Hispanic Youth Symposium 2009 — Hispanic College Fund
Video courtesy of Stina Augustsson.
Working at South Valley Academy as their College Counselor during the 2008–2009 school year was a galvanizing experience. It forced me to bring into focus the struggles I endured in relation to completing my post-high school education.
Going to college was an underlying assumption in our familial culture. My mother holds a baccalaureate degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua in Chemistry. My father completed his emergency medicine degrees and certifications within two years of returning to the U.S. with his young family (us). However, the execution of this expectation proved to be messy and painful. Long story short, I quit UNM in the middle of my second semester. As an 18 year-old distracted by a boyfriend, an apartment, friends and partying, I walked away from UNM in the middle of the spring semester after my graduation from West Mesa HS.
Unfortunately, WMHS did not provide the type of intense guidance that a first-generation, immigrant adolescent needs when committing to becoming not only a college student, but a college graduate. We were a graduating class of about 350. We had been a freshman class of over 900. The statistical correlation between beginning and finishing high-schoolers remains constant in large schools. In a population of over 2k, the college-bound potential of a student or even a group of students becomes lost in the cacophony of survival that shapes the most critical years of thousands of our students. National Hispanic Merit Scholar semi-finalist? Sounds fancy! My understanding of what it meant to do well on the PSAT only became clear to me as an adult.
This long-story-short rambling intro outlines my experience as a teenager in the Albuquerque, NM USA school system because of the unique opportunity that I was granted after finishing my B.A. in Linguistics & Spanish and wrapping up coursework for my Master’s. I accepted a position at South Valley Academy as an Educational Assistant. The work sounded intense and intriguing, the pace seemed dynamic.
Well, I had no idea what I was in for. I will leave my largely-positive commentary on charter schools for another time. That said, there is an inherent benefit to a small-population school environment. Committing to ensuring that all 26 seniors would be enrolled and familiar with one of our local higher-learning institutions was an incredible experience. It was challenging, a bit insane, but eye-opening and morally awakening.
I attended the symposium to follow up with the SVA students that attended, and to get a feel for the type of event that HCF put together. What a thrilling time! I attended a competition where students put together community action plans to address social issues that keeps students from being successful. I watched a talent show that showcased skills and talents from singing to tae kwon do. I visited several booths at the career fair event. It’s the event that can be the pivot point for a student that otherwise has not been taught where to find the bridge between “I want to be a … when I grow up” and the concrete plan of action that will fulfill that dream. If the Hispanic Youth Symposium would have been around to help my generation, successful as we are (go Mustangs! Class of ’98!), I’m convinced that the outcome of our efforts at college and beyond would have been couched in better strategy and more knowledge.
Sometimes it is difficult to conceive that there are people younger than us. Most of the rest of the time, it’s easy to assume that they’ve got it under control, since we turned out so well with no guidance or supervision (adjust to your own experience as needed). Yet, the fabric of a culture and a society is only created by the connections between people. It is our responsibility to ensure that those following the same paths as us have access to our insight.
Beyond access, it should be our priority to pro-actively share our experiences and expertise. Especially at such a challenging time as the transition between teens and twenties. Some say that high school is hard. The reality is, the years right after high school are the most challenging. For those of us that survived, it may now seem elementary, but we should never undermine the potential for influence and empowerment that we can have in each others’ lives. After all, today’s high school students are tomorrow’s colleagues, employees, fellow drivers and parents. Let’s commit to a better community!
The Hispanic College Fund is an amazing organization, and they need our help when it comes to ensuring that programs such as the Hispanic Youth Symposium remain available for our students, and that they become exciting hubs of knowledge and information exchange in the areas that will affect tomorrow’s college graduate.
