comenzando esta carrera

I didn’t think I would feel this way. I never expected it but eight years later, I am rather excited. I feel like I’ve closed a chapter. It is moments like these when I wish I was a better writer so that I could articulate myself. I need to give you some history before I explain my current sensation.

I dropped out of school when I was 13. I had just finished 8th grade. It was at graduation that I informed my mother that I wasn’t going back to school.

I was done with it. The racism had been awful and I couldn’t bare it anymore. The students had played what they called “the dirty Mexican Jew game”. They didn’t know any bad words for Mexicans but knew Jews were bad, so they called me that. The game was like tag, but I was the tag if you touched me you got the “dirty Mexican Jew disease” and the only way to get rid of it was to push me into someone else. I was the only student of color in my school. Those of you who have seen me know that I easily pass as white. But I never denied I was Mexican. I never denied my mother when she picked me up from school. Never answered in the affirmative to questions of if she was my nanny.

And so the day after I graduated from middle school, I gave up. I moved to Mexico. Technically, the final decision to stay in Mexico came that fall, the day after I turned 14. I remember my mother begging me to come back to the United States. I refused even though I wanted to admit all the fear I had buried inside me. I was afraid of living by myself, of being in Mexico alone. Because while I did go back to Mexico I choose to live in a state where I had no relatives and no friends. In the end a younger aunt, only 23 years old, moved in with me. That year was the most rapid growth I’ve ever had; both emotionally and physically. It was that year I would think about when I did return to the United States to finish high school. It was those friends that I made, that I would lean on when the racism in my elite high school was too much to cope with.

My last two years of high school I found a way out. I applied for post-secondary option, that is I would take classes at the state University. It was then I finally found some place I enjoyed. I found classes I loved, I made great friends, I started working at the radio station, I feel in love with Alexi. Then it came time to apply for college. We had a “college center” in my high school, which was of no help to me. Oddly, Alexi had gone to the same high school I had and had scored a perfect score on either the ACT or SAT (I cannot recall which). When I went to the college center they told me not to apply for college that I wouldn’t get in. I listened to them all the while staring at a picture of Alexi that they had hanging on the wall with his scores below his name. I would never have my picture up there. I didn’t really know how to apply to schools and neither of my parents had gone to college so they were no help. So, I did the only thing that made sense to me. I only applied to schools in Ohio. I got into every single one and with a full scholarship to all of them.

Part of me really wishes I had gone to a historically black college, or to a small liberal arts women’s college. Part of me wishes I had ventured out to one of the other schools I had applied to. The only reason I went to this school was because it was known and I feared the unknown. But where would I be now had I gone elsewhere? When I applied I had done so with the intention of pursuing an economics degree and then going to law school.

Had I gone to any other school, I may have graduated in four years and by now be getting ready to finish law school. I would never have worked at the medical clinic, that I now manage. I may have never realized that my passion is more in medicine then law.

Today I completed all my course work and am now finished with my bachelors. It took me six years (eight if you count post-secondary)! Even though of those six years I went full time and only took two quarters off. I will receive a degree in Economics (labor and international studies) and a degree in Spanish (linguistics) with a minor in Latino/a Studies (queer and feminist performing arts). I’ve been able to take a lot of fun classes and am only a few classes short of multiple degrees, like Urban Geography, International Studies, Women’s Studies, and an Independent Film Studies degree. I’ve also been fortunate to have done research as an undergrad.

I didn’t think today would be a big deal. But I started to get excited yesterday during my last essay exam, as I wrote about how perhaps when looking at the rapid industrialization of Japan we should think back to Engles and his criticism of England in the 19th century (I love Engles and Marx). It has been a fun ride. I am glad this chapter is closing. Yes, it took me a while to finish. Yes, I have a long way to go (Medical school) but as a good friend said to me “No es una carrera contra el tiempo, si no una carrera contra la ignorancia”.