Caminos de Éxito: The Jose Prado Scholarship

My journey as a first-generation Hispanic has come with a lot of challenges. One major challenge is one every first gen has which is financial concerns. Towards the end of my high school years, I started to question if my family could afford for me to go to college. Although my parents assure me we will figure it out I know it will be a struggle. Another additional challenge I have had is my parents wanting high grades this has shaped a major part of me. Whenever I saw a grade go under a %95 I would start to panic and try finding ways to get it up. My role model in my life has to be my dad. He is always working and finding other ways to make money. You will nearly never see him sitting down he is always up working on something around the house or working at a family member's house. He works in construction which is hard. I hope to grow up like him and work as hard as him. He has been doing this job ever since he came to the US when he was 18 years old. He was able to come here with nothing and now we have our own house. This is why I know if he did it with nothing I can do it as well as well with the support of my family. One major hardship I had was the pandemic. My first year of High School was online. I found it very hard to concentrate in class and pay attention to the lecture. On top of that, I also had to help my mom out with my little sister since she does not know the ins and outs of technology I was constantly getting up and helping her out missing part of the lecture which led to me being confused at times and not knowing what I was supposed to be doing. One way I overcame this challenge was for once in my life I had to start asking questions I am not the type of person to raise my hand and ask for help. I had to be okay with unmuting and asking many questions during class which was way out of my comfort circle. Freshman year was the year that killed my GPA and had the lowest grades because I found it hard to speak up as an introverted person. I see education as a hidden power. The normal person does not know how powerful it really can be. But give education to the right person and that person will be able to achieve great things in life. I feel like I'm that type of person I know that knowing something can help. If it's not at the moment that one thing that you learned can make a great impact in the future when it's used correctly. Education and knowledge can impact a lot of lives. A smart person can invent a very creative product that can help a lot of people at once can change how life works. All you have to do is look around and you will see how knowledge changed life. The cars we drive were created by a person who was educated and they put that education to work and created something great that impacted the human race we use them every day to get around with ease. education is very powerful in the right hands of a person.