My personal experiences as a first-generation and low-income student have created an understanding of the difficulty behind attaining higher education for marginalized individuals. In my life, I have met amazing teachers, mentors, and peers that have moved mountains to support my academic journey. Reflecting upon my experiences, I realized how impactful my support systems were. I grew up in a community that faced persistent economic, political, and social instability. I along with a majority of my community were presently oriented, just trying to survive the day. It was difficult to imagine a life outside of our reality. A life that we could freely challenge ourselves without the worry of financial burdens, social discrimination, or legal prejudice. Therefore, many individuals lost the opportunity to grow their potential. The feeling of hopelessness plagued my community. I remember when I felt challenged to drop out when I was in high school. My father had recently been deported, my mother lost her job, and it was up to my siblings and I to handle the further financial responsibilities. Guilt followed me through every class. At the time, I believed that my family and I were better off if I had dropped out. As I managed more personal responsibilities, I strayed away from my academic obligations. Eventually, I met with my advisor, and I shared what I was going through. Afterward, he asked me to imagine who, what, and where I would be without education. I realized that I would have been like anyone else in my neighborhood, either precariously present-oriented, incarcerated, or deceased. I wanted to experience a different future, one that was not expected of me. Now that I am halfway through college, I know that higher education is possible, but I want to ensure my community knows as well. Since my freshman year, I have been a student worker under TRIO, a college program that serves as a support system for first-generation, low-income, and disabled students. My experience at TRIO has clarified my passion in supporting marginalized students in their college journey. I discovered that culturally-inclusive support is needed for underrepresented students to receive an equitable experience in attaining higher education. I would like to help others like others helped me. I want to become a personal, academic, and professional resource for marginalized students as a culturally-inclusive, college program coordinator and director one day.

My name is Iván Robles Barrera, and I am a first-generation full-time student at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University. I am currently going into my second year of college. Throughout my life, I have needed financial aid, scholarships, and other external resources to attend higher education, and without them, like millions of other students coming from low-income families, it would have been financially impossible to obtain the education I wanted. Unfortunately like many marginalized communities, there have always been barriers to our greatest endeavors. For my parents, it was the poverty, violence, and corruption that encompassed their country. As for my siblings, it was their legal statuses as DACA recipients that excluded them from receiving financial aid, in-state tuition, and other vital social benefits that made it difficult for them to pursue any post-secondary education. As a result, my siblings never got to reach their full potential and my parents never lived a second in peace. While living amongst disadvantaged communities, one isn’t exposed to all the resources and opportunities necessary to build an individual's potential. One’s perspective is ultimately limited by their environment. If one only sees injustice, violence, and poverty, they will believe that nothing else exists except for what they witnessed throughout their lives; It is unfortunate when this exact ignorance forces people to cut off the potential knowledge and power that they were meant for. It’s difficult. For myself, I had to leave my community in order to disarm my ignorance. I immersed myself in discomfort as I applied to a private, catholic institution. In which I discovered Jesuit values and teachings, specifically towards social justice. As time went on, I realized that issues that were prevalent in my community weren’t as prominent in my new environment. The conversations of parents getting deported, rent being due, and anxiety increasing no longer came up, but I knew they were still alive somewhere else. I then realized, my community and their stories live in individuals such as myself, and I must utilize my new resources and privilege to help others find their way to their full potential, whether it be academically, socially, or mentally. One of my first experiences that allowed me to fulfill my desire to help was a school organization named Advocacy Club. Through the Advocacy Club, we had the opportunity as students to advocate for social issues that were prevalent within our society and communities. One of the most prominent campaigns within Advocacy Club was the “Dream-On Campaign”, in which undocumented, DACA, and mixed-status students shared their experiences living under their circumstances. Not only was I able to advocate for my own community, but I was able to transform my trauma into action. Throughout the years, the Dream-On Campaign has been partnered by ALIENTO, a grassroots organization dedicated to youth leadership and immigration advocacy. With Aliento’s help, The Advocacy Club members learned how to organize meetings with representatives, present their stories in legislators’ offices, and bring out meaningful conversations. Even though Aliento and Advocacy Club’s effort to pass legislation was unsuccessful in the past years, there looks to be hope. As of last year, SB 1070, a new senate bill, was introduced and passed. The bill would allow for in-state tuition, scholarships, and financial aid for undocumented students; the goal that Aliento and Advocacy Club maintained years ago. Through persistent effort, this November in Arizona, SB 1070 will be eligible for the public to vote on. Although, I found that there must be a collective effort to break down the legal, social, and financial barriers that keep marginalized communities from succeeding. With my Political Science degree, I hope to learn the legal structures and foundations necessary to efficiently criticize legislation and create more equitable opportunities for our country and its individuals. I plan to become involved with public policy or other fields of government to contribute to the representation of marginalized communities. My trauma has stuck with me my whole life. From the second I woke up, to the hour I fell. It began as the roots of my suffering and became my aspiration to work. It is my heaven and hell. It is my blind guide in a dark room. I hope to not kill it, but rather suppress it, in order for my trauma to witness my success. I dream of my community embracing their identities, traumas, and other facets of themselves to flourish beyond their imaginations; just like how The Advocacy Club and Aliento revealed the power to me.

Hello, my name is Iván Robles Barrera, and I am a first-generation full-time student at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University. Through generational trauma, mental health issues have been passed from my poverty-stricken ancestors to my current low-income, immigrant family. From a young age, I grew up with an absent father, deported on several occasions, and a hard-working mother who was constantly making ends meet. I had no direction to understand my emotions nor life whatsoever. Due to a lack of guidance, I followed my environment. I observed how individuals avoided their emotions to finish their priorities. I witnessed as they numbed their trauma with illicit substances to live another day. And I embodied my mother’s lack of self-care to protect others. As I grew, so did my ignorance. I would choose to believe that I was happy living a life that was so busy that I had no time to think about my feelings. Although externally I was fine, I knew I was prolonging the progress of my internal healing. In high school, I would soon learn the value of my emotions, and the power of my story. Through written assignments, advocacy campaigns, and open mic events, I would lean into discomfort in order to best understand what made me feel. Whether it was describing my community issues, childhood, or specific trauma, I realized I was slowly but surely transforming my trauma into action. During this, I learned to be more vulnerable with others. I am human, as we all are, and likewise, I came to understand that I am not perfect, and I don’t have to be. As coming from a first-generation family, my parents, unfortunately, did not have the privilege to focus on their well-being due to their urgent need to flee their native country, Mexico. Due to this, my family did not understand the importance of emotional support, instead, they focused only on physical survival. At the time, we understood that as long as we had food, shelter, and clothes, we were okay. But soon, I grew to resent being just “okay”. I resented the feeling because it did not account for the depression, anxiety, and trauma I faced. Due to a lack of recognition of one’s well-being within my family’s definition of “okay”, it made me feel isolated with feelings unknown to anyone else. I was supposed to be okay, but I did not feel okay. After understanding the importance of reflection, self-recognition, and patience, I reclaimed the tears I once shedded for my internal wounds, and transformed them into power. I used my past for others to understand a new perspective, and created more areas of vulnerability within my community. After this discovery in my journey, I recognized that I was not that different from those around me. I realized that we all have doubts, fears, and traumas that form us the way that we are. But it is vital that we allow it to build us up instead of allowing it to tear, not just, us apart, but also our relationships as well. I am grateful for my progress. I got to discover the silver lining to my trauma, and regain the power it once took from me. Although, it’s been a collective effort between both working on myself, and helping others work on them, especially my own family. Now that I am 19-years-old, I see that my family are my emotional twins, even my own 50-year-old father and 49-year-old mother. I see that our patterns are the same. I can go a week avoiding friends, family, and school until I feel better, and my father can go a whole week drinking or isolated in his room until he feels better. My mother can give up her last dollar or pair of shoes, and I will give up any part of myself to make someone’s life easier. My parents told me, specifically my father, that I am their reflection in the mirror. Throughout the years, I understood it to not follow my father’s footsteps, but now I am understanding it to not follow my parents’ mistakes. I know who I will become if I never heal, and my father is the reminder that if one doesn’t take the time to work on themselves, they’ll be running from their trauma forever. Even though I have been able to make healthier habits and break routines, I know it is only fair that I return my knowledge to those who needed it most; to those who never had the time or chance to think about their well being; my parents and others like them. Mental health and illness lives amongst us. It is not shameful nor strange to struggle with one’s mental health, and instead, should be promoted within all our communities, especially disadvantaged, marginalized environments. Change doesn’t have to be all at once, and that too, is okay. As long as there is a consistent effort towards understanding oneself and their trauma, everything else will work out. Take care of your mind, and your mind will take care of you.