As a college student, I witnessed a classmate leave pregnant on a Friday and return Monday as a new mom. In a handful of days, she gave birth and came right back to class; only now she needed to care for her newborn who would dominate her time and energy.

There was a time during what now feels like the distant past when being lost in an unfamiliar place was a familiar and near-universal experience. Without a phone with which to input an address or location so we could be assuaged with step-by-step commands to a relevant reference point, most of us experienced the disorientation associated with our inner cognitive map’s learning curve.

During my undergraduate years at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), I rarely made my way to the university’s library. For my research, I often used the library’s digital resources without much thought. Those resources had always been available to me, and I had never taken a moment to consider just how those digital resources made their way to me.

Before the summer of this year, I had only set foot inside the Centennial Museum and Chihuahuan Desert Gardens at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) perhaps once or twice. Unfortunately, I do not recall what prompted me to enter a building that I had passed on several occasions to and from the English Department's Hudspeth Hall and the UTEP University Library.

I have been a resident of the Borderland all my life, graduating from El Paso High School in 2012, earning my B.A. from the University of Texas at El Paso in 2016, and working towards my M.A. throughout the current pandemic. I remember listening attentively to my history classes, learning of the great endeavors of the nation’s founding fathers, the wars that shaped the state of Texas as we know it, and wrapping up the school year with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. This is what has been traditionally taught throughout Texas, yet it is hardly a complete story.