From Foreigner to Foreigner: Los Angeles to Seoul

karaoke in Korea
By Kensi Martinez '21 Anyone who knows me can attest to my avid love for Quora, a question-and-answer website where you can find people from the likes of regular high school students to Barack Obama himself. I can spend anywhere from one to eight hours on the site daily, learning personal opinions, facts, and news—and sometimes writing them myself as the fourth-most viewed w...
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An Undergraduate Fellowship Everyone Should Know About

By Marie Tano ‘20 The greatest thing about Pomona is the abundance of programs, fellowships and internships at your disposal. There is so much opportunity. The tricky thing is locating them, finding time to apply and actually being accepted. One fellowship that I find is generally unknown and unpopular to students is the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship. As a current sch...
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A Letter for Incoming Black Students, from a Black Student

By Ebere Amadi '22 It was a 47-minute car ride from my house to Pomona College on Move-In Day, August 25th, 2018. I drove down the 60 freeway with a car full of family, luggage, and Frank Ocean’s nostalgic tunes. As the familiar melodies of Ivy and Nights boomed through my speakers, I almost cried as Frank beautifully sang “we’ll never be those kids again” because it was tru...
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What It Means To Be More Than a Name

Magali in front of sign about being yourself
By Magali Ngouabou ‘22 The American government knows me as Magali Astride Cyrielle Leslie Ngouabou Noubissi. The first four are all my first names, and the last one is supposed to be my middle name, but the guy at the social security office (who was somehow in charge of typing out the name I’d have to live with) messed up. As a result, I now have to squeeze even more of my n...
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Alternabreak Oakland: An Empowering Journey

Alternabreak group with large balloon creatures
By Marie Tano ‘21 This past spring break, I spent time as a Student Coordinator for the Oakland Black Alternabreak trip. I co-led this trip with Katlyn Young ’21, and we spent an entire week in Northern California where we partook in community engagement, volunteerism and self-reflection. All of the students involved with the trip labeled it as an impactful and eye-opening e...
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My First Summer As a Lab Assistant

looking at slide in chem lab
By Myles Ashitey ‘22 My father would constantly drone on about my “untapped potential.” You could imagine his astonishment to discover that I was granted the opportunity to intern through a program called STEMPrep after my first year of high school. The program seeks out high-achieving, minority students with STEM interests and grants them laboratory experience by pairing...
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The 5Cs in Real Life

drone view of 5 Colleges
By Daniel Garcia '21 Daniel Garcia answers some of the most common questions about Pomona in relation to the other Claremont Colleges that form a consortium known as “the 5Cs.” How easy is it take classes at Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, Scripps, or Harvey Mudd College? It's more than easy to take classes at the other colleges, and the schools promote it. By having fi...
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Pomona and Entrepreneurship on Campus: My Experience

Toran in Based New Orleans T-shirt
by Toran Langford ‘21 This is a meditation on the roots of my entrepreneurship and what I aim to accomplish by creating a new brand. I’ve always been interested in researching the history of African countries. During a really radical stage in my life, I did extensive research on Ancient Kemet, or Egypt. There are many modern scholars like W. E. B. Du Bois, Chancellor Will...
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On Being Part of an Underrepresented Group at Pomona

FLi at 1vy-G, the inter-Ivy, First-Gen Conference
By Daniel Garcia ’21 On campus, I work for Dean Townes, the Associate Dean for Student Mentoring and Leadership, who oversees all of Pomona’s mentoring programs. We have 10 mentoring programs at Pomona that provide a current student mentor to first-year students from similar backgrounds. While the mentor programs are almost entirely student-run and organized, the team under ...
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The Spirit of Service

By Toran Langford ’21 Building Leaders on Campus—affectionately known as BLOC—has come far since back on March 29, 2010 a band of four students launched one of the most affective organizations at the Claremont Colleges. BLOC’s founders are Salif Doubare '12, Brian Ssembajjwe '12, Martin Barrera '13, and Corey Jacinto '14. Today, BLOC has grown to more than 50 participatin...
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