Señorita Ruth

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.