Arianna Smith-Forte - Traveling to Culturally Significant Locations (+6 Points) - Class of 2027

I traveled to Yosemite National Park, where I hiked the Mist Trail past its waterfalls and learned that the Ahwahneechee people lived in Yosemite Valley for generations before being forcibly removed. Climbing the steep stone steps beside the falls and feeling the mist made me feel humbled and peaceful, and the trip taught me the value of slowing down in a busy year as a student, intern, and club president. The hike also pushed me physically, and reaching the top of the trail felt like finishing a hard coding problem. The trip's strength was its breathtaking landscape, but its weakness is that Indigenous history is easy to miss, and it could be improved with more stories told by Native communities themselves. I noticed a pattern connecting Yosemite to my work at Meta, Tapia, and Girls Who Code: in each, the stories and systems we inherit depend on whose voices were counted, much like bias in the data I study in my computer science courses. This experience strengthened my goal of building technology that includes overlooked communities, and my next steps are to keep pursuing projects that support underrepresented languages, learn the history of places I visit, and make time for rest outdoors.