Transformative Experience

My experience with education has been the most transformative experience that helped shaped me into the person I am now. As a first generation Latino student with immigrant parents, I grew up unaware of the importance an education could have on my life and I was kept in the dark about its importance. Only when I was called to meet with my counselor the first week of my senior year in high school to discuss where I wanted to go to college did I realize I had no knowledge of college, its requirements, or my plans after high school. I was told that with my 2.1 G.P.A. and four D’s, I should attend a community college and at the time it scared me because everyone I knew, including my sister, dropped out within their first semester and never returned.

To accomplish my goals, i took adult school courses, replaced my elective courses with ones where I received D’s, took extracurriculars to challenge myself, and learned the true meaning of hard work and responsibility. My education became my main priority, I placed myself with like minded peers by joining my school’s Dreamers Club, which coincidentally helped me learn about college, and I learned to balance my life. After all my work I was accepted to my first choice university through E.O.P. and I felt that I would graduate from there but when the school year began I felt a sense of emptiness. I developed a passion in high school for serving my community and pursuing economic research; therefore, my perfect job became one where I could research my nation’s economy and use it to help lift my community from poverty and give people like me a chance at a great future. I learned that my feeling of emptiness resided from the knowledge that my school was not meant for economic research, it was meant to have a corporate