This past Friday, February 17th, Pima Community College West Campus held the first Heritage Day event since COVID caused it to be canceled 3 years ago.

We arrived at the school around 9 a.m. along with other schools from around Tucson and got lanyards for when we broke off into separate places later in the day. Afterward, we went into the gym for what could be compared to a pep rally. There was a cheering competition between all the different schools, music, and introductions for all of the adults that made the event happen.

After the introductions, they brought out Calvin Terrell. Calvin talked to us about extremely motivational and deep topics for about an hour and the entire gym was silent. The whole time he was talking, there was not a single person in the room that was talking because everyone was listening to his words of wisdom and really taking them to heart. He told us to reevaluate the meaning of the word “respect” and think of it more as “re-spect,” which literally means look again. He put a lot of things into perspective for us and I will remember the words he said for the rest of my life.

After we got deep, they moved us into separate rooms based on our lanyards. Some of the different categories were engineering, JTED, D1 sports, medical, law, and entertainment. I chose entertainment and we got to learn about DJing and what really goes on behind the scenes.

Around 12, we got released from that and went to lunch in the courtyard. They gave us the option to have a Chick-fil-A sandwich, an Eegees sandwich with a cookie, or an enormous slice of pizza that was like 2 inches thick, and we all got to have an actual Eegee. Then we went around to booths from various colleges that gave us information and stamps on a card that had our first and last names and the high school we attend.

We had to collect at least 4 stamps from these booths in order to turn in our cards into a basket for a raffle with 6 winners of $50 cash. Once lunch was over and we went back into the gym, they started the raffle and after they named 2 winners, they would have a performance from either students or the She Phi step team that was there. This went on until around 2 p.m. when the buses started to show up and then we all went back to our schools.

Heritage Day was an amazing experience and everyone would have loved to have attended all 4 years of high school if it weren’t for COVID. Every single person in the world should experience the kind of love and unity that this event brought to the high school students of Tucson. If you weren’t able to go this year, make sure you keep an eye out for the sign-ups next year around January/February.