Graduation 2021
A couple weeks ago, I received my degree in the mail. I’ve been out of school for almost two months now. I’ve stopped measuring time by increments of ten weeks and due dates and enrollment passes. I thought that after receiving this piece of embossed cardstock with my name and old English script it’d feel official, but there’s only so much pomp and circumstance that can be lifted from a piece of paper. It’s been hard to fully experience these milestones thanks to the pandemic. It really has felt like when you are reading a paragraph of a book that you don’t quite understand the first time so you have to keep rereading it over and over again until you get it (or you just move on and turn the page and connect the dots later).
Ironically enough, my in-person college experience ended on my 21st birthday. I left campus that rainy day not knowing I would never again return to an in-person class for the rest of my undergraduate career. I spent some time to mourn both my individual loss and our collective loss during this pandemic — the loss of a senior year, the devastating loss of life for millions around the world, the loss of work for many, the loss of homes and habitats during one of the scariest wildfire seasons we’ve ever seen. It felt important to feel it. All of it.
Flash forward to our new year, 2021. An opportunity stood in front of me and would not let me pass. At this time, I was feeling rather powerless. At the end of 2020, I had to abruptly leave Los Angeles and move home after my mom’s health declined. She was in and out of the hospital throughout the holiday season, and we could no longer afford to live independently, paying separate rents. I felt so angry that the years I spent trying to obtain some semblance of control —in my finances, my future, my mom’s care — each slipped out of my control one by one.
Nonetheless, here stood an opportunity: a full-time position as a Community Organizer for the Public Education campaign at LAANE — the same campaign I interned for just 7 months prior. After some encouragement from my mentors and femtors, I went for it. I sent my resume that went straight to my future boss’ spam folder. Yet, for some reason, he actually checked his spam that day and saw my name and job application in the subject line. I interviewed, I waited, exhale, I trusted.
I believed in myself, despite my inexperience, and petitioned to graduate early before hearing back about the job decision, guided by my Pisces intuition that even if I didn’t get the gig, I’d at least have some time to rest before starting from square one. A couple weeks later, I found out that in March, I would not only become the first in my family to obtain a university degree, but I would also become the first in my family to break into the professional field. Tener una carrera.
This spring, I celebrate, and with celebration, comes an enormous debt of gratitude to every friend, mentor, family member, scholar, professor, coworker, comrade, and co-organizer that helped me get to this point, ’cause I did not do this alone by ANY means.
I made it because my grandparents spent years in the fields up and down California to give their children and their children’s children greater opportunities. I made it because my mom decided to pick up our lives and start fresh in the Borderlands after experiencing heartbreak, taking up waged domestic work to put a roof over our heads: first a bare-bones room with no running water and later a one-bedroom on H Street. I made it because my older brother forced me to read chapter books in kindergarten and spurred a lifelong love for learning and reading. I made it because on the final days before UC apps were due, I took a leap of faith, trusting that same Pisces intuition, and ticked the box ‘UCLA’ despite my SAT score being painfully average.
Once at UCLA, I was guided by a whole floor of friends that were into Public Service and Civic Engagement. Then USAC, the B Caf, then Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo, then AAP Research Rookies and las Obreras de las Maquiladoras de Tijuana, then Workers and Learners and Labor Studies, then SLAP, then some more Labor Studies, then Community Scholars, then LAANE, so on and so forth. For each stage of my college career, I had a whole slew of supporters that believed in me and challenged me, and that is what I enjoyed most about college. In no other social setting are you constantly given opportunities to grow, to learn something new, to meet someone new.
Thank you to my lifelong friends, you know who you are and I love you all so much. Thank you to organizing for allowing me to meet so many inspiring people and teaching me about revolutionary optimism in the face of structural oppression. Thank you Vanessa, Gloria, Liz, Bryanna, Guadalupe, and Jack at UCLA Labor Studies for providing the absolute best student work environment ever. Thank you to my all-star professors at UCLA Labor Studies, Professor Abel, Professor Higbie, Saba and Janna, Professor Narro, Professor Gaffney, Professor Griffey, Professor Hung, and all the rest. Thank you to the Chicanx and Central American Studies Department. Gracias Profe Javi for giving me the opportunity to study abroad.
Thank you to Zachary and the Tamayo/Scowden fam. I love you more than words can express and I’m so grateful for our love story.
Although this piece of paper in the mail does not encapsulate the full emotion of my experience at UCLA, I hold it with pride. This degree provided me with the stepping stone that I needed to cross to discover a career in fighting for justice.
I’m immensely grateful that I now dedicate my career to organizing alongside LAUSD parents, students, teachers, and community members for more equitable public schools, because after all, transformative education is how we get free! I’m grateful that I am able to now provide for my mother, who sacrificed so much for my brother and I. And finally, I’m grateful for Los Angeles in general for teaching me about community struggle and resistance. Grateful, grateful, grateful. #2021Grad #FirstGen #SiSePuede
