A Graduation Reflection...and My First Post!

Today was my college graduation. This blog has been a long time in the making, partly because I've been so consumed with writing for school publications, but also because I didn't know how I was to angle what I wanted to do with this space.


I figure, I'm opinionated enough, might as well put it out there for someone to read and perhaps take notice. Anyway, what better way to start a blog than to make my first entry all about such a life changing event.

To some graduating from a CSU might not seem like a great deal compared to a UC or a private institution but in the world I live in and compared to a great deal of my peers I am a world and a planet away from where some people might think I would be.


I live in the Valley. Now, there are some nice parts of the Valley and then there are the not-so-nice parts (that's where I live). Without exaggeration there are police choppers outside almost every other night on any given week. My neighbors, well they are a nice mix of low-income blue collar workers from all ethnicities, on my block you will find the drug dealers, taggers, white trash, immigrants,and your regular Joes just tryina make a living. I can't compare it to South Central or Watts, but its bad enough that I have come out of this with both a street education and a college degree :)

I love it.

If it weren't for living under these circumstances, I wouldn't appreciate the things I have or have accomplished. The simple fact that I can see the difference in them (the people around me) and what I'm trying to do with my life, the fact that I'm not ignorant like the cholos and cholas that live their day by day picking fights over insignificant things,the fact that I can look beyond and see the greater scope of things... its all worth it.

It took me 5 years to get my B.A. in Journalism, and my minor in Central American Studies, but that moment, that feeling of accomplishment I felt this morning walking across the stage was a culmination of many years of hard work, dissapointments, and lessons learned.

I've seen my parents struggle financially.
Friends die in the last years of suicides, overdoses, and gang-related murder.
Friends in jail for the better part of their youth, and all for what?
That could've been me. Why not? Many of them came from good families with good morals like mine, and many came from neighborhoods like mine, what defines each and everyone of us that make our outcomes different?

You can't let the things you go through, or the neighborhoods you come from, or all the horrible things some of us are predisposed to and born into, you can't let where you come from define where you are going, if you want it bad enough.

Looking back there are so many different times horrible things could have happened to me. Hanging out with rival gangs, dating the wrong people, trusting the wrong people. Even something as simple as sitting in a car outside my house almost took my life... one day I was caught sitting in the crossfire of bullets from my neighbor to an unknown passerby.

Is it destiny? Is it drive? Is it fate? Is it God?

All I know is its something to be grateful for, I've seen way too many friends go by the wayside and I am determined to make things right for myself and my family.

hasta luego.