Thank you for taking the time to create this scholarship, it's truly a blessing! Attached is a video to apply for the Carlos F. Garcia Muentes Scholarship. With gratitude, Alejandra Orozco Herrera

Alejandra Orozco Herrera. The letter "j" in my name, Alejandra, forces your tongue to meet the top of your mouth in a very particular way. For that reason, it holds a particular difficulty to some people to say who are not very familiar with Hispanic names and pronunciation. But strangely, I love the idea of kindly telling people (when it's appropriate) how to correctly pronounce it. My mom has told me the irony of my name and I truly believe it. Ever since she was a teenage girl, she loved the name Alejandra. She thought it was beautiful and she decided that if she ever had a girl, she would name her Alejandra. A couple of years later, after being in two relationships, she met my dad while working at a bank. To her surprise his name was Alejandro and it didn't take long for them to become lovers. I was their first born and she shared with my dad the ironic idea of her first baby girl's name, which of course, he pridefully agreed and accepted, thinking it was all a made-up story to convince him of my official name. I like to think that I'm Alejandra the Third but since I was born female, this title doesn't apply to me. I carry my name like a crown, with great pride, knowing it comes from my bloodline: my grandfather Alejandro Orozco Sr. He was a humble man from a ranch who owned land and grew crops. He was no ordinary rancher though. He was highly respected and known to be a person who put order in troublesome situations and the people insisted him to become the mayor of that small Mexican community. He was thankful but he rejected the offer because he wanted to focus on growing his crops and making business. I like to remind myself that I am a decendant of a person who held a strong character, of a humble leader that spoke loudly with his actions. My name is incredibly important to me because it symbolizes the merging of two families and the beginning of another generation. I feel like my name stands out as bold, elegant and strong within a generation who got named after artists, or very common and popular names of the late 1990's. I've never met someone in person who has the same name and last name as me, which I believe adds the power and essence of individuality and uniqueness to my name.

That was the last day in my homeland and I didn't even know it. I was too young to even question why we were spending the night with my tía and why dad wasn't here. My parents were fleeing the increased bloody violence of Juárez, México and with them they carried a hopeful prayer for a safer future for my sisters and I to grow up in. My dad spent a couple of months working with my tÍo in the state of Colorado, saving as much money as possible and sending just enough to my mom, back in the big, beautiful state of Texas to feed their three daughters. They decided to make El Paso, Texas our new nest and that brought challenges of all kinds: from home-owning, to job-positions, to schooling and medical services. I clearly remember our first "home." It was 2 white, mini mobile homes put together side by side and as a seven year old kid, it was exciting to see how the trailers maneuvered those two rectangles to align them correctly. Then came the part that has stuck with me forever: entering those torn-down mobile homes shocked me because back in México, we used to live in a two-story white house in the corner of pretty decent neighborhood, with a beautiful flower garden, a pool, a dog and a cat. The mobile homes needed a lot of repair, from broken windows, to the pipelines, to installing electricity to the huge hole on the kitchen floor were I could see the dirt, weeds and pebbles down below. I won't ever forget how my parents made all those problems seem like the most exciting opportunity to have fun. Since there was no electricity yet, my dad convinced my sister Andrea and I that we were the Sun's working partners, so when the Sun went down, he said it was the Sun's sleeping time and that we should do the same. So we did. Amazing tactics, I should add! The showers didn't work but the stove did, so my mom would sanitize the mopping container, boil water in a kettle and then fill up the container with warm water and we would take showers squatted down right beside the container, using very little shampoo, no conditioner and scooping water with a Disney cup to the top of our heads to rinse the foamy lather completely off our bodies. It became like a small game for Andrea and I, as we would count the seconds it took for the other to complete a full shower and it was usually a 300 second time mark. As the years passed, I realized that I had lived things that my classmates wouldn't understand but I knew that it had impacted the way that I viewed life. It made me profoundly grateful for everything I had for I knew in the back of my head that it had a price that was hardly worked for with sweat and tears. My childhood experiences molded in me the spirit of humility because I now know that everyone has a story and each story is valuable, unique and life-giving. Keeping these memories of the past alive help me propell to the future with fuller force for the reason that I don't take the sacrifice of my parents for granted and I believe that us dreamers, those of us who imagine wild possibilities, are the ones with enough grit to bring our dreams alive.

Access. Endless access to many forms of drugs, distractions and escapes is responsible from detaching us from reality and our own selves. And guess who is the first victim? The mind. The mind is susceptible to micro-changes in our environment and makes a decision to either store a dopamine-releasing action and repeat it as often as possible to "keep us safe" or to avoid change, growth and being uncomfortable. It was the summer of 2017 and a year had rolled by since I graduated high school. It was my choice to start working in my mom's business right after graduation and I had post-poned college for a year. No big deal...or so I thought. I looked at myself in the mirror one morning and for the first time in my life, I couldn't recognize myself. I had lost my identity to a systematic, undriven, goal-less and empty routine. No one really desires to be in that place but here are the first signs of that dark, heavy cloud that invaded my sky and revealed a part of me that I didn't know existed. First, my Iphone's camera roll was stuck in Christmas of 2016. I'm a big fan of taking pictures of everything, literally everything: sunsets, going grocery shopping, a pretty flower on the sidewalk and posting them on my social media. Next, I started napping for longer periods during the day and purposefully extended my time in bed on the weekends without a shower for multiple days. I have to say that I've never been a napper I'm constantly on my toes, spending time outdoors or actively engaging and moving my body. That summer I had no desire to get up, all I wanted to do was shut my eyes, and lay under the silent blankets. That consequently led to binge watching Netflix shows over midnight hours and waking up the next day to go to work uncharged and unmotivated. I left various pool party, birthday party, volunteering, coffee and brunch invitations on "read" or with the usual "thanks but I already have plans, maybe next time," response and a feeling of guilt, pity and emptiness that I would try to erase with more sleeping or a new TV show. My health goals, were nowhere to be found. That energetic and agile soccer player that left the field on my senior year of high school felt like another human I was talking about. I gained about 10 pounds and felt like the ugliest version of me. But it all continued with a vicious cycle of daily fast food pleasures. At this point I wanted nothing with no one. I didn't want anyone to see me nor I wanted to spend time with anyone else. I avoided my reflection at all costs. I felt that if I looked at myself for too long, I would end up breaking the mirror or try to attempt to hurt myself in a minimal way. Now, I must admit this was when I knew something had gotten out of hand. I had been raised in a loving, unified family and as the oldest of three sisters, I was always involved in their activities and felt the need to be there for them. But I had built a wall and distanced myself from my own family's events such as cookouts or evenings at the park. This was a new experience and I couldn't make sense of why I was here, my thoughts had no order and I started thinking in third person. I started thinking how well my family would be without me. How they didn't really need me and I could see how they would still go on about their day uninterrupted by my absence. Suicidal thoughts will creep between the root of the available mind. I can now see how we all operate in the formation of our everyday through our daily choice of thoughts and habits. I was able to restore some friendships that I mistreated for that period of time but not all. I fully integrated back with my family in the following months and felt so much love for them. I understood that as a family we were one and if one of went missing, we would all be incomplete. I renewed my self-image by allowing my self to step into the uncomfortable waters of losing that extra weight and adding a workout routine into my day. Being depressed as I now, is not only being sad. It was fairly easy to fake a smile or fake interest in a conversation but my mind was running on the sub-conscious self-harm train. Suicidal thoughts happened mostly during the night and thinking back on it now, it was a product of my hopelessness. I thought that I had no hope to get better and that the depression would only drive me in a deeper, darker hole. In my brain, all I could think about was: "I don't want to put my parents through a clinically-depressed daughter. They don't deserve this, they have loved me and supported me throughout my whole life. They won't understand and will tell me to brush it off or that it'll go away." Mental health is the core of all health and it's our life-time companion, let's shape it in a way that positively shapes us.