"So like, do the curtains match the drapes?" The first time someone asked me that, I was in the seventh grade. Vulgar? Most definitely. However honestly, it isn't the craziest thing I've ever heard uttered about my hair. Growing up, I took great pride in my red hair. My mother would tell me: 'Evelyn, you have the rarest hair in the world.' Old ladies in the supermarket would stop us to tell me they were envious. Hairdressers would make me promise to never dye it. 'People would kill for this color!' they'd exclaim. I don’t remember being made fun of or treated differently as a child, and being homeschooled up until my junior year of high school is probably a big reason for that. In our home, learning was curiosity-driven and personal. I was encouraged to ask questions, explore big ideas, and think for myself. My red hair, like my sometimes quirky interests or deep love for ballet, was simply one more thing that made me, me. However, one thing that became immediately apparent to me upon entering public school, is that being ginger makes you the first target for uncomfortable comments, and being homeschooled only adds fuel to the fire. "What do you mean you're homeschooled AND a ginger?! Did your parents hate you or what?" That's something a close friend once said to me. I think she meant it as a joke, but after hearing the same "joke" hundreds of times from almost everyone, it didn't really feel like one. At first, I laughed it off. I didn’t want to seem sensitive or dramatic. I became more cautious about what I shared, even joking about myself to blend in. But that didn’t feel right either. Even the well-meaning comments stung: “But you’re so normal for a homeschooler!” Which I suppose was meant to be a compliment, but it was also loaded with stereotypes. Why do these assumptions exist? What about having red hair makes someone a target for open ridicule? Why are homeschoolers seen as anti-social or sheltered, even when they’ve been socially engaged their whole lives? And why are these traits seen as inherently bad, instead of something to be understood, or even celebrated? These questions were more than just thoughts passing through my mind, they began to fuel a curiosity I had long wanted to explore. I became fascinated with discovering how people shape their identities and how outside pressure and judgement plays a role in it. How language and "harmless jokes" often reveal deeper biases. This is what led me to anthropology. My senior year I took AP Language and Composition, a class that is deeply structured around culture and the human experience. For our semester project, we were assigned an ethnography, where we observed a specific subculture. That assignment lit something up in me. I realized I didn’t just want to ask questions, I wanted to study the systems, histories, and patterns that inform how we relate to one another. I wanted to find out what creates culture. I plan to study anthropology because I’m drawn to the complexity of the human experience. My own journey, from being misunderstood to understanding others, has shown me how powerful, and sometimes painful, that shaping can be. But it’s also shown me the importance of looking closer. The things that once made me feel different have become the lens through which I see others more clearly. They’ve prepared me not just to study culture, but to contribute to it, with empathy, curiosity, and a genuine desire to make space for every person and every story.