This post was updated Nov. 13 at 7:24 p.m.
It was like clockwork. Every single evening, I expected my dining room to rumble and teeter like it was hit by a Southern California earthquake.

I am surrounded by women in my French literature class, physiology class and pre-medical club meetings. I feel at home, like I belong.
I am 19 years old, and when I say I am a student and plan to be for many years to come, I am met with grins and encouragement.

“How are Manahil’s grades? Has she been studying?”
These were always my grandmother’s first words during her daily phone calls with my mom.
Despite all of her children pursuing professional degrees and her husband being a colonel in the Pakistan army, my grandmother never attended college.

A group of around 20 UCLA ecology and evolutionary biology professors, graduate student teaching assistants and undergraduate students spent more than three weeks conducting research in the Peruvian Amazon basin.