By Monica Sanchez, the winner of the Young Author's Scholarship. She recently started her first year at St. Mary's College.

There is an unspoken consensus on this campus among its students, that the school-wide English dialect be “Distinctly Californian” (a misnomer to anyone in the state residing north of LA). This entails speaking with minimal tongue use. The words are loosely formed entirely at the back of the mouth, top of the throat. Enunciation is avoided deliberately. Deliberately.

Is this age appropriate? No, at 18 I’m within the average student age bracket, yet I proudly use my tongue to its maximum capabilities (no lechery implied).

Region appropriate is more like it. An unfortunate statistic, (can a statistic be a statistic without being a statistic? I think so), that my classmates derive from Southern California almost wholly. They’ve arrived in tow with flip-flops, unruly sun-bleached hair and, most noticeably, careless speech patterns.