When I graduated high school in June 2022 I realized I didn’t want to go straight to college, I wanted to go straight into the workforce instead of going to college. I decided to go straight into the workforce instead of going to college. So I got a job as a security guard. It required me to get a New York State security guard license or as my boss called it a guard card which showed me the reality of being a New Yorker. I remember taking the job thinking wow this is going to be a chill job little did I know the guard card was going to show…

In the article “Ethnography and Colonialism,” Rosalina Diaz recounts her experience traveling to Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Maria in search of her mother. While there, she attempted to conduct an ethnographic study of the local population but quickly realized her approach was fundamentally flawed by an inherent colonial perspective. Diaz noted that her initial lines of questioning met with resistance from the community, forcing her to confront her own biases. Ultimately, she had to reframe her work by acknowledging the pervasive lens of colonialism to better understand and communicate the experiences of the Puerto Rican people she encountered.