Half-filled Jar of Coins by Pruett

Half-filled Jar of Coins by Pruett - January 2026 Scholarship Essay

“You can’t have a quinceañera. You’re not really Mexican! You don’t even speak Spanish!” That’s what I was told by kids at my school when I was fourteen. I was telling my friends how I wanted a quinceañera when a few of the more popular kids walking by overheard my conversation and said, “You can’t have a quinceañera. You don’t even look Mexican!” Despite my dark hair, brown eyes, and tan skin, I have more of an ethnically ambiguous look. I attribute the ambiguity to my red-haired, fair-skinned mother. “Do you even speak Spanish?!?” I don’t. My father can, but I’ve never learned. “You can’t have quinceañera! You’re not Mexican enough!”

It’s hard to connect to my heritage when I’m made to feel that I’m not Mexican enough. There was apparently something about me that didn’t meet their threshold for Mexican-ness. No matter what I said or did, I knew that I could never change the minds of those popular kids. Sometimes I feel like that partially filled mason jar of coins sitting on a dusty shelf. Sure, we intuitively know there’s legal tender in there, but it’s not real money. There’s nothing of real value in the jar. It took me a couple of years to learn, but the reason that jar was perpetually half empty was because I was asking other people to fill it instead of making contributions myself. So, I found ways to drops coins into the mason jar.

We love food in our family. We eat our way through any places we visit, and we cook meals at home nearly every night. I started connecting to my Mexican heritage first through food. My dad makes the best homemade salsa. We have competitions to see who can take the most heat. He still has an edge on me, but I’m holding my own. He’s taught me his salsa recipe, but I haven’t quite perfected it yet. CLINK. About twice a month my dad and I make tostadas together at home. It’s my all-time favorite meal and we always have it on my birthday. I look forward to passing on that tradition and recipe to my kids someday. CLINK. My grandma on my dad’s side lives in Texas and visits us every couple of months. I love hearing about her life. She is a proud Mexican woman, who sacrificed to give her son, my dad, a better life. She’s got sass too! Even at 71, my grandma will threaten to throw a "chancla" at my dad if she thinks he’s acting up. CLINK. I befriended people at school who were also made to feel like they weren’t Mexican enough. We commiserated and learned to laugh at how personally we took how other people judged us. CLINK. CLINK. I found many ways to make myself feel complete instead of relying on how others to see me the way I see myself, as Mexican. I may not be Mexican enough for them, but I am for me! CLINK.