If an AI system were trained to understand and represent the Filipino American experience, I would want it to know that our stories often begin long before we arrive in America. For me, it started at age four, watching High School Musical on a small TV screen in Manila, where I imagined American life as bright, fun, and problem free. When my parents announced that we were moving to the U.S., I saw it as a dream come true. But when we arrived, that image faded quickly. I would want the AI to understand the realities that followed; how my parents left behind established careers to start over at minimum wage jobs, and how my family of six squeezed into my aunt’s house after leaving behind our own. I’d want it to know what it’s like to bring an off-brand doll to school and realize, in a single comment from a classmate, that your background sets you apart. That was the moment I first understood the feeling of “otherness”: a quiet but lasting awareness that I didn’t quite belong. The AI should also understand how assimilation sometimes requires performance. I stopped speaking Tagalog to perfect an American accent. I learned what foods were “normal” to like and which topics would help me fit in. I lied about things, such as liking certain sports teams or condiments, just to be seen as part of the group. Like many immigrant kids, I adjusted to survive socially. But there are elements no algorithm could fully grasp. It wouldn’t know the quiet guilt of losing fluency in your first language or the weight of comparing yourself to peers who seemed effortlessly American. It couldn’t replicate the internal calculations behind every small choice to fit in—or the gradual process of trying to reclaim what was lost in the process. The Filipino-American experience is extremely nuanced. There's sacrifice, shifts in identity, and the conflict of erasing ones culture and, years later, wishing you could revive it. If an AI could understand that complexity, it would be a step closer to representing our reality. *Coincidentally, AI was used to incorporate ideas from an old History assignment I wrote on the feeling of "Otherness" to answer this prompt.*

Darkness surrounded me that night two years ago. It was dark because it was 1 A.M., but it wouldn’t be farfetched to call my state of mind a dark place. Why was I awake so late in the night? Well, it wasn’t because I had a project or an essay or a Bold.org scholarship to write. The reason I was pulling this all-nighter was that, if I had stopped scrolling on my phone to attempt to sleep, I would be alone with my thoughts. That, for seventeen-year-old-overthinker Angela, would not be ideal. So there I remained on my bunk bed, surrounded by black except for the blue light shining on me. Funnily enough, I was on Pinterest: an app meant to spark inspiration for the idyllic kind of life you’re meant to shoot for through the “pinning” of aesthetically pleasing images. Among the millions of photos was an image of a field. On it was a quote by Joyce Sunada, saying, “If you don't make time for your wellness, you will be forced to make time for your illness.” That quote stuck with me that fateful night and for a long time after that. It hung in the back of my mind like a stubborn piece of gum on my shoe. But maybe what pestered me wasn’t the gum. It was the shoe. (Let me explain.) I looked within myself. I wasn’t trying to make time for illness, right? No, of course not. Who “makes time” for illness? Going around wanting social anxiety, wanting depression? I sure wasn’t. If anything, I ignored the rather blatant signs of problems because, quite frankly, most people threw those terms around like confetti. But the days never got easier. The future loomed like a storm cloud, and my brain conjured a million different ways my plans could go wrong (college, friendships, job prospects, etc.) So I kept to myself. When things got hard, I knew that I could just drown it out with an hour of YouTube and scrolling through Instagram’s endless reels. I hoped the media would teleport me elsewhere, anywhere but here. My mindset was this: do your best in all you do and everything will/should/might be okay. Let me tell you, dear reader. I was not okay. No one in their right mind can continue ignoring their hurt and expect it to go away. It’s like pressing on a bruise when it needs an ice pack; like rubbing salt in a wound that desperately needs a band-aid. Making time for wellness means that you have to be intentional about getting better. Good mental health doesn’t magically show up on your schedule, and it definitely won’t become routine unless you want it to be. Getting better is not easy, but it’s necessary. It might mean taking a few minutes out of your day to meditate or stepping away from the busy waters to breathe by the shore. If it seems inconvenient, it shouldn’t be. If you are too busy to prioritize the health of the very source of all you do, think, and say – that is, your mind – then you are simply too busy. “Nothing changes if nothing changes,” says another quote I recently saw on the app. (Not sponsored, promise!) And it's true. You cannot hope to find light if you keep yourself in the darkness, scrolling through Pinterest at 1 A.M. when you are so tired, isolating when you need to talk to someone desperately. I wish I could tell myself that. I wish you could know that, no matter where you are in your mental health journey.

You scroll on Instagram one day to find a perfect yellow square, posted by 88rising. The caption relays their heartbrokenness concerning Asian violence. "Yellow Lives Matter" was the movement at hand, and though a statement like that seemed harmless at first glance, it was met with much controversy. Diverse voices, like (aspiring) Asian-American writers like me, are not just preferable but imperative for any cultural publication to have the nuance it deserves. Take the yellow square predicament mentioned earlier; Asian Americans viewed it as honorable for the predominantly Asian music group 88rising to speak out about and against Asian violence. But the Black Lives Matter movement was also at its peak while this occurred. People wondered whether or not -- and claimed, wrongfully, that -- the yellow squares were trying to grab some of the attention from the very movement that started the colored-square Instagram protest posts. Thus, a problem arose: whose voices should be amplified? In come the diverse voices in public relations. It's usually best, but not required, that those who belong to certain communities are the very ones to report on the issues that rise within them. Outsiders who hope to understand what goes on within a minority community (and are not merely trying to get the gist in order to form their own opinions) deserve to get that information from the community themselves. It’s a matter of true, uninhibited representation. So in the case of the Yellow Squares and in other cultural controversies, diverse voices must be the loudest. Even when the subject discussed has nothing to do with race or culture, diverse voices give new interpretations and perspectives, akin to looking at something with a new lens. Perhaps even a kaleidoscope. If I only seek to be heard rather than listened to, heard rather understood, then I’d be doing myself a disservice. I wouldn’t be any different than a talking head, an insignificant Twitter account in all-caps, praying for a retweet from a Verified user. The reason why someone like me, or any diverse voice for that matter, is important in public relations is because complaining about being wrongfully understood and interpreted is a thing of the past. We have the opportunity NOW to be the ones writing the articles about ourselves. But as an Asian American myself, I cannot begin to think of myself as the only one allowed to talk about issues concerning my community. What I’m trying to say is that, for most situations, the ones who can best speak about the horrors of house fires are the survivors themselves, maybe even more so than the firefighters, architects, and scientists ever can. What is a diverse voice? Rather, whose voice is considered diverse? In a place like America, an amalgamation of skin colors and origins, the entire country has a diverse voice. Or, rather, it should. But more often than not, as seen in dissatisfied petitions and brightly colored posters outside city halls, the people do not feel represented. Now more than ever, diverse voices are a no-brainer for public relations. It is not a matter of virtue signaling or even affirmative action. Our voices need to be heard even more than we need to speak.

He smiles, the way a teacher does before giving the answer after a class period trying to solve that one hard math question. Pauses, like one does before delivering a killer punch line. In a soft, sweet tone, Matthew McConaughey says, "Take out what you aren't, and you find who you are." In the car with my headphones on, I am utterly impressed. His arms reached through the audiobook, through my phone, and shook me. His wise words all implied the same, persistent question: "Who are you?" Well -- who knows? When you were born into a time where it feels like every technological and scientific question has been answered, where every good story has been told, and all the most inspirational influencers have been met, how could you not feel pressured to be the best, or something more interesting than who you actually were? Identity-less. I hadn't understood the significance of an identity, until I realized that I was becoming into a person I didn't like. I had avoided social interactions, stopped being concerned about people, and put people before myself. I had convinced myself that I was ultimately a terrible person, not deserving of love or praise. Yet, I always, deep down, wanted to be better. Why was it so hard, to be the person I wanted to be? The Oscar-winning actor's voice moved me to action: take out what you aren't. I wasn't a no-good. I had love to give, I was just afraid and believed in lies that I told myself. There was a quieter voice that I refused to listen to, one telling me that I wasn't undeserving of love. With that, I became more confident. I loved people more, and allowed people to love me.

It's hard to be alone. Even before the catastrophe, I was all too familiar with the lonely after school days and the social media ridden nights. Watching other people, finding a way to smile and laugh so freely around people who love them. I felt like an outsider in my town, a town of close-knit families, and in my own family where all three of my siblings had their own groups of friends. But I knew something that they didn't, had something that some people could only dream of; the knowledge of the power of song writing. Nothing feels as empowering as making a piece of art that perfectly and accurately encompasses your anger, frustration, desire, and loneliness. With every chord, beat, and lyric, I'm in control. I'm no stranger here -- for once, I feel like I belong. Not only do I belong, but I lead. In song writing, I'm able to ditch all the labels people have put on me: quiet, good, harmless. I make a mess in music. I make chaos. With rock'n'roll riffs I'm able to jam out about feeling invisible in school (my song "Invisible"), or I could pluck my guitar to a ballad about a woman who never found love, or I could stroke my piano keys about an alien who wishes to be human ("Girl in Gravity"). There are no rules and no one has a say -- but me. This is my everything. The first song I ever worked hard enough on to put out is my song "Big Idea" about a girl named Betsy who is down and out with the pain in her youth and the pressures of the world, which is what I will be sharing to showcase my everything. To be able to express all the feelings one has in adolescence, all the good and bad, into a beautiful piece of art is so important. I am so happy to have something like song writing to keep my feelings at bay.

As a 17-year-old teenage girl in today's society, I am not alone when I say that I don't have a good relationship with food. For the first time in history, humans look at food and all its beautiful implications and somehow twist them into something ugly. "Food makes you fat. Eating too much makes you a pig. Eat less to be prettier"; these thoughts fill our minds as distant countries thank foreign gods at the first sight of food. Observing this disturbing contrast, I noticed how first world countries have forgotten the fundamental purpose of food; to fulfill. It instead confused and crippled us. It seems that society has construed food into many different things. Fast food has increased obesity rates and have kept people from relying on local produce, or their own cooking skills. On the other hand, there are millions of meal and fitness regiments to keep our bodies at tip-top shape, suppressing our cravings almost torturously. "Is there a middle ground?" I wonder. Everyone had something to say, everyone seemed to have the answers, yet it wasn't clear what I should be doing. It seemed everyone was confused too. So, I took to my own and did my own studies. I didn't want to be out of the know anymore. I didn't want to feel guilty about eating, when it was something I needed to do to survive. The first thing I did was see why I felt guilty. We all know that junk food is bad, yet society has somehow adapted a culture of "acceptance", even when the thing they're accepting is bad. Society doesn't tell us to change. They tell us that we are fine the way we are, yet they push unrealistic standards of beauty. So, I drowned out the noise and listened to my own conscience. First, I toned down on sugary processed food and fast food: all the food my gym teacher taught me to cut out. Working in Dunkin' Donuts, I saw the same customers order the same meals in the morning and through their day. They must not have enough time to cook food, I thought. But I was certain that it was partly because of habit, because of a reliance. I wondered what it would be like to rely on myself. Without relying on packaged food snacks or ready-made meals, I had to make efforts. I took to the farmer's market, enamored by the colors and ingredients that I hardly saw in fast/junk food. I was excited to cook or bake something with real ingredients, on my own. To eat a meal made entirely by your own hands, with ingredients that you bought, directly financing your local farmers, immediately takes away a chunk of the guilt. I hardly created as much waste as I had before--no more granola bar wrappers or Wendy's paper bags. If I craved something, I got the ingredients and made it. I brought my own produce bags, and, surrounded by so much delicious and nutritious food, I was inclined to eat healthier. And even better, I wanted to eat healthier by my own will. Not out of a desire to get skinnier; not because I was influenced by super model influencers on social media; I ate healthier because I felt better about myself. Without a beneficial result, you can never fully stick with something. Fast food mimicked that with it's deep-fried flavors, or bright candy bars, yielding temporary satisfaction but a prolonging guilt. With natural food, I got prolonged satisfaction. We cannot expect change without making any. Eating healthier was my challenge and newfound passion.

Writing my song "Big Idea" came after I had tried so hard to create a unique sound that I ultimately came up with nothing. So, I went back to the basics -- G and C chords. The beauty in the basics is that any melody accompanies well with it. I tried to make up a few melodies and the phrase "Betsy has a big idea" came out. It was a simple melody, a phrase with endless possibility. With my basic chord progressions, I sought to tell a story about Betsy, a young girl who faces the world and its anxieties. Some might call it depressing, but I hope it comforts lost youths who feel exactly how Betsy does.