From Immigrant to Graduate

The year is 1971. A child is given life in a small city in El Salvador. She is the first child of two parents who are living in borderline poverty, living off of their humble farmland. Fast forward to the fall of 1979. The child is now 8 years of age, and she is unaware of the terror that is about to be bestowed on her. For the next 12 years, 70,000 Salvadorians will fall to the tides of a civil war. She is unaware of the fact that she will spend her childhood nights hearing gunfire and bombings miles, and sometimes blocks away. After the war had subsided, her parents decided to risk everything a follow the "American Dream" and head up north. The child is now a young adult, and what she does next is about to dictate whether or not she makes it into her new life.

She is loaded into a truck with 2 other men she doesn't even know. She also doesn't know if her parents made it past the border or not. One of them notices that she is scared and hands her a piece of gum to calm her nerves. They then make it to the California border, where they are stopped by authorities to do their regular checks. At this point, the woman is trying her hardest not to faint from the stress and fear of being arrested. However, she and the two men pass the border without being caught, and her and her parents make a beeline to sunny Los Angeles. Now being in the land of the free, she works vigorously for her father to pay rent and put food at the table, all while attending high school and learning a foreign language. Years later she states, "[It] was one of the hardest things I had to [undergo] in my life."

Despite the hardships of adapting to a new culture, learning a new language, working at the swap meets to make ends meet, and becoming a United States citizen, she finished high school, and she set her eyes on a degree. However, she meet a man and started a family consisting of two kids. This would push back her goal of achieving a higher education, in exchange for raising children and becoming a housewife. However, as the kids grew a bit older, she was ready to embark on her journey, as she started taking classes at a junior college and would eventually get enough credits to transfer out. Three years later, she would walk in her cap and gown at Cal Poly Pomona and become the first woman in her family to not only finish high school, but the first to graduate from college and get a degree.

After living in a war-torn country during her childhood, coming into a new country illegally as a young adult, overcoming language barriers and economic hardships, and getting married and raising two kids, she managed to finish college despite her upbringing. Because of this and much more, my mother is my hero and inspiration in life.