UC Personal Statement

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I was born in San Quentin, a town in Baja California. It’s a really poor town with no sidewalks, just dirt all around. My grandma would take care of my younger brother and I until I was six years old. At that time, we left to the U.S. to where my parents were living. It felt like I had arrived at a new planet, at first. I encountered new challenges in the process of adjusting to life in this country, making new friends and learning a new language- -English.
When I began my education, I was put in bilingual classes and by the time my first-grade year ended, I was able to speak, read and write in English. Since I am the oldest of my siblings, my parents expected more from me than my siblings. They value education, but they just don’t know how to help me succeed in school; unfortunately, both of my parents stopped going to school in second grade because of family problems in Mexico. What would motivate me to do my best in school is my parent’s life struggles and when I would see them coming home from working in the strawberry fields looking beat up, sweaty and really tired.
Unfortunately, we had to move a lot because of my parent’s unstable jobs working in the fields. I had to learn how to adjust to moving from house to house, settling into a new school and making new friends. During school breaks and summer vacations, in my freshman and sophomore years, I would help my parents work in the strawberry fields. That experience humbled me and I only felt a fraction of the back pain that my parents had to endure working for us to put food on the table. When high school came I had no guidance of what to do in regard to universities. It wasn’t until the summer before my Senior year that I learned about the importance of extracurricular activities in order to make myself more “worthy”.
I took the initiative to take a summer Psychology course my junior year at Oxnard College and gained a lot of information about extracurricular activities from my psychology professor there. After that, I enrolled in two college classes in the fall. Then I started looking for a job because my parents needed me to help them with the rent and also wanted me to get the experience of becoming an independent person. I managed to get a job at a coriander cooler. The leftover money from my earnings at the coriander cooler I’m saving for college. I felt this wasn’t enough, so I started to look for more opportunities to keep myself productive and to contribute to the community. I asked people that I knew if I could volunteer at their places. My coach from the boxing gym I go to, La Colonia Boxing Gym, told me that I could help volunteer at his gym to help train young kids how to box.
All of this I initiated during my senior year in order to become the first one in my family to attend a four-year college. My family history is what makes me want to be the first one in my family to graduate from high school and to attend a college. In conclusion, my experiences in the U.S. made me into the hard worker, self-motivated, and disciplined person that I am now.