I just got some really exciting news at work the other day and I can’t help but blog about it. One of the major projects I’ve been working on for the past couple of months is a survey for the Commuter Program. We have actually been talking about doing something like this since last semester but for whatever reason we weren’t able to do it then. At the beginning of this semester Daniella told me that this was a project that we really wanted to get done so she asked me if I would be comfortable putting the survey together. Of course I said yes even though I didn’t even really know what to put on the survey. I had a lot of help from Daniella and within a month of being asked to do it, the survey was in the Commuter Center for students to take. Once students were finished taking the survey, we had our Administrative Assistant insert the answers into Student Voice.
This survey is really important to us because we are currently trying to make the Commuter Center a permanent space on campus and we knew that this survey would provide a lot of good data for that process. The survey was put out before Spring Break and I am currently in the process of analyzing the data and putting the open ended questions into themes. I must say I have the experience of analyzing my action research data to thank in this process because I feel I have a pretty good understanding of how to form themes and use quotes from the students.
Now that I’ve explained the project I have to tell the good news. A few days ago a received an email from our representative from Student Voice asking us if we would be willing to “share” the survey on the Student Voice website. What this means is that all universities who use Student Voice will have access to our survey (not the data) so they can have an idea how to create a survey such as ours. According to the Student Voice representative a lot of universities are looking to create a survey similar to ours and he felt these universities could benefit from seeing ours as a starting point.
When I saw this email I got so excited I ran into Daniella’s office to tell her. She was really excited too and as I walked away she said to me, “Congratualtions!” That was when it really hit that this is a big accomplishment for me!! I was the one who took the lead on this survey and put it together and I was being recognized for it. I can’t say I did this all on my own because I definitely did not. I went to Daniella, Merrick, and Stephanie for feedback and input on the survey, but the fact that I was the one who was in charge of putting this never before done survey together made me feel like this was definitely a personal accomplishment for me.
As I am reflecting on this exciting news I am thinking back to one of the first blogs I wrote earlier this year about making an impact. I talked about how I was told that every GA is known for leaving their mark in some way in our office. I do feel like I’ve done a lot of work and made an impact at work with the different things I’ve done, but I’ve never felt as proud as I did when I saw that email. I honestly feel like this survey is my mark. This is what I’m going to be remembered for. I understand the survey might change slightly and the questions might be adjusted, but I will be the one who started it and I will always remember the recognition I received for it. I was even thinking about a possible interview question of “Tell me about your proudest accomplishment” and I know this is my proudest accomplishment to date. I now feel like I can leave my role as the Graduate Assistant in the Center for Student Success feeling like I’ve made an impact and that I will be remembered. This is an amazing feeling and I am so glad I have reached this place in my career as a Graduate Assistant.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
My Identity Development
I decided to take a break from my action research paper for a little while and I thought to myself "I should do something productive." Then it hit me, I should write a blog! Then I wondered, what should I write about? Then that hit me too, I'm working on my action research where I'm writing about first-generation Latina students, so I should write about my identity development, more specifically more racial/ethnic identity development.
I feel like I've said this so many, but this program has honestly completely changed my life for the better. I came into this program thinking I was completely confident and comfortable with who I was. I think I expected to grow somewhat, but I really thought most of my growth had already happened during my undergraduate career. I quickly realized after starting this program that I was going to be reflecting a lot about myself and I might have to start confronting some things that I had kind of avoided before. One of the biggest things this program helped me realize is how proud I am of my Mexican background. I don't think I could have said this 2 years ago. In fact, I know I couldn't have said this 2 years ago.
Coming into this program, I had not ever really thought about my Mexican background and when I did I found myself feeling very ashamed of it. I grew up in an area with a big Latino population and went to high school with a large Latino population. Most of my closest friends were Latinas, but all I could see were the Latino students who were getting kicked out school, getting pregnant, or just being disrespectful to teachers in class. I could not get passed the fact that in my mind (please understand that I was very young at the time) these people were giving our giving us a bad name. The way I saw it, it was no wonder that there were all these negative stereotypes about Latinos because I was seeing it first-hand. Every single girl who was pregnant at my high school was Latina. For these reasons, I was very much ashamed of my background.
Even though I was ashamed of it, I will say that this was one of the things motivating me to go to college, I did not want to be another negative statistic. I wanted to be that one of a small number that actually does graduate from high school. I vowed to myself that I would not get pregnant at a young age. I would do whatever I could to avoid being "just another Mexican girl who gets pregnant in high school." I had dreams and goals and I was not going to let anything get in the way of that. A lot of this came from being raised by a single mom who was the Mexican girl in high school that got pregnant. Don't get me wrong, I love my mom with all my heart and she has been one of my biggest role models, but just knowing her history and stuggles, made me very aware of teenage pregnancy. She also always told me that I could do so much than she did. She also stressed to me that I could go to college and make something of myself. I think it was this constant reassurance from her and seeing all those pregnant girls in high school that made me so confident that I was going to go to college and I was not going to get pregnant at a young age.
I can say today with full confidence that I am very proud of where I come from and everything I have been able to achieve. I don't think I would be where I am today if it wasn't for this program and all the reflectins that are embedded in the program. It was through all these opportunities to reflect that I feel I have truly developed my racial identity. However, I do still feel like I have a long way to go. Even now as I'm thinking about Jeff and I having kids in the next two years, I am so afraid that people will still look at me as just another young Mexican girl who got pregnant because I look so young. I know I should not be concerned about this at this stage in my life, but I can't help it. Part of me wants to have a shirt made that says "I am xx years old, I have a Master's Degree, and I'm married. Stop judging me!" Of course, I'm assuming that people will be judging me, but I think I just think about it so much that I feel like it's going to happen.
Even though I still have a lot of growth to continue to do, I am very happy with where I am in my identity development. I have made it a goal for myself after graduation to become fluent in Spanish. I was surrounded by the language a lot growing up, but I was never really taught it. I took Spanish in high school and I feel fairly comfortable understanding it, but I am not at all comfortable speaking it. I really feel like this has affected my relationship with my grandma because she does not speak English well at all, so I can't really have a conversation with her. I really do want to become more a part of my culture. I want this so badly, I even have a strong desire to learn to cook some good Mexican food from my grandma. If you know me, that's a big deal because I am not a cook. But I want to be able to make those meals for my kids so that they can be in touch with one half of their culture.
I feel like I've said this so many, but this program has honestly completely changed my life for the better. I came into this program thinking I was completely confident and comfortable with who I was. I think I expected to grow somewhat, but I really thought most of my growth had already happened during my undergraduate career. I quickly realized after starting this program that I was going to be reflecting a lot about myself and I might have to start confronting some things that I had kind of avoided before. One of the biggest things this program helped me realize is how proud I am of my Mexican background. I don't think I could have said this 2 years ago. In fact, I know I couldn't have said this 2 years ago.
Coming into this program, I had not ever really thought about my Mexican background and when I did I found myself feeling very ashamed of it. I grew up in an area with a big Latino population and went to high school with a large Latino population. Most of my closest friends were Latinas, but all I could see were the Latino students who were getting kicked out school, getting pregnant, or just being disrespectful to teachers in class. I could not get passed the fact that in my mind (please understand that I was very young at the time) these people were giving our giving us a bad name. The way I saw it, it was no wonder that there were all these negative stereotypes about Latinos because I was seeing it first-hand. Every single girl who was pregnant at my high school was Latina. For these reasons, I was very much ashamed of my background.
Even though I was ashamed of it, I will say that this was one of the things motivating me to go to college, I did not want to be another negative statistic. I wanted to be that one of a small number that actually does graduate from high school. I vowed to myself that I would not get pregnant at a young age. I would do whatever I could to avoid being "just another Mexican girl who gets pregnant in high school." I had dreams and goals and I was not going to let anything get in the way of that. A lot of this came from being raised by a single mom who was the Mexican girl in high school that got pregnant. Don't get me wrong, I love my mom with all my heart and she has been one of my biggest role models, but just knowing her history and stuggles, made me very aware of teenage pregnancy. She also always told me that I could do so much than she did. She also stressed to me that I could go to college and make something of myself. I think it was this constant reassurance from her and seeing all those pregnant girls in high school that made me so confident that I was going to go to college and I was not going to get pregnant at a young age.
I can say today with full confidence that I am very proud of where I come from and everything I have been able to achieve. I don't think I would be where I am today if it wasn't for this program and all the reflectins that are embedded in the program. It was through all these opportunities to reflect that I feel I have truly developed my racial identity. However, I do still feel like I have a long way to go. Even now as I'm thinking about Jeff and I having kids in the next two years, I am so afraid that people will still look at me as just another young Mexican girl who got pregnant because I look so young. I know I should not be concerned about this at this stage in my life, but I can't help it. Part of me wants to have a shirt made that says "I am xx years old, I have a Master's Degree, and I'm married. Stop judging me!" Of course, I'm assuming that people will be judging me, but I think I just think about it so much that I feel like it's going to happen.
Even though I still have a lot of growth to continue to do, I am very happy with where I am in my identity development. I have made it a goal for myself after graduation to become fluent in Spanish. I was surrounded by the language a lot growing up, but I was never really taught it. I took Spanish in high school and I feel fairly comfortable understanding it, but I am not at all comfortable speaking it. I really feel like this has affected my relationship with my grandma because she does not speak English well at all, so I can't really have a conversation with her. I really do want to become more a part of my culture. I want this so badly, I even have a strong desire to learn to cook some good Mexican food from my grandma. If you know me, that's a big deal because I am not a cook. But I want to be able to make those meals for my kids so that they can be in touch with one half of their culture.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Reflecting on my trip to Qatar
A conversation I had with Jeff last week during lunch got me thinking a lot about my trip to Qatar. He was telling me about his night at his internship in the emergency room at Sharp hospital. He is basically shadowing and working with a current nurse as part of his program. They we headed to the waiting room to pick up a patient and when he read the patient’s name he told the other nurse that he knew exactly how the conversation was going to go. The patient was a Muslim woman and he said that the patient was not going to say anything and her husband was going to do all the talking. Sure enough, he was completely right. He knows quite a bit about the culture since he was deployed in Iraq for a year. I started talking about what I had learned while I was there. Then I started to think back to my reflection paper when I wrote:
“Some of the ones that stick out in my head are the fact that girls/women cannot leave the country without a chaperone until they are 35 years old. I think my mouth fell straight to the floor when I heard that. Another one was that there is no dating there and arranged marriages are quite common…All these things were just so surprising to me and I actually found myself internally criticizing their culture. I kept asking myself how any girl/woman could live like that. I didn’t understand how they don’t just rebel and do what they want. This was actually a huge moment of growth for me. I don’t really consider myself to be a feminist, but I deeply believe in women’s rights and it’s something I’m really passionate about. In fact, for a long time I refused to learn how to cook because I saw that as me fitting into the stereotype of what I’m supposed to be because I’m a female. I’ve gotten over that now, but there are still things I refuse to do because I refuse to fit that stereotype. So when I was hearing about all these things that the girls/women are not allowed to do, it actually made me very angry. I honestly just wanted to know why these girls/women put up with it. Then after thinking about it for a really long time I realized that this is their culture and it’s a part of their lives. They don’t question or rebel against it because they don’t know any different. I realized that just because it’s different than the way I choose to live my life doesn’t make it wrong.”
I honestly do feel like I have grown a lot from this experience because I learned that it was not fair for me to criticize their culture. However, I found it interesting how easy it was for me to have the conversation with Jeff. As I was talking about it and basically criticizing their culture, I realized what I was doing. I was having an internal conflict with myself of I should not be continuing to have this conversation. Instead I should take this opportunity to let Jeff know the reflections I had after my trip to provide the chance for the two of us to have an educational moment together. Even as I’m typing this I’m realizing that even if I had tried that it wouldn’t really make a difference. Because Jeff was in the Army for four years and was deployed to Iraq for a year, he has lost three friends to the wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan). All three of these soldiers are men who he was fairly close with and it was really tough for him to get over their deaths. Because of the deaths of his friends, Jeff has admitted that he often experiences hatred towards Muslims. We have had quite a few conversations about this and he knows that it is not the fault of all Muslims that he lost his friends, but he still struggles not have those feelings come up. I have told him that is understandable that he would have these feelings toward them, but it is still difficult for me to accept. However, I must also recognize that I have not lost anyone close to me because of the war, so I have no idea how he feels. I feel like all I can do at this point is making sure that I am continuing to have these reflections and maybe after some time has passed I can have these conversations with Jeff.
My struggle continues to be that I don’t feel like I’ve completely allowed myself to accept the way the girls/women are treated as their culture. Even as I read through my reflection paper, I found myself getting angry about the way they are treated. During Ethics class a few weeks ago we were asked to think of an example when we went from super-ego to conscience. It was not until some of my other classmates starting giving their examples that I realized my example was. My moment of going from super-ego to conscience is my experience in Qatar, specifically thinking about the way the girls/women are treated in the culture. I realized that I was raised to be independent and never depend on anyone for anything. My mom was raised in a very traditional Mexican household where she would always have to come and do chores and my uncles would get to go out with their friends. My mom made a decision that she was not going to raise my brother and me that way, so we both always had equal amounts of chores to do. I realize that because of this and seeing the way my grandma basically babies my uncles, I have become very judgmental of any woman who follows this traditional way of living. I realized that this was happening way before my trip to Qatar, but it wasn’t until my trip that I realized I did it. It wasn’t until I got into class that week that I realized that it was an example of me going from super-ego to conscience. However, I do still feel there is a lot of work to be done. I still find myself being judgmental, so I need to be very conscience about it and continue to reflect and come to terms with the fact that just because someone chooses to live their life this way does not make it wrong. I may not agree with it and I may feel that it diminishes the power of women, but it is not fair for me to judge someone because of it. Even as I’m writing this I’m realizing that I have a long road ahead of me, but I believe that me realizing it is the first step.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
LIVING WITH UNCERTAINTY
It has been a very long time since I've blogged, but my experience today in Seminar got me thinking about a lot of things that I need to write about. The word that keeps coming to my mind is uncertainty. I feel like right now my life is surrounded my uncertainty and I don't really know how I feel about it or what to do with it. There are some things that are certain: I will graduate in May (hopefully), I will be moving back to Orange County in July, and I will be working for this next month and half on Ethics, Action Research, and job search. However, there are a lot of things that are uncertain and the one that I am most concerned about is where I will be working at after I graduate. I had a conversation today with Daneilla about my job search and how I'm trying not to get discouraged. I feel like I've put myself out there and applied to some jobs but I havent' heard anything back. I know the process takes a long time, but it's still hard. I did add that I am very confident that I will have a job eventually. I don't know when or where but I will find something. I really do feel like I'm comfortable with that. I think what I'm uncomfortable with, which I realized today in Seminar is this idea of waiting for the perfect job.
Again, I am very comfortable with the idea of not having a job right after graduation or even by the time I move back to Orange County. However, it makes me really anxious to think of waiting for a job that is perfect for me. I do believe that I need to find something that I like and enjoy, but can I really wait for that perfect job? At this point, I really do feel like as long as it's something I can see myself doing and I'll be happy then that is enough for me. This got me thinking about why I am so uncomfortable with holding out for the perfect job and I think I realized why. I feel like at this point in my life I need to find a job as soon as possible because I am feeling a lot of pressure to make sure that I am financially stable. I feel like I am putting this pressure on myself because I don't feel like there is anyone else putting this pressure on me.
I think I'm feeling really pressured because I know that we are going to get an apartment with my mom and the whole reason we're doing this is to help her out. We decided on this because I know that my mom is in a really bad situation and is having a lot of financial struggles. In order to help her save money and actually be in a good place financially, we decided to get an apartment with her and my little sisters. Because the reason for this move is to give my mom some financial stability, I want to make sure that I am contributing financially and not giving her any financial stress. I feel like she has had so much financial stress for the past two years and I want to do whatever I can to alleviate that for her. For this reason, I feel like I just need to find a job that I enjoy even though it might not be my dream or ideal job.
I would love more than anything to find my perfect job, but at this point in my life I don't feel like it's practical. I have so many other obligations and I don't feel like it's fair for me to turn down jobs because it is not exactly what I'm looking for. Who knows, maybe I will find my dream job, but at this point I'll be happy if I find something. I don't really know what this says about me, maybe I am being too practical and not thinking about myself enough, but I don't feel like I can right now.
Again, I am very comfortable with the idea of not having a job right after graduation or even by the time I move back to Orange County. However, it makes me really anxious to think of waiting for a job that is perfect for me. I do believe that I need to find something that I like and enjoy, but can I really wait for that perfect job? At this point, I really do feel like as long as it's something I can see myself doing and I'll be happy then that is enough for me. This got me thinking about why I am so uncomfortable with holding out for the perfect job and I think I realized why. I feel like at this point in my life I need to find a job as soon as possible because I am feeling a lot of pressure to make sure that I am financially stable. I feel like I am putting this pressure on myself because I don't feel like there is anyone else putting this pressure on me.
I think I'm feeling really pressured because I know that we are going to get an apartment with my mom and the whole reason we're doing this is to help her out. We decided on this because I know that my mom is in a really bad situation and is having a lot of financial struggles. In order to help her save money and actually be in a good place financially, we decided to get an apartment with her and my little sisters. Because the reason for this move is to give my mom some financial stability, I want to make sure that I am contributing financially and not giving her any financial stress. I feel like she has had so much financial stress for the past two years and I want to do whatever I can to alleviate that for her. For this reason, I feel like I just need to find a job that I enjoy even though it might not be my dream or ideal job.
I would love more than anything to find my perfect job, but at this point in my life I don't feel like it's practical. I have so many other obligations and I don't feel like it's fair for me to turn down jobs because it is not exactly what I'm looking for. Who knows, maybe I will find my dream job, but at this point I'll be happy if I find something. I don't really know what this says about me, maybe I am being too practical and not thinking about myself enough, but I don't feel like I can right now.
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