In GFI Seminar I, sophomore year, former Head of the History Department Dr. Mabel Wong introduced us to community-based thinking. With this new way of thinking, we divided examples of communities in the world into a radial “graph” of increasing degree. e innermost circle is a town, followed by a municipality or state, followed by a nation, followed by a continent and so forth.
She asked us to create a graph of our own communities, with ourselves as our innermost circles. e series of circles I drew to describe my sophomore year is still applicable today.
My second circle is my family — this may be obvious, but it’s because they have a tie to every other circle of my life. ird are my friends — people around me who equally have the insider scoop into my life and are my support system. Fourth is Marlborough — a place and sisterhood that I truly resonate with and that has watched me grow. And fifth, the community that this article will ultimately explore is Los Angeles.
There’s a certain small-world quality to LA, especially for high schoolers. This leads to an interconnectedness within Los Angeles that bridges high schools, forms connections and makes it so that everyone knows each other one way or another.
It’s comforting, but also slightly intimidating, that whenever you go out in public in LA, there’s always that feeling that you might run into somebody you know. My mom and I play the “who are we going to run into” game when we enter a mall or a popular restaurant. Countless times we have run into a preschool friend at Mendocino Farms, a fellow Carlthorp graduate at the Century City Mall, a former AYSO teammate at the Brentwood Country Mart and more. When I think of friends of friends, whether I’ve met them through a mutual connection or because of social media, it creates a sea of familiar faces across the city. No matter what school, each LA high schooler is bonded by shared connections and “LA” experiences, ultimately building unspoken friendships that I have grown to appreciate.
However, in addition to these experiences, I also acknowledge that LA is inherently exclusive, and I am privileged to exist in the “LA private school scene.” It’s important to remember this bubble I live in isn’t always an accurate representation of what makes the LA community so unique. e true connector is the universal Angeleno experience. It’s the joy when the Los Angeles Dodgers make it to (and win) another World Series. It’s exasperating when it drops below 60 degrees in December. It’s having the beach so close and yet never going as much as you want to.
As the next chapter of my life approaches, the interconnectedness of the LA community gives me a sense of comfort. Even though I know that the experience of seeing my classmates in one place will never be replicated, I’m excited for them to become my random run-ins across the city. I, alongside the class of 2026, will never stop taking lunch runs to Wine and Cheese, frequenting the Westwood/Sunset Blvd In-N-Out, calling 90-minute periods “Flunch,” eating delicious sushi at Ami and reminiscing on our wonderful times in Los Angeles. Moving away (for most of us) will be terrifying, but we will always know where home is.
