Growing Up In High School
The greatest battle I’ve fought in life has been within my own fears. Growing up, my parents always emphasized the importance of doing good in school, being involved in the community and of course going to college to break the cycle in which we lived. At a young age, I never really gave much thought to what they said or even thought about growing up, especially not in the community in which I was raised. I am originally from a very small town in the Central Valley. Our population consist of over 90% Latinos and agriculture workers from low economic backgrounds. The small percentile of students who make it to high school graduation mostly decides to attend a local community college, but only a small percentile will actually finish or transfer,
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Many of the reasons why our cycle doesn’t break is due to the fear of leaving home. Overcoming your fears can be conquered with time and with support from others, yet there is also other fears that cannot be solved so easily such as financial debt. My community is mostly undocumented and works in agriculture. On average, the wage of a field worker is bellow minimum wage. Students are discouraged in many cases by their family’s financial situation therefore, they opt out from even applying to a University. My high school discouraged many of us from applying to outside scholarships saying that we needed a “struggle” and better grades to compete with students outside of our town. I have accepted all the loans offered to me in order to pay off school, my debt is over fifteen thousand, yet, I am only on my second year. Both of my sisters are also attending college, my parents are unable to contribute to all three of us therefore we have all took loans to relieve my parents from the hardship of struggling to pay for our education. This scholarship and AAP encourages students of color like myself, it distracts us from the fear that we have of being unable to pay for school and its an amazing asset to encourage us to not feed discouraged about continuing our education
Many of the reasons why our cycle doesn’t break is due to the fear of leaving home. Overcoming your fears can be conquered with time and with support from others, yet there is also other fears that cannot be solved so easily such as financial debt. My community is mostly undocumented and works in agriculture. On average, the wage of a field worker is bellow minimum wage. Students are discouraged in many cases by their family’s financial situation therefore, they opt out from even applying to a University. My high school discouraged many of us from applying to outside scholarships saying that we needed a “struggle” and better grades to compete with students outside of our town. I have accepted all the loans offered to me in order to pay off school, my debt is over fifteen thousand, yet, I am only on my second year. Both of my sisters are also attending college, my parents are unable to contribute to all three of us therefore we have all took loans to relieve my parents from the hardship of struggling to pay for our education. This scholarship and AAP encourages students of color like myself, it distracts us from the fear that we have of being unable to pay for school and its an amazing asset to encourage us to not feed discouraged about continuing our education