My own roadmap has been anything but normal, linear, or predictable. The plans I had for myself throughout high school and the beginning of college changed constantly to the point where my pursuits are no longer the same from a year or more ago. I started undergrad by going to a community college that I had absolutely no intention of going to at all. I was rescinded from California State University, Dominguez Hills a week before my high graduation due to a technical problem within my student portal. I felt like a failure and disappointment, especially to my parents. As a first-generation student, my main goal in life has always been to make my parents proud of me. They never graduated from college and neither did my brother at the time. That was one of the lowest points in my life and I hope to never feel like that ever again. Due to that experience, I worked harder than I ever did in high school at my community college. I changed my major about three different times before realizing what my passions are. I put all that motivation and focus into my classes and campus activities to the point where I was able to transfer in two years. I applied to and was accepted into nine universities, a feat that I never thought I could achieve. My decision came down to NYU and UCLA, to which I chose UCLA and have not regretted that decision once.
A person that I look up to and has had similar experiences to me is my cousin, Cathy Fernandez. As another Latina, first-generation, transfer student, Cathy has had her share of ups and downs in her educational journey that I can relate to. Cathy is almost done with her Doctorate of Education program at California State University, Long Beach and will become Dr. Cathy Fernandez by the end of May. Her passions fall in line with mine: helping people, bringing up students of color, promoting education to all who want. I had the lucky opportunity to interview her about her own roadmap:
If you could describe your academic journey in one word, what would it be and why?
A rollercoaster, just because I started off kind of rough. In my first semester of college I ended up on academic probation at Long Beach City College. I was on academic probation for about a year, but fast forward now, I'm doing my doctorate in education and currently have a 4.0 in my program. There's been ups and downs and it took me four years to transfer, so it was kind of rough. I was working and I decided that that wasn't going to help me finish in a timely fashion so I stopped working.
When I went to Cal State Long Beach for my bachelor's degree, I wasn't working and it helped me a bit. I did have some issues with the counselors there and getting misinformation, but I did have a really good time over there because I had a mentor that really guided me to where I'm at now.
This journey that I'm on right now is very exciting and it's been something that I've been wanting to do for a long time.
2. Were your undergrad, grad, and doctorate program experiences similar or different to each other?
I went to community college for four years. That was interesting because I just kept taking classes and ended up with more units than I needed because I kept changing my major. I wasn't passing classes, like math, so that journey was a little bit rough because I felt that it was never going to come to an end.
I then did my bachelor's, second master's, and now my doctorate at Cal State Long Beach so those experiences are somewhat similar because they were on the same campus. I already knew where to find resources on campus so they felt similar to me. In terms of coursework, the experiences were definitely different. The levels of difficulty kept going up and up with the coursework I was given.
With my master's and doctorate, I actually enjoyed those more because I felt that I was really focusing on what I was interested in. I was literally just reading about education or counseling and how to help people rather than just taking general education classes. So, I really enjoyed my two master's programs and doctorate program the most because of how focused I was on what I was learning. Learning about education and how to help people have been very exciting to me.
3. How did you decide on what your educational path and career path would be?
They kind of chose me. I started off college not wanting to go to college. I actually wanted to be a masseuse because I knew that they got paid $50 an hour and thought that that wasn't bad for not having gone through college and for helping people with pain and stuff like that. My dad was the one who told me not to because they came to the U.S for all of us to have opportunities and go to college. He said that he didn't have the opportunity so I need to do it. I enrolled at Long Beach City College with no goal in my mind, I only went because my dad said to. I had an interest in optometry because I've worn glasses since I was 7 years old and thought that I would be an optometrist. Once I talked to optometrists and counselors about optometry they told me the things I would have to do and how long it would take and I realized that optometry wasn't my strength. I wasn't great at math or science so I didn't want to make that investment and time into optometry.
I changed my path to business law, music law, and even social work at one point. I even tinkered a bit with becoming a speech pathologist but realized that that job would be more heartbreaking, like social work, than rewarding. I knew that I liked to see people make progress and push forward in their process of growth and that could take months or years in speech pathology. I decided not to continue with that path.
It wasn't until my last semester of my bachelor's where I found a program called McNair's Scholar Program and met my mentor. I had to be interviewed and taken under someone's wing to do a research project. I met Dr. Clara Rendon who was a leading scholar in higher education so I was very blessed to meet and work with her as a mentee. She took me under her wing and told me "You can get your doctorate today if you wanted!" and I told her that I wasn't ready for that yet. She then told me to get my master's and continue from there. She really made me realize that I love to be on college campuses and feel the energy and passion that people have for being there. That made me realize that there are people who work and go to school on campus and that I could do that for a living. I did more research and realized that it would be fun to work on college campuses and guide people to not make the same mistakes that I did.
4. What have been the most difficult or most rewarding aspects of your educational career?
The most difficult aspect was mostly the imposter syndrome. In my mind, I was never really a good student. I graduated high school with a 2.2 GPA, I hated high school, and I went on academic probation my first year of college because I didn't have a passion for school. School has never been something that has come to me super easily, but I do love to learn and read. The only thing about school that I didn't like was the grading aspect and having to write papers on what my opinion is when I would rather just say what my opinion was. I constantly had to work on my mental script because people told me that I write the way I speak. I struggled the most with my writing and even to this day, even though I have a 4.0, I still have second thoughts about my word choice in my papers. On top of that, being a mother, full-time worker and student, finding the time for everything have also been challenging.
The most rewarding aspect is being able to help students everyday. It's rewarding to have my son see my graduate with a master's on his birthday and eventually my doctorate as well. Now he's telling me that he wants to go to college and that he wants to graduate as well. Being able to help family members as well go through the education process and talk to them about their dreams and watch them achieve them is awesome as well.
Comments