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| It’s important to know early on what you want, so you can start talking to your parents and getting the information, taking the right academic steps to go on. Once you know the difference between certain kinds of colleges, you start to sensitize your parents to what the choices are, and what is out there. You start being able
to say, “Okay, what do I need to do to be able to go to that college?” –Rosa |
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| My great-aunt called me and said, “I’m really worried about you. As much as I want to tell you to do this, do
that, and believe in this, believe in that, I’m going to try to tell you to believe in yourself, and do things that
you feel like are important for you to do. So what’s the best thing for Eric to do?” I was like, “To leave?” She’s
like, “Okay, now! How are you going to leave?” I was like, “I’m going to go to college.” And she’s like, “Well,
how are you going to go to college?” “I guess by getting good grades.” “But how are you going to get good
grades?” “By working for them!” “Oh! So if you work for it and you get good grades and you do what you’re
supposed to be doing, and graduate, that’s your ticket to get out of there!” I just started laughing. Because she
basically broke it down, “Well, how are you going to do that?” Everything started to change from that moment
on. I was going to be me. –Eric |
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I started working here around the end of September my senior year. I really trusted my employer, Anna. When
I was telling her what was going on in school, the first question she asked me was, “What college are you
applying to?” That’s when I really started to think about college, because here, they were not happy to think
that I was not going to college. They really pushed me, like, “You’re going to college, apply to colleges!” They
all gave me different ideas of what I could do, and they asked me what was the one thing that I wanted to do. I
said I wanted to be a lawyer. They said, “You could do it, you just have to go to school for it!” That’s when I
started thinking about the options I had, and I started researching college.
My three mothers at work helped me with the whole applications process. I consider them my parents in a
way, ’cause I can’t go to my actual parents and talk about it. When I have a problem and I come to them, they
understand me, and they help me fix it. –Aileen |
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After my tenth-grade year, I went to a summer program at the University of Texas called Minority
Introduction to Engineering. I came to campus and stayed in a dorm for a week, I worked with engineering
students to do some cool things. I was like, “Wow, this is what computer programming is like, this is what
graphic design is like—this is what you can be when you grow up!” We went and visited different businesses
around the Austin area.
It was really cool, and I loved it. I remember being very empowered at the time. “Yeah, Stephen, that’s
great, you’re interested in engineering, but you also write really well, you can also lead a discussion really
well,” people began realizing that in me. When I came here two years later, there were students that still
remembered me. –Stephen
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