This month saw your humble columnist notch two huge literary achievements, the kind ink-stained wretches dream about.

I was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the commentary category for my coverage last year about the political evolution of Latinos, making me just the third-ever Latino to achieve that distinction.

Maybe even more impressive, however, was that portions of a column I wrote a few years ago became mandatory reading for hundreds of thousands of high schoolers across the country.

The occasion was the AP English Language and Composition exam, that annual ritual for smarty-pants high schoolers that allows those who get a great score to earn college credit. The exact column, you may ask? Not the subject of my Pulitzer finalist nod, or my arcane stuff, or my street-level coverage of Southern California life. Or even my rants against In-N-Out, which is overrated.

Nope, the subject was… loquats. The small, tart fruit currently ripening on trees all across Southern California, which forever puzzle newcomers and delight longtimers and squirrels.

In 2021, I wrote a columna arguing that loquats, not citrus or avocados, are our “fruit MVPs” because they’re so ubiquitous and beloved by many of SoCal’s immigrant groups, including Latinos, Asians, Armenians and more. The piece also ridiculed an East Coast reporter who alleged that no one eats loquats in Southern California.

I’m very proud of it, but if I were to use one of my columnas to test college-bound high school seniors on their mastery of analysis and rhetoric, I wouldn’t have used that one. Someone tell that to CollegeBoard, the nonprofit that administers the Advanced Placement exams along with the SATs.

I found out about my columna‘s inclusion last week after the second round of AP English tests concluded. Friends of mine texted me that their children who took it were bragging to friends about how they knew the “loquat guy.” Students across the country took to TikTok to shout me out.

Some called it their favorite reading prompt. Others ridiculed my columna’s description of a loquat tree heavy with fruit as “glow[ing] like a traffic cone” or my stance that people who say no one eats loquats is an affront to Southern California’s “culinary soul.” Still others wondered what loquats were in the first place, how did they taste and where could they buy some.

In response, I created a TikTok account and filmed a short video of me silently staring at the camera while eating a loquat from my 4-year-old tree, which gave fruit for the first time this spring. “Hello I’m Gustavo Arellano the Loquat King,” a caption read. “What loquat questions can I answer?”

180,000 views later, I’m a TikTok loquat star.

But what exactly the AP test asked students about my piece remains a mystery.

A friend’s kid told me test takers were required to read a passage from my piece in the multiple-choice section and then answer questions about “word choice, claims, examples used, figurative language” and the like.

(I’m granting anonymity to the kid because CollegeBoard’s exam policy states that anyone who shares any content from exams that haven’t been publicly released will have their test scores “canceled, no retest will be permitted, and you may be banned from future testing.” Gosh, can’t you just give them detention?)

A CollegeBoard spokesperson declined to share the test questions about loquats with me because students are still taking it. They also asked I “not disclose any information about them” because CollegeBoard sometimes uses the same questions in future tests “and when information about them is shared, we have to discontinue their use.”

Too late!

I’m flattered, CollegeBoard. I’m not even angry that you didn’t bother to at least give me a head’s up. But I guess it’s par for the course: Although I did take AP English at Anaheim High with Ms. Sinatra, I skipped out on the test because I figured it was for dorks and goody two-shoes and I didn’t think I was either.

Oh, how wrong I was. I’ll stuff my sorrows by eating a bunch of loquats this weekend, because no one else eats them.

The week’s biggest stories

Valley fever cases are expected to spike in California

• For the second year in a row, California is on track to have a record-breaking number of valley fever cases, which public health officials say are driven by longer, drier summers.
• Valley fever is a lung infection that people get when they breathe in spores of the fungus that lives in dry soil, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• While valley fever shares many of the same symptoms as other respiratory diseases, including COVID-19, it takes about one to three weeks for valley fever symptoms to develop, and the illness can last a month or more.

A new COVID subvariant spreads rapidly as Trump pivots away from vaccines

Santa Monica residents go to war against Waymo

• There’s a battle brewing in Santa Monica with a fleet of unmanned, electric Waymo vehicles on one side, and exhausted, weary locals on the other.
• Using cones, cars and sometimes themselves, residents have taken to blocking the Waymos from entering their company-funded parking lot, so much so that the company has called the cops on them a half dozen times.

Trump administration threat to revoke Chinese student visas roils California

• Scholars and international students fear such an action could jeopardize the academic future of tens of thousands of Chinese students enrolled at colleges across the country, and threaten billions of dollars in tuition payments desperately needed by universities already facing the loss of research funding and other cuts effectuated by Trump’s education policies.
• The potential financial fallout is of acute concern in California, where Chinese students constitute the largest international group. About 51,000 Chinese nationals in California make up more than a third of the state’s nearly 141,000 foreign students.

More big stories

This week’s must reads

More great reads

For your weekend

Rite Aid’s Glassell Park location — including its Thrifty ice cream counter — closed in 2023, as part of the company’s debt restructuring after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company recently announced more store closures.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Going out

Staying in

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Gustavo Arellano, metro columnist
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, Sunday writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.