Screen Shot 2021-05-04 at 7.07.25 PM.png — “Make it stand out.The way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”

-Isis Brooks

Hello everyone! It’s time to break the fourth wall and read a story about yours truly, Glimmer 411’s current Curl 411 Editorial Intern! I’ve had a lot of fun introducing ya’ll to the rest of the Glimmer 411 team, and now it’s time to introduce myself.

My name is Erika Isis Brooks, but most people call me Isis. I was born and raised in Compton, CA and I am getting ready to start my senior year at Carnegie Mellon University.

As a kid, I grew up in the house with lots of extended family members, which was super fun. I’m technically the oldest daughter, but because I was raised around many of my cousins, I feel like I have older siblings to look up to too.

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My childhood story arc was definitely “nerdy black kid struggles to fit in with other black kids”. Ya girl (still) can’t dance, read a lot, mainly listened to rock music, and was on the brink of becoming one of those cringey weeb kids (you know the ones that wear cat ears to school and think they look cute in bad 99 cent store cosplay? Good times.) Even though I didn’t become a cringey cosplayer, anime and manga still greatly impacted my everyday life. Currently I’m minoring in Japanese and when I finish my Bachelor’s of Arts in Creative Writing I plan on getting a Master’s in translation.

Besides my interests, another thing that made me question who I was was other people’s perception of my ethnicity. You know I once had a kid tell me I was Samoan and call me a liar when I said I was black. I don’t think it helped that I consistently wore my hair flat ironed because my grandma thought it was more presentable. All of this really made me feel like I wasn’t “black enough”.

But then I went to a really nerdy highschool, and learned I could rebrand myself and find black kids I could relate to. This small idea of agency began to reimagine itself in other aspects of my life and has allowed me to gain things I didn’t believe were possible for myself.

At the beginning of my sophomore year of college, my financial aid was reduced and some of my mentors told me to just be grateful for what I got because my school wouldn’t raise it back. Instead I used my voice, and ended up walking out the financial aid office with a higher stipend than I originally had.

Last year, I applied to go on an “all expenses paid for” trip to Israel and was rejected. But guess what...I ended up going anyway (with all the original benefits) because I wouldn’t take no for an answer.

I don’t mean to sound like some self-help guru, but I’ve started to realize that when we don’t recognize the agency we have over our own lives we end up sabotaging ourselves.

I do think however, that the other side to this coin is becoming self-aware. Learning to take advice from others and recognizing our own character flaws then, doing what we can to address it. It’s the hardest part and something I’m still trying to get better at but

Every time we humble ourselves, even more opportunities come our way.