Santana used to worry, when she first joined Cheerios, that she would be at the bottom of the totem pole, literally, due not to her age or her freshman status, or even her lack of experience, and certainly not because of her talents or abilities, but rather because of her genetics. She was the only girl of Hispanic descent on the squad, possibly the only Hispanic in all the history of Cheerios to even try out. She knew that other Hispanic girls from her neighborhood watched her with something between resentment and envy, thinking that she was stepping outside their boundaries, drawing attention to herself in a way that they may want for themselves but would never ask for in the way that Santana did. Already she did not quite fit in with the girls in WMHS of her own heritage; they had always thought her too "stuck on herself" because she actually did well in school and went to class, even though she attempted to conceal her actual desire to succeed academically and downplay her scores and the fact that she occasionally actually studied. They didn't like the way she dressed or how she talked, the fact that she only spoke in Spanish when with her abuela or when very angry, and they didn't like that she, as the daughter of a fairly well off doctor, was an only child with a room all to herself, in expensive name brand clothing, rather than one of five or six siblings in a small rented home. More times than Santana could count she had been accused of being a puta, a sellout, of "trying to be white" or "forgetting where she came from," even though she and most of the other Hispanic-American girls had been born right there in Lima and never set foot on Mexican soil. For Santana to join Cheerios, and then Glee Club, was an unforgivable breach of what was considered acceptable among them, and she could almost feel their unspoken curses aimed her way when she was accepted on- along with their silent hopes that she would fulfill society's expectations for her and get pregnant at fifteen. Lucky for her, it was Quinn who took over that role, and Santana took up the responsibility of barking like the Taco Bell dog every time she passed their table in the lunch room instead- though god forbid anyone else even think of making such a gesture who didn't have (My parents or grandparents were) Made in Mexico stamped somewhere within their genetic code.