Cristina profile
Many people think that GED students would never be able to get into law school, however Cristina Arriola is on her way to proving that not to be true. Soon to be recognized as the paralegal student of the year by Del Mar, Cristina has come a long way to achieve this honor. At 28, she will given the Outstanding Academic Student award that is given out to one student for each department.
While Christina has worked hard for this award, the journey has been anything but easy. She dropped out of high school in 10th grade as she didn’t see “the importance of being in school or getting a degree.”
This attitude stuck until Cristina was 18 and miscarried her child at 28 weeks due to an umbilical cord accident. She later got her son’s
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She received another push towards getting an education less than a year later when her older brother, Daniel, was diagnosed with cancer.
“It threw my world into chaos,” said Cristina, “less than a year after losing my child, I was possibly going to lose my brother, who helped me so much after losing my child. You live in denial about things like this happening, but cancer runs in my family and my brother had it.”
Her brother was one of the main reasons Arriola decided to go back to school as he stressed its importance.
“Danny motivated me to go back to school and made me promise that I would no matter what happened,” said Cristina, “He knew how important it was and wanted me to have a good life.”
Shortly after Cristina promised her brother that she would go to school, he passed away. “I didn’t go to school right away, but I knew that I would.”
Needing a change, at 23 Cristina moved to Chicago, where she “saw a little bit more of the world and saw that [she] could go do more and be more.”
While working in Chicago, she worked with people who had bachelor 's degrees and saw that she would really need to continue school in order to keep going with her