#lara and i will be simply partying on sunday?!

[probayern]

i genuinely haven't felt this way about germany nt since 2016 i forgot that it's possible to make it out of the group before the last game

[kaylareneeillustrations]

Reflections on Pages 1-50 of Think Wrong, Wicked Problems, and the clip from FRINGE22

My favorite part about this week��s readings/videos is how broad, yet narrow they all are. What I mean by that exactly is that each of the writers/speakers talked about social change, impact, and ‘thinking wrong’ in a general sense, as well as a wider sense. 

They created narrow ideas by creating local examples of how different methods of social impact can be created or how people of various occupations can do so and how they can ‘think wrong’ as well as think big to help make the world a better place for each and every one of us. They also did so by narrowing it down to how creatives can help creative change and even specific types of creatives; ad graph majors and photographers for example. Ways that they talked about creating social change in a broader sense is by talking about creating said change globally or not being occupation specific at times and saying that it can be done by anyone and everyone who dares to think big, challenge the status quo and just do it.

I found all Think Wrong, Wicked Problems, and the clip from FRINGE22 to each be incredibly intriguing, powerful, and driven but I especially liked FRINGE22 and Think Wrong for their own reasons. My favorite part(s) about Think Wrong would be the overall design of the book and the way that it created a sense of fluidity, while there were subtle changes in the layout throughout this section. Having the visuals help captured the reader’s attention and add a sense of dynamism and action, which really relates to the subject and helps keep the reader’s attention throughout the entirety of the section. What I especially liked about FRINGE22 is that it had very personal aspects to it that were created by being in the space of the speaker(s), it was filmed in the area of our own campus, and the fact that one of the speakers is Lara herself. These personal aspects really added to the more narrow aspect that I mentioned before, by showing that designers/artists in the area of our school can create change, just like we can as well.

Reading and watching these awe inspiring articles, sections of books, and videos really got me to thinking about ways that I have helped create social change throughout my life so far. I was raised in the church so I found myself doing a variety of methods of volunteer work from a young age: helping teach kids in Sunday school and youth group, serving meals to the less fortunate, playing with kids while their parents picked out free Christmas gifts for them, helping with community block parties, painting faces at various events, donating school supplies, making balloon animals for kids at community events, and even travelling to Mexico for a missions trip. 

During said missions trip our team helped build a community center for local families and make and lay cement for families to have concrete flooring in their homes, rather than dirt flooring. While of course these families appreciated all of the hard work that everyone put into this I’d have to say that the best part about working with them would be actually playing soccer with the kids, painting butterflies and spiderman on their faces, serving them meals, teaching them how to paint Van Gogh’s Starry Night, coloring with them, or simply just spending time with the families and talking with them to the best of our abilities.

My biggest take away this week is that social change knows no age, race, gender, occupation, etc. It can be done by anyone in a variety of ways. It can be travelling to help others, feeding someone a hot meal, creating a billboard or ad campaign, writing an inspirational book or song, and so on. Anybody who decides to step out of their comfort zone, color outside the lines, and take a leap of faith can make the world a better place for themselves and those around them.

[gobigorgohome2016]

USATF 15k Champs / Gate River Run

I was talking on the phone with my mom earlier this week and mentioned how I wasn’t going to make it to my great-niece’s birthday party on Sunday, with the race happening this weekend and all.  My mom’s response was that she didn’t even know I was racing.  Let me remind you that, like a true millennial, I talk to my mom approximately 35 times per day.  Apparently racing on the circuit has become so second nature to me that I fail to even tell my mom about it.  

The USATF 15K championships were held in Jacksonville, FL this weekend as part of the Gate River Run. One exciting aspect was that I was able to cross a new state off my list.  I have now raced in 21 states, and have gone for a run in 28 states.  

Since the race was on Saturday, I left for Jacksonville early Thursday morning.  I’m a big fan of arriving 2 days ahead of time, the earlier the better.  As an added bonus, since I have been going to bed earlier it wasn’t a big deal to go to bed at 10 and wake up at 5:30 AM for my 7:30 AM flight.  PS, I LOVE living 15 minutes from the Indy airport.

I arrived to Jacksonville around noon and was able to finish up some work for the day before taking a nap. My roommate arrived around 3, and at 4 PM we went for a run along Jacksonville’s riverfront.  Afterwards, I attempted to find a grocery store, but quickly found myself in an incredibly sketchy part of downtown and retreated. I ran into the ZAP fitness team, and they invited me to join them for dinner.  I was really apprehensive because they were heading to a Thai restaurant, and I wasn’t so sure how my garlic and soy sensitivities could be accommodated.  However, I was STARVING and not really in a position to be picky about food.  

I wound up ordering the only thing on the menu that appeared safe:  Beef pho.  Even though it was a huge gamble, I didn’t have any stomach issues whatsoever, and it turns out that pho is just bone broth with onions and bean sprouts. Major fortuitous win on my part!

After dinner I headed back to the hotel and met my other roommate.  Even though races generally allow you to request roommates, I like to leave it up to chance.  So far, I have had great roommates and made many new friends.  

The next morning, my Oiselle teammate, Andie Cozarelli, texted me about finding a grocery store. She also has food sensitivities, and oftentimes it feels like she is one of few people who really “get” what I go through when it comes to fueling.  A lot of the time I feel self-conscious talking about my food sensitivities, especially because I have been increasingly accused of having an eating disorder.  While that is a whole other blog post in itself, I will just say that it is really nice to have someone I can talk to about the challenges I have in regards to finding the proper foods for my body.  

We found a Fresh Market about 1.5 miles from the hotel and walked over.  Even though these races definitely have a “business” component, one of my favorite parts is catching up with all of my running friends and meeting new ones. What does a runner with food sensitivities buy when fueling for a 15k race?

-kombucha -a bag of pre-cooked quinoa -an 85% dark chocolate bar -vegetables from the salad bar -a can of salmon -Fage Greek yogurt -Magic Hat #9 beer

What food did I pack?

-4 Lara bars (cherry and peanut butter chocolate chip) -1 microwaveable forbidden rice bowl -3 Kashi peanut and hemp crunch bars -3 oranges -3 bananas -3 packets of Justin’s almond or hazelnut butter -4 packets of apple cinnamon oatmeal -1 bag of granola -rice cakes -2 Perfect Bars -3 bags of black tea; 3 bags of green tea; 3 bags of peppermint tea

After the grocery store excursion, Andie, my ZAP friends, and their friend Tim and I all went for a run. I was planning 5 miles in the AM and a 3 mile shake out later, but I decided that 3 mi round trip of walking was already kind of a lot so I only did a 5 mile run.  During our shakeout we saw a pack (flock, murder, group, school?) of dolphins.  

Then I had breakfast (2 bags of oatmeal with almond butter and a banana) with Andie, and we made plans for work.  I had a 1700 word article entitled Can You Run a Marathon without Training? due that day, and she had some work of her own. After a highly unproductive 1.5 hours of work, we took a break for lunch.  I had a microwaveable bowl of forbidden rice (80 grams of carbs in one serving!!!) with some of the veggies from the salad bar and a can of salmon, as well as an orange and part of my chocolate bar.  Then I finished my article.

Next, I had signed up to go with a bus group to The Sanctuary, which is an after-school program for inner city/underprivileged kids.  This was so much fun.  We formed a circle around the kids and introduced ourselves while talking about the role running has played in our lives.  Paul Chelimo brought his silver medal and allowed the kids to try it on. They clearly loved the experience. One thing that stuck out to me is the importance of representation.  These children were primarily African-American, and during the q&a session they were given the opportunity to choose a runner and ask him or her a question.  With the exception of me (I was asked by a little girl if I thought I could win the race) (I said I stand on every starting line believing that winning is always a possibility), the African-American runners were clearly the ones that these children looked up to.  It really bothers me that people become so upset about the number of African-born US runners.  Besides the fact that many of these people are my friends and I know that they did not simply wake up one day and say, “I am going to become a citizen” and then a week later started waving an American flag, I feel we should be more understanding that greater competition and representation in sport makes us all better.  I’m not going to get upset and complain that a non-US native beat me; I’m going to try and get faster.  

Anyway.

After that we had our tech meeting, and then dinner.  The pre-race dinner wasn’t one that I felt comfortable eating – pizza and pasta – so I opted to bring my own food.  While pizza and pasta are two things I love to make at home, they almost always contain garlic, which is one food that I am most highly sensitive towards.  Instead, I brought up my packet of pre-cooked quinoa and the rest of my veggies.  After that meal, I had my “dessert” of Greek yogurt and granola, finished with peppermint tea and a beer.  

Before I went to bed, I was texting with Dave.  Leading up to the race I had been feeling pretty nervous.  I’m not typically nervous going into races, but I’ve known for the past few weeks that I am on the verge of a breakthrough.  My workouts have been going better than ever, and I really wanted this race to be the one that showcased my improved fitness.  I told him I had two mantras for the day (both borrowed from oiselle):  Be a gritty bitch (thanks Sally!), and dig deep, get ugly (thanks Heather!).   I went to bed telling myself I was ready for a breakthrough.

I actually slept very well and even woke up a couple times pleasantly surprised I still had hours left of sleep.  I woke up around 5:20 AM without my alarm and ate breakfast:  two packets of oatmeal, a banana, and Justin’s chocolate hazelnut butter. I drank a mug of Jasmine green tea, one of my favorite pre-race drinks.  

I sat in the hotel room and got my gear together, debated the merits of compression sleeves or no compression sleeves, put on my makeup, then realized I would be wearing sunglasses so it really didn’t matter if my mascara looked good or not.  We bussed over to the start line at 6:30 AM and still had about an hour before it was time to warm up.  I sat around with Andie, Obsie, Aliphine, and Tim.  Obsie is my good luck charm at races.  Her positive attitude is infectious, and we first became friends at Twin Cities in 2015, where we both hit the Olympic Trials standard after warming up together.  

I suppose part of my nerves for this race was the fact that I was trying something a little bit different. I really dislike the feeling of being passed during a race.  I mean, duh. Who doesn’t hate that feeling?  In nearly all of the races I have run in the past 2 years, I have started conservatively and tried to negative split. While I don’t always negative split, I do tend to slow down less than other people.  But, I also tend to never actually be in the race.  

My coach and I have been discussing taking a more aggressive approach.  For this race, we decided that I would go out with a group of women that I know are faster than me.  I anticipated the first mile of this race to be ~5:10.  I did something I never do, which is stand directly on the start line instead of 3 – 4 women back.  While this wasn’t exactly my intention, I found myself sharing the lead with Aliphine and Jordan Hasay for the first 2 miles.  I have no idea what our mile split was (I didn’t start my watch for this race), but I do know that we went through 2 miles in 10:41.  So, my strategy kind of worked out in my favor. It wasn’t a crazy fast first couple miles, and if I had simply felt the need to run x distance behind the lead group, I would have probably disadvantaged myself from the get-go. Around 4k the group kicked it up a notch which wasn’t really a move my legs were able to cover.  Instead, I remained steady.  I went through 5k in 16:58, which is an 11 second PR for me. Going into the race, I anticipated the first 5k might be a PR.

After the 5k I started to feel the effects of running a PR and still having 10k to go.  I got passed by a couple girls, which temporarily put me in a mental state of wow. This sucks.  I went through 4 miles right at 22:00, so I realized I was probably going to struggle to hold 5:30 pace.  The toughest miles for me, mentally, were miles 4 – 6.  It was around here that the chase pack passed me, and I began to struggle.  But, when I went through 5 miles I realized that even if I ran 6:00 pace I would hit a 10k PR.  I got a bit of a 2nd wind here and told myself to go for the PR, and if I died after that I could at least say I ran two PRs.  

I went through 10k in 34:41, which was a 20 second 10k PR.  My splits were 16:58 and 17:45.  

Once I got through 10k, I knew it would be a matter of holding on, not dying on “the green monster,” and then using the downhill for home.  

All weekend, “the green monster” had been spectacularly talked up.  I had seen the bridge and foolishy thought my experience at the Pittsburgh Marathon meant the bridge would be a piece of cake for me.  The bridge is 3.8% grade and approximately a mile long.  We were told to expect to slow down ~20 seconds that mile, but most people slowed down MUCH more than this.  

The bridge was death. In addition to the hill, we also had a decently strong wind to contend with.  From the top of the bridge there was 1600 m left in the race.  

I’m pretty bummed that my chip didn’t register a time at 8.3 miles, because I would LOVE to know what I split that last 1600.  I battled with a couple women here, which pushed me really hard in that last mile. My split for this last 5k was 18:08, but this was definitely the hardest portion of the course.  Overall, my splits were 16:58, 17:45, and 18:08.  Those splits aren’t spectacular, but after looking at the results and analyzing other people’s splits, I actually ran fairly evenly. It’s also good to know that I was able to hang on after running two PRs today.  

My overall time was 52:49. I actually split 52:48 for 15k at Houston in 2016, so I can’t claim this as a PR unfortunately.  I’m a little bit surprised because I really expected to be sub-52:00. However, I did hear times were about ~2 minutes slower across the board, so who knows?  I was 18th overall, and 17th out of Americans

I guess I wouldn’t say that this was exactly the breakthrough I was looking for, but there are certainly more positives than negatives.  I proved to myself that I can fearlessly take the race out with the lead pack and that finding myself next to runners like Jordan Hasay or Emily Infeld doesn’t phase me.  I am proud that I did not walk away wondering what if I had started faster?  

I do think that I was a little complacent during 8 – 12k.  I have a secret weapon that I have been working on:  breathing.  With a mile to go, I started counting breaths and I noticed I was able to pick up the pace quite a bit.  I think I had a little bit more left than I should have.  

Something that bothered me a little bit was that I ran the same pace today as I ran at the 10 miler in October, and also the same pace as my half marathon PR at Houston.  I KNOW I am in better shape than I was at the 10 miler, and I strongly believe I am in better shape than when I ran my half PR. But, I have to remind myself that it is impossible to compare races, especially when I had such a different approach each time, and was in vastly different points of my training.  

I’m getting kind of tired of making comparisons.  Maybe it’s the airplane wine that I’m drinking right now, but I want to abolish comparisons between races and days and PRs and etc etc.  I’m a gritty bitch who digs deep and gets ugly, so what’s the point of saying that one race was better than the other?  From here on out I just want to compete hard and be fast.

That’s not too much to ask, right?  

[bountyofbeads]

What Makes an American? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/sunday-review/immigration-assimilation-texas.html

PLEASE READ 📖 AND SHARE this important perspective for our current time. We have a DECISION TO MAKE about WHO WE ARE AS A NATION!!! Do we want this to be Trump's America or the America that is a patchwork quilt of diversity and culture that blends together that makes us uniquely American.

"Trumpism itself may impede assimilation: if you constantly tell immigrants they’re unwanted, they may come to believe it."

What Makes an American?

I took reassurance this past week in a Texas immigration story that suggests America’s powers of assimilation remain formidable.

By Jason DeParle | Published Aug. 9, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 9, 2019 1:00 PM ET |

One man likens immigrants to snakes, frets that they will never “go back to their huts,” and insists that they threaten “jobs, wages, housing, schools, tax bills” and more.

Another sees a “Hispanic invasion,” fears that it will bring the “cultural and ethnic replacement of Americans,” and warns that the foreign influx endangers “our way of life.”

After last weekend’s shooting in El Paso, it was so hard to distinguish President Trump’s views of immigration (paragraph one) from those of the accused killer (paragraph two) that the suspect offered a pre-emptive defense against charges of plagiarism. In a “manifesto” released just before the massacre, he insisted he wasn’t just mouthing “Trump’s rhetoric’’ but offering thoughts of his own.

Posted on a far-right website, the statement never used the word “assimilation.” But it rested on the Trumpian view that immigration was failing and that this failure posed an existential threat. The fear that foreigners refuse to adapt is widespread among immigration critics, and even Americans with more welcoming views sometimes worry that assimilation is proceeding less surely than it once did.

I took reassurance this past week in another Texas immigration story, which suggests that America’s powers of assimilation remain formidable. It involves a third grader with an apt name, Precious Lara Villanueva, who lingered at dinner a year after arriving in the United States and said, “I sort of agree with Rosa Parks.”

This was news. The previous year, Lara’s teacher had called Parks a “hero.” But the idea of a hero in handcuffs made no sense to a girl straight from the Philippines, where children are admonished to respect elders and obey authority. “She didn’t listen to the policeman,” Lara had said. (Besides, she added, heroes wear capes.)

By the following year, her views were in flux. “It wasn’t, like, fair for the black people to sit in the back,” Lara told me at dinner in 2014. Parks’s courage impressed her, but so did her manners: “She said no — but she didn’t use a bad word.” To an immigrant deftly blending cultures, Rosa Parks became “The Civil Rights Hero Who Didn’t Curse.”

I’ve followed Lara’s family for 32 years, as they completed a remarkable rise from a Manila shantytown to the Houston suburbs. As a young journalist, I moved into her grandparents’ hovel, to better understand the country’s vast poverty, and I’ve been reporting on the family’s migrations ever since. Lara’s grandfather worked abroad for years at a time, cleaning pools in Saudi Arabia, and her grandmother raised their five children on the money he sent — 10 times his Manila pay.

All five children grew up to become overseas workers, too, and the one I know best — Lara’s mother, Rosalie — used her father’s remittances to get through nursing school. She worked in the Persian Gulf for nearly two decades, then got her big break in 2012 when a short-staffed hospital in Galveston, Tex., offered her a nursing job. Her husband and three children soon followed.

While opponents of immigration insist (ever more loudly) that assimilation has failed, the Villanuevas’ experience offers a retort. With a house in the suburbs and kids on the honor roll, they achieved in three years a degree of assimilation that used to take three generations.

They did so, moreover, in metro Houston, a pro-immigrant corner of Red State America where nearly a quarter of the work force is foreign-born. Once synonymous with honky-tonks and rodeos, Houston now sells itself as a hub of diversity, with Hindu temples and Viet-Cajun cuisine.

In a country of 44 million immigrants, no family stands for the whole. The Villanuevas merely stand for the substantial immigrant success missing from the Trump Twitter feed.

I got to see the process of becoming American through the eyes of Lara and her older sister, Kristine, who assimilated rapidly, in surprising and contrasting ways.

When they arrived in late 2012, it was obvious who had been the first-grade beauty queen. Kristine reigned as if she still wore the tiara. She was saucy, bossy, purposeful and proud, with a toughness that belied her nine years. Proud of the English she had learned back home, she spoke it with a syntax that conveyed exuberance. She was “so very, very excited�� to see America and “so very, very proud” of her visa that she taped it to the wall.

But her move was very complex. In coming to the States, she had gained her “mommy” (Rosalie), but lost her “mama” (Rosalie’s sister, Rowena), who had raised her on a Philippine farm while Rosalie and her husband, Chris, worked in Abu Dhabi. “I didn’t want to leave Mama Wena, but I also couldn’t leave my parents — either way it’s sad,” she told me. Mama Wena called in tears and needed money. When Kristine bought a Barbie, “Mama” chided her for not sending the cash.

Kristine’s English, good for a foreign child, was weaker than it seemed. Whenever her teacher said “keep your book out,” Kristine put hers in her desk. It took a Filipino teacher to explain that itago, Tagalog for “to keep,” means to hide away. Asked to describe a “pet peeve,” Kristine wrote about her dog. Losing confidence, she hid behind a frozen smile.

In fifth grade, a new persona appeared. Tired of being the meek foreign girl, Kristine reinvented herself as a wisecracking diva of the sort she saw on TV. She described herself in diaries as “honest” and “joyful,” but also “mean” — a boast. “My classmates say, ‘Kristine, it’s not like you!’” she said. “Now I’m a Kristine who will fight for herself!”

Kristine snapped selfies by the thousand and posted them on Instagram accounts like “kristinecute” and “swelfwe.queen.” She practiced poses: Fish Mouth required an exaggerated pucker, Duck Face protruding lips. She touted them as sophisticated American looks her Philippine cousins wouldn’t know.

Kristine’s Barbies, like Kristine, straddled contrasting worlds. Her stories revolved around a family named the Fashion Fashionistas, who lived in a Manila trash dump but used their private plane to shop in America. For Kristine, poor Filipinos becoming rich Americans needed no explanation. It simply felt true.

Mostly the straddling went smoothly, but occasionally the Fashionistas’ daughter, Stacy, felt burdened by those left behind. When she caught someone back home wearing her shoes, Stacy beat her — as Kristine dramatized by whacking the doll’s head on the floor. Freed from obligations to the needy, Stacy flew back to the rich country and decorated her room in Hello Kitty.

As her frustration mounted and her school progress stalled, Kristine indulged in a series of minor rebellions — ignoring assignments, disrupting class, and affecting a scatterbrained personality in a bid for popularity. Her teacher affectionately groaned, “She’s becoming Americanized.”

Once, that would have been a compliment. The classic version of Americanization is called straight-line assimilation. It’s a three-generation tale as central to America’s mythology as the Boston Tea Party: The immigrants struggle amid poverty and bias; their children awkwardly juggle two cultures; the third generation completes the rise, with a white-collar job and a house in the suburbs. The story imparts two lessons: The descendants of immigrants advance and do so by blending in.

Straight-line assimilation was the reigning narrative of the mid-20th century. Half a century had passed since immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe had poured through Ellis Island. Learned men had warned that they would never adapt, but they did so decisively. A unified country had beaten the Nazis, with Mayflower descendants sharing foxholes with Kowalskis and Mancinis. Groups that warred abroad lived as neighbors in New York and Chicago. A Catholic became president.

Sometime in the 1960s, this assimilation story fell from favor. It overstated the acceptance that immigrants had won and understated the hardships they had faced. It idealized WASP culture and slighted the satisfactions of the ethnic community. It overlooked race — the lengths to which the country had gone to prevent the assimilation of blacks.

Leftist scholars condemned “the blight of assimilationist ideology” and celebrated ethnic struggle. Ozzie and Harriet gave way to Kojak and Columbo, heritage travel and klezmer bands. Assimilation seemed wrong as an explanation of what did happen and offensive as an explanation of what should happen.

The resurgence of ethnic identity was heartfelt but no sign that assimilation had failed. On the contrary, as scholars like Herbert Gans and Mary Waters argued, Americans could celebrate their heritage precisely because it meant so little. It did not affect where they could live, whom they could marry or what jobs they could get. “Symbolic ethnicity” flourished, but divisions faded: intermarriage rose, discrimination fell and residential enclaves dispersed.

Given the difficulties that immigrants and their descendants faced, Gans rightly called their assimilation “bumpy line” rather than straight. But bumps and all, assimilation prevailed.

It’s possible that Kristine’s generation will find assimilation harder. Economic mobility has waned, a quarter of the foreign-born lack legal status, and most of today’s immigrants are racial minorities, which could attract more enduring bigotry. Mass media once encouraged common identity. In today’s narrowcast world, pluribus triumphs over unum.

Trumpism itself may impede assimilation: if you constantly tell immigrants they’re unwanted, they may come to believe it.

But other differences between the eras could ease assimilation. Immigrants have civil rights their predecessors lacked. (Sicilians did not have affirmative action.) Many arrive like Rosalie, already middle-class. And mainstream culture is much more diverse, making it easier to fit in.

Two academic camps have shaped debate about the children of immigrants. Both see the majority succeeding — advancing in school, securing jobs and integrating. Intermarriage is high, and English is near universal. “Today’s immigrants are actually learning English faster than their predecessors,” the National Academy of Sciences concluded in 2015.

But some scholars warn that Americanization carries risks, especially for the poor. The longer newcomers are in the United States, the more likely they are to smoke, grow obese or commit crimes. Two prominent scholars, Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut, have warned that the children of the most disadvantaged immigrants may assimilate downward, joining the native poor in a “rainbow underclass.”

Kristine’s teacher wasn’t thinking about that when she fretted about Americanization. But even her mild concerns turned straight-line assimilation on its head: She saw Americanization as the problem, not the solution.

A rival group is more optimistic. They found that children of immigrants not only outperformed children of natives (of similar races) but did so despite having parents with less income and education. How could that be? Philip Kasinitz and three colleagues argue that children of immigrants often enjoy a “second-generation advantage” over native peers.

Two parts of the argument are familiar — immigrants, self-selected for ambition, pass along their drive, and the intensity of ethnic networks provides support that natives lack. But the researchers also argue that children of immigrants benefit intellectually from living at a cultural crossroads. (They note it took a Russian-born Jew, Irving Berlin, to write “White Christmas.”) Children of immigrants, they wrote, often “combine the best of both worlds” — their parents’ and their peers’ — or innovate in ways that “can be highly conducive to success.’’

In the Villanueva family, each theory offers a guide to a different daughter. (A son, Dominique, was too young to share his thoughts in equal depth.) Kristine’s experience provided a small reminder that Americanization isn’t always beneficial: She assimilated energetically, but to the distractions of middle school. Lara blended her Filipino and American selves in ways that supplied an edge. She was second-generation advantage personified.

While Kristine experienced migration as division (English vs. Tagalog, her mother vs. her aunt), Lara found it addition — Rosa Parks’s protests plus her politeness, parents beside her and grandparents on Skype.

Lara’s Filipino traits included her manners, her long dinnertime prayers and an immigrant’s belief in opportunity. They also included the benefits of a two-parent family, which social science finds considerable. (“American families are a mess!” her teacher complained.)

From the United States, Lara got a reduced sense of class and gender constraints, a school full of books and a classroom with just 24 students, instead of 70 in the Philippines. Above all, she got a license to ask questions.

Nothing about the Philippines had encouraged her to probe. On the contrary, a classroom so crowded had little time for raised hands, and children were taught to respect their elders, not interrogate them. American teachers loved questions.

“Do fish sleep?” Lara asked.

“Is the Leaning Tower of Pisa ever going to collapse?”

“Do nurses have to be caring? Maybe I’ll just be a doctor.”

Curious about how she had grown curious, Lara formed her own assimilation theory: America had scared her into asking questions. Confused when she arrived and afraid of repeating second grade, “I told myself I should be interested right now.” Being interested became a habit. Put differently, blending cultures produced new thinking — Lara was simply repeating what the Kasinitz camp argues about the cultural crossroads.

In her second school year in America, Lara flourished. Her teacher first noticed her gift when the class read a book about a bully. Asked what a story is “about,” most third graders summarize the plot. Lara extracted a lesson: “The theme of this book is not to be rude. We should show good character.”

Lara liked to debate, largely with herself, which of the heroines she studied was greatest. Rosa Parks didn’t swear and Helen Keller didn’t quit, but Harriet Tubman rescued others, “even though they weren’t her relatives!” Every Filipino understands sacrifice for family, but selflessness toward strangers opened a new moral universe. “She did the really, really right thing.”

One day when we stopped for an after-school snack, Lara sprang a sneaky question. “Do you know how to infer?”

I frowned as if trying to remember. “I’m going to teach you how!”

She paused to dip her fry in her milkshake and increase the suspense. “It’s like when you say, ‘Oh, it’s cold — it’s really snow outside.’ I didn’t tell you what season it is. But you can infer it’s winter.”

She stabbed the air in triumph with a milky fry. “You see? It works!’’

By the end of their third year in America, Kristine and Lara had each become an exaggerated version of herself, with Lara reveling in grade-school epiphanies and Kristine deep into middle-school intrigue. Her 15 closest sixth grade friends were arrayed in a fluid hierarchy, with “sisters” at the top, followed by “best friends for life,” then “baes for life” and “ride or dies.”“Your ride or dies are like your best friends but not your best-est friends.”

While Lara’s new word was “onomatopoeia,” Kristine’s was “stuffy-fluffy.” Her science teacher said she “wants to be one of the popular girls” who “act like they don’t have a clue. Her English teacher blamed the “ditsy’’ pose on “Americanization” but said, “I don’t think that’s really her.”

It wasn’t. With a little more time her English strengthened, her conflict about leaving Mama Wena waned, and the awkwardness of middle school passed. In tenth grade she sent me a matter-of-fact text that read,

“My current grades:

History: 91

Chemistry: 99

Geometry: 100

English: 100”

Two texts followed:

“Yes!” “Yesssss!”

When the family bought a new suburban house, Rosalie reminded her Americanized children how far they had come. “Mommy grew up a shanty,” she said.

“What’s a shanty, Mommy?” Kristine asked.

Lara spent our last ride to school talking about the difference between mean, median, and mode, then pumped her fist when she heard there was a test. She had studied Harriet Tubman again (“she saved people, even though they weren’t her relatives!”) and made the A-honor roll.

I offered to mark the occasion with a trip to the toy store, but Lara chose Office Depot and wrote her first book ��� an enigmatic study of a girl who asks questions.

“Why would I be excited for a TEST? Just why?!”

“Why do I have emotions just why — please tell me? Would you?”

“Why am I so curiouse (cq), just why?”

I thought back to second grade, when her first experience of America was a classroom of especially disruptive kids. Lara spoke little English but was so well behaved that her teacher exclaimed, “I need a few more like her!”

Fresh from the Philippines, Lara was the most foreign student in the class and in a Norman Rockwell way the most classically American — the earnest girl in a dainty sweater with an apple on her desk. She didn’t replace an American, she became one.

Jason DeParle is a reporter for The Times and the author of the forthcoming, “A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century,” from which this essay is adapted.