Leila Aistrich
I’m toppling over every two minutes because I have to waddle. My vision is limited with my hair streaking across my face and the hood of my zebra-print snowsuit being too tight. With the limited movement I have, I manage to chuck a snowball at my best friend before the motion trips me over completely. “LEILA!” I lift my head to try to see who is yelling at me, but my hair is so fully in my eyes that it doesn't matter anyways. Two arms tug me off the ground into a standing position and march me over to a bench as I stumble over my snow boots. Tiina slides my hood off so she can look me in the eye as she scolds me,. “This is a school. We do not throw things at each other.” I look down at my boots. What a scam. I thought. One of the coldest countries in the world and a girl can’t even throw a snowball at school. A year later, I wouldn't even be around snow.
When I stepped into my classroom in California, I stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn’t know why, but I could feel that I didn’t have the same experiences as everyone else. They all talked differently than I did, and most of them had lived in this city their entire lives. That was the first time I became an alien. The white girl. I was the minority. I endured questions based on stereotypes like “Do you all live in igloos?” about my country, and “You probably don’t season your food.” about my race. So I tried to make my background as inconspicuous as possible. I tried to hide my pale arms and legs with hoodies and jeans. I tried to say “Sacramento” and “towel” the same way that the other kids did. No matter how hard I tried to blend in, I couldn’t erase where I came from. Even though I belonged to the largest racial group in America, in this city, I was a white speck. I thought the only way to belong was to shrink the parts of myself that stood out.
Eventually, the discomfort of erasing my background pushed me to start asking questions about why I was the way I was. That curiosity led me down a path I hadn’t expected: history. Not just the history in textbooks, but the stories of my ancestors, and all the countries that shaped them. I learned about the traditions that filled my childhood without me even realizing their significance. Eating tippaleipä for Vappu, getting a schultüte for my first day of school, and popping crackers open at Christmas. Finally reading and learning about history helped me see that I wasn’t an outsider. That history was full of people who looked like me, doing amazing things. The further I looked through the pages though, I realized that nobody looked like my classmates did. They were FROM here, so why weren’t they in the stories?
That question stayed with me until the day I visited the Smithsonian Museums. I wandered through halls filled with information, but it didn’t take long before I started noticing the gaps. I saw timelines that missed people that looked like my friends, achievements that were half-told, and a version of history that didn’t reflect the diversity I had come to grow up around. Who picked these things out? Who chooses what gets put on the walls here? I looked it up later that night, and the more I read, the more it felt like all the discomfort, the hunger to feel seen and to help others feel seen were pointing me in that direction. I had that California “Eureka!” moment, and felt like I found my calling. This is what I was meant to do. Not just to preserve history, but to complete it. To create spaces where everyone could see someone like themselves reflected on the walls of history, like I had. Since that moment, I’ve done more than just dream about it. I’ve started doing the work. Now, I volunteer as a tour guide at a museum that educates its visitors on immigration and agricultural workers. It’s small compared to any Smithsonian Institution, but the stories it holds are just as powerful. I lead visitors through exhibits filled with faded photographs, rusted tools, and handmade socks. I’ve watched people light up when they see something that reflects their own family’s story. I’ve seen the quiet moments when someone realizes they’re not invisible, that their history matters.
Standing in front of those exhibits, telling stories, and explaining how a single farming tool shaped a whole community, I feel like I’ve finally stepped into my purpose. I’m not just learning history anymore. I’m helping to tell it. To share it. To honor it. Being a museum curator, to me, means more than preserving artifacts behind glass. It means making sure the full story gets told. Including the ones that have been ignored, misrepresented, or left out entirely. It means creating a space where no one feels like they have to shrink who they are just to belong. A space where history is not a white wall, but a mirror. My path started in a zebra-print snowsuit on the other side of the world, stumbling through the cold. It led me through confusion, alienation, and rediscovery. And now, it’s led me here, with a vision for the kind of history I want to help build. Where no one feels the need to hide their skin color or change how they say “towel.”
