: Anna's Taqueria. It's a Mexican restaurant in the student union, and it was easily the spot I most frequented. Not just because they had bottles of Jarritos and quesadillas and Juanes on the radio, it was the only place I distinctly heard people speak in Spanish. Is there a strong Hispanic representation at MIT and other Ivy League schools? I'm sure there is, but the problem was I still wouldn't have fit in with them. I'm too American to be Hispanic, too Hispanic to be American. It's a non-dense fractal in the intersection of two worlds.


I am reminded of a Myspace blog I wrote four years ago. If it weren't so late I'd go and look it up. Anyway, it was about this word "nepantla" meaning a sort of middle ground between dreams and reality, neither fully in one nor in the other. For a while I like to think I've been in this fog without differentiation, but more often than not it seems like I'm merely observing, watching both worlds fluorish and collapse. I'd like to live in one of those, I think, but do I have to choose only one? It seems like the answer is yes, or else I can stay here in neutral land.

But seriously, quotas suck. While it enables more people to work or study in a particular place, there is always gonna be some lingering doubt about whether we truly deserved to be here. It's like a voodoo curse, either intentional or not, and then the other non-minority people who otherwise would have gotten in go and whine about it. Sadly, it's lose-lose.

Sometimes I want to go to Boston and Cambridge just to see if things have changed. But it seems like if I wanted to do that, I'd have to become one of them. I've gotten a lot of perks from being Hispanic. Often I don't think I deserved them. It's only made me feel worse about myself. I can't help but think maybe I'm still in this graduate program, I'm getting this award, I'm getting this grade JUST because I'm Hispanic. Am I around to make their statistics look better? I never signed up for this.

My mom asked me what I want to do for my birthday. I just wanna run.