How I Became Involved

My parents were always involved in my education one way or another ever since I can remember, they always pushed me to do better and thought me the importance of doing good in school. My freshman in high school they attended a parent conference where they heard about a program specifically designed to help students from my community get to college, at the time they didn’t know how this program operated but it didn’t take long before they signed me up for it. I didn’t have much of a choice; all I knew at the time was that now I had to attend Saturday school at the University of Southern California (USC) and every Wednesday I will have to meet with a college counselor during lunch time.  As you all can imagine at the time I was not very pleased with the idea of having my weekends reduced to only Sundays nor having to give up my lunchtime once a week.

            This program that was going to “take away” so much of my free time was called TRIO USC Upward Bound. Upward Bound is just another branch of the eight TRIO programs I talked about in my last blog. This program is specifically designed to help high school students from low-income communities graduate and attend four-year universities. At the time I thought the program was a waist of time, every Saturday from that point forward I would have to attend Saturday school to review material covered during the week in each one of my classes. Even though as a student athlete it was draining at times as time passed by I realized it wasn’t really all that bad, they helped me keep my grades up throughout all the four years I was in high school and I was making new friends from each of the different high schools that participated in the program.

            Upward Bound served me as an introduction to not only the TRIO programs but to a demanding academic life. Every summer we would have the opportunity to live in the dorms at USC and take college level courses, which was with no doubt one of the best experiences I had throughout high school. As a 15 year old I got to experience what it was like to live on a college campus and I think that was my motivation to graduate and move away from home. There is no doubt that Upward Bound played a huge role to help me get to where I am today, it was definitely not a waste of time and I am thankful for having the opportunity of being part of that program.