Don’t let fear stop you

People ask me all the time if I feel excited about graduating from college. I know I should be because it really is an accomplishment that not many people have the chance of even attempting.

However, the knowledge, the experiences and the friends that I have acquired during my time here make me feel melancholic and insecure to leave this place I have grown to care so much for over the last five years of my life. I am grateful, nonetheless, to my parents and God for giving me the chance to obtain a higher education.

I know how it feels to endure the struggle of financial instability. My parents have done everything they can and have made sacrifices to ensure that my siblings and I won’t commit the same mistakes they did when they were young. As the days pass, it becomes more clear that it is true: I am about to become the first in my family to get a college degree.

There was a time when my family lived together in a small house in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. However, because of the lack of a profession, my father was unable to find a job there. He went up north looking for a job in the U.S. He worked illegally in Oklahoma for seven years until he was deported back to Mexico.

I realized that everything was going to change. My mother, a full-time homemaker for 20 years, had to find a job and now as an undocumented immigrant in a foreign country. As an inexperienced college student, I decided it was time to contribute financially in my household. I applied to multiple jobs, yet I was not hired anywhere, not even at fast-food restaurants.

In my second semester in college, after I had grasped that education matters, I got my first job. A university department hired me to work in a new tutoring program. Along with different partners, other students and I took the role of English Composition I tutors for several freshmen classes. This job made me conscious of the importance of acting on the obstacles that life presents.

From there on, I have been working and studying full time simultaneously. I have learned how to balance my responsibilities, I have become more adult each day (even if my physical appearance says otherwise). I have been able to provide economically to my household. I bought my first car and was able to make my mother a permanent U.S. resident.

Even while the obstacles were immense, my parents have done everything they can for my siblings and me. My father’s deportation made me see life from a different perspective. I found the courage to stop relying on everyone else and to keep fighting for my goals. It is time for me now to take my next big step and start living a life beyond school, no matter how frightening it seems.