WRITING PROJECT 3

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ALEXIS ABRIL ALDANA, HOST:

Entering into a new environment can be very challenging and difficult at times. Going from a simple high school surrounding to a large and scheduled university can be overwhelming for most incoming students. Alumni from ASU are good sources for stories and information about education and life in a university. Raquel Aldana is a professor of law in California, Silvia Aldana is Global Project manager at American Express, and Abel Aldana is a Marine and the Manager of Floral Supply Syndicate.

A. A. ALDANA: When you started going to ASU, what were your feelings about going to a bigger school?

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R. ALDANA: It was a drawback because it’s a double edges sword. On the one hand, bigger suggests more access and as a public institution I think access is really important. So in that sense I guess I am committed to the ideal of providing access to Arizona residents. On the other hand, it also suggests that it’s less selective and that when you are studying there the size of the school can make it more difficult to get more individualized attention and resources. For me, I navigated that by entering into the honors program.

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S. ALDANA: I don’t really think I thought about it. To be honest I was young and immature and so I just went to college because I thought that was what you were supposed to do when you graduated from high school especially because of Raquel (Silvia’s sister). She pushed and said that you need to go to college and get an education.

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A. ALDANA: At first I didn’t like it. It was overwhelming. You know, one time you’re popular the
next nobody knows you. And the classes were just too big. A lot of people in those classes.

A. A. ALDANA: What were your plans?

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R. ALDANA: Yeah. I mean I thought law school was always in the back of my mind. So I knew that I was going to go to law school and so I majored in English literature and Spanish literature because I wanted to learn more about my culture, I actually got two B.A.’s by accident. I think it was preparing me to go to law school.

S. ALDANA: I didn’t! I was extremely immature. I again went [be]cause that is what I thought I was supposed to do and so I registered for classes and I had no plans. Honestly, if I had it all to do over again, I wish that I had more understanding of what I wanted to do. I don’t think you need to know what you want to do at that age, but I think I needed to understand it more. I didn’t have to make my decision of what I wanted to do for the rest of my life right there and then. I didn’t know what to do.

A. ALDANA: I wanted to get a degree in computers. I’ve always been pretty good with them. So I figured I’d go that route.

A. A. ALDANA: Why did you decide this/the path/major/steps to take in order to achieve your goal(s)?

R. ALDANA: Because I needed to be a good writer in law. Although I guess there was also a part of me that might do a PhD instead of law and I loved literature. What changed my mind about pursuing a PhD path had to do with the fact that literature is fiction and I saw to many problems in the real world and I felt that literature solved no problems in any pragmatic way. I think it’s very healthy for the soul for people to read and it is very good for society to do that. But I couldn’t see how it would make any difference for poor people who many of them can’t even read.  So that kind of solidified my commitment to law and not literature.

S. ALDANA: I moved majors a lot. I started with psychology, then I moved to anthropology, and then I did business and then I did medicine. I think it goes back to the first question, that’s the problem with the big school, is that I didn’t know what I was doing and I didn’t have any support system to tell me, to get me focused. Not that imp saying people need to tell you what to do, I honestly didn’t know what I was doing so I kept taking all of these classes. It wasn’t like there was a support place where I could go to and say I’m really confused, how should I go about doing this, so I just took classes and registered them. You’re kind of on your own.

A. ALDANA: I’ve always been pretty good dealing with computers since the TRS 80 model. You know, I just figured I got really good with that one, move onto the Apples and then just became really good with them. So I wanted to get a degree in something that was interesting to me.

A. A. ALDANA: What were you feeling when you started? Or when did it hit you when things start to feel different?

R. ALDANA: Here’s a funny story. I think I was very insecure. When I got my grades from ASU, I didn’t know that in high school my grades were based on numbers and in college, grades are based on letters. And when I first got my first report card I was looking at the numbers not the letters so when I looked at the numbers all of my courses were either three credits or four credits. And I thought that I had got three’s and four’s and I cried and cried and cried because I thought I had done better and I went to speak to Upward Bound because I was so ashamed that I had done so poorly. So I showed my report card to one of my mentors, and she said what are you talking about you have all A’s. And I was like what?! I go, I don’t, look, it’s a three. And she goes that’s not your grade your grade is this letter. It’s all A’s. I didn’t think I had gotten all A’s. I could not imagine that I had gotten all A’s. I expected B’s because I thought college was supposed to be  much harder and I thought I couldn’t really compete at an A level as I had done in high school but after that I was like, oh yeah this is a piece of cake. (LAUGHTER)

S. ALDANA: I think a lot of it was probably confusion. Not really understanding the purpose. I think I found myself losing focus and I’d be like oh I don’t have to go to this class, plus I was commuting and I would get up in the morning like we don’t have a test, and they don’t take roll call, so I would just not go to class.

A. ALDANA: they weren’t really different. I basically knew what I was expecting. Once I went into the computer classes, it was basically what I expected. I knew quite a bit of it.

A. A. ALDANA: What did you look forward to?

R. ALDANA: I liked learning frankly. I liked the classes that were challenging. I liked the honors classes the best. I was a commuter student and I didn’t really relate to the party school attitude. I was never a part of it number one, I felt like I was going to a different university because I was not really connected to the traditional mainstream. I worked a lot of jobs. There are some good professors and I feel that I taped into those professors and I was very lucky.

S. ALDANA: Honestly I didn’t.

A. ALDANA: Getting out of there. You know graduating and then getting a job. Doing what I love computers.

A. A. ALDANA: What advice could you impart on me, for my ASU experience and education?

R. ALDANA: Well you’re like me going to be doing a commuter experience. That’s why I actually wanted you to go to a different university. (UoA) One, it would get you away from home so you had to engage the full college experience and because it is a smaller school. I think that would be healthy. So I would say to you, don’t make the same mistakes that I made.  One of the best things I did was take a job at ASU and so I worked tutoring students. My sub-community was that and Upward Bound. I would recommend that you get some kind of job on campus that will get you more connected. You should make deeper connections with professors.

S. ALDANA: I have a lot of advice. Because I think that I’m someone that I could say classically did everything completely wrong.

(R. ALDANA: that’s not true.)

As I got older I regret a lot of my choices. For me, I didn’t have the full experience or real understanding of why you go to college. But also it’s a path to becoming an adult. I think commuting was the worst idea. I wished I would have lived on campus. I wish I would have joined clubs. I wished I wouldn’t have worked, I worked a lot. There’s to aspects, I think you have to be ingrained to be with other students that are going through the same experience. You join networks and you also party. That’s the whole ritual you’ll never get to do it again. And now that I am older if I could go back and redo it and just get awesome grades and still enjoy, I would have done it completely different. Education is extremely important.

A. ALDANA: make sure you do your homework. Make sure you stay on top of things.  Do the best you can. It’s pretty expensive so, every class, make it count. In the end you only get out of it what you put into it. That’s the best advice I could give you.

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