Sarah Delima (she/her/hers) is a second-year History major at the University of California, San Diego. A Filipino-American self-declared “LA-adjacent” native from Arcadia, California, Sarah describes her life experiences as a student, from attending an academically rigorous high school and entering college during the COVID-19 pandemic, to finding community as a humanities major at a STEM-focused university. In addition, Sarah recounts the role of her Filipino culture on her upbringing, detailing the dichotomy between her parents’ ideologies and her own, the prevalence of Catholicism within Filipino culture, and her overall experience as a Filipino-American. Thus, this interview encompasses the unfamiliarity of the “first-generation” label, Filipino-American culture and identity, and highlights the pursuit of higher education as both a personal and academic metamorphosis.
This interview was conducted over Zoom by Paycee Minaya, a fourth-year Sociocultural Anthropology major at UCSD interested in studying topics related to Filipino-American identity and the first-generation college student experience.
