My Journey

I must say this is very different for me I have never shared my stories or anything with anyone and now I am about to post in a place where all can see... I have been writing and writing rough drafts and felt like everything I wrote would be judged, or my ideas would be taken as someone else's... So I am toughened up and ready to do this. Ha Ha. Sorry this is long I express my self in a deep way that can't fit in a short paragraph.

I come from a hard background but have learned how to take the negative that was in my life and look at it in a new way, positive ways of viewing the bad things that have happened to me has made me who I am and I wouldn't change my past if I could. If I changed my past I wouldn't be who I am today. I wouldn't have a voice of empathy but a voice of sympathy. I would rather have a knowing how it feels so that when someone talks to me I am able to sincerely say \"I am sorry for your pain.\" Let that person know that they are not alone. I want to help people and change the world to view things a different way.

So... Who am I and where am I from? I am from Las CrucesNew Mexico U.S.A. I am a 30-year-old single mother of a three-year-old. I am an ambitious go getter that doesn’t stop until I achieve my goal that I am trying to reach. I am a survivor of a childhood that is to long for this posting. One day I might share what I have gone through but today is not that day. I have lost a son and the day I said good bye, was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I now have a little girl and she is the reason I a m alive. She is the light of my life and sometimes I don’t think I deserve such a blessing in my life. She is the only one that told me Happy Birthday on my Birthday she woke up and automatically said it. The crazy part is I never told her when my birthday was… I cried…

I am a college student and have realized that colleges are not accommodating to every one; which is where the next question comes into play.

What is an issue women face in my community? Single mom’s do not have the support they need to stay in college. Housing is not available at all schools for single mom’s, food for all students is a big one, and the food they have available at the big universities are not healthy.

What are some actions I am already taking to change the circumstances? I came up with a plan while attending DACC in Las Cruces NM and I took it to the student government office and the lady changed everything to a point it was no longer the program I had hopes for. It was to give support for many students. Here I will talk about the single mother’s portion of my Idea. I called my program feeding a starving student. With all the ideas I had I had to put them under one program instead of hundreds of different clubs. The idea was to allow many different opportunities to support students, open many different doors, it was to form diversity and bring us all closer, study groups, having home cooked meals, babysitting with a way there was never money to be exchanged, encouragement and forming a support system for students. These are important factors for a single mom to have, college students are broke and can’t afford a whole lot of anything so the program was geared towards helping out each other coming together. I am tired of hearing about all the racism in this world, I think actions are stronger than words. If we want to pass on to our kids that racism is not ok, then we need to show them what not being racist looks like.

These students go thousands of miles away for school sometimes and they don’t have the physical support they need. If this program that I have were to actually come into play it would spread like wild fire. If it raised the rates of graduate students and lowered the rates of drop out students, made students feel more welcome, help them feel like they could survive outside of the world they are used to. Let me put it this way I wrote a poem about the college letters they send out and I would like to share it.

Letter from University to a single mom:

Dear Student we are glad to inform you that you have been excepted into our university.

That doesn’t seem right... let’s try this…

Dear single mother of a three-year-old daughter we are glad to inform you that you have been excepted into our prestigious community college (Right here is where your letter turns into the end of a medication commercial) Where we offer no help to find day care, if food is a problem then you are more than likely to do without. Our meal programs are overpriced and is ONLY offered to “REAL” university college students. Our classes, books and supplies that you will need for your class are overpriced as well only because we know you need them and can’t pass the class without it. We extra over price when things are a MUST have for a course. By the time you are done gathering the things you will need, you will have little to no money at all to survive on. You will probably be $15,000 in student loan debt by your third semester. This money still won’t be enough to cover all your expenses, so you will have to get a job to make ends meet. If the putter car you drive needs repairs, we offer no recourses to help you fix it. Studying will be a challenge and homework 100% complete and to obtain a good GPA over your course of studying at our prestigious community college probably not likely to happen. Support groups are not offered and even though we are a “community college” we do not involve the community in any way other than to take their money. The words Community College means nothing more than: You are a single mom or poor kid that did not receive a scholarship to a real university. We clam to be cheaper but let’s be real I mean a few dollars cheaper than that one over them!

But hey welcome to the “broke person funding community college where you are 100% on your own. Remember we open no doors and offer no support at all. So we hope you enjoy it here at our community of BULLSHITTER alert! While you fill up on sugar and call it a meal, because your time is precious and not a minute to waste. If you are a student who really has to study, has a harder time comprehending the material and if you dare took the time to make yourself a healthy meal it will cause; The domino effect. Daycare closes at 6, you will be 3000 miles away from your family so you can say goodbye to any kind of calling for help. So you will have to stay up late and study more to maintain at least a B average.

You will wake up in the mornings after just closing your eyes, probably around three hours of sleep is what you will obtain, you will probably wake up 20min late. The dominos effect will take place, you will have enough time to put on your clothes and brush part of your hair, wake up your child get him feed, while brushing your teeth and making coffee, you’ll also be brushing out the rest of your hair and finishing up the homework that is due later that day. You will skip breakfast, and tell yourself to remember to grab a pop tart on your way out the door. You will get your child dressed, brush his teeth and run a comb through his hair and out the door you go. You will forget to grab your coffee you had just nooked in the microwave and yep you will forget your pop tart too. So here at our community college you will sit in class and your stomach will start to rumble from hunger pains so you then won’t be able to concentrate, and do to the lack of sleep you will have you will struggle to stay awake. You will miss the assignments dates that are told to you in class. You will have so much on your plate you will forget to look at your syllabus. Oops you will miss those assignments your grade will be a big fat 0! Let’s not forget if you are a single disabled mother we will claim we offer help, but if your teacher doesn’t follow through with the agreement they sign well then let me tell you what happens with this.

We will give you a contract to give to your teachers they will sign it and not even look others will tell you they need to look it over and they will return it to you the next class. Teachers will see if they can pull a fast one and you will tell them “according to my contract...” Their reply will always be the same let me see what is on your contract and then talk with my boss about it. You will wait patiently every class for the teacher to say that you can do what the contract had said. This doesn’t happen though so you will bring it to our attention, we will simply turn it around and make it look like your fault. We will ask “why didn’t you bring it sooner?” or you might be too scared because you think the teacher will grade you badly, we tell you they are not allowed to... Umm hello how would we know. During the second half of the semester you will not no longer feel the need to step into the disabilities office because you got the hint that we really do not care. We only have this because the law makes us!

You will take it up with the vice president of our university but here is the thing single disabled mother of a three-year-old child you will realize that he will merely call a meeting and make it seem as if he is on your side. Even though you have clear documentation from doctors and our school stating your needs. Here at our community college we will write the same thing in your file stating it was your fault. So know that in the end we stand by our teachers.

So on second thought single disabled mother of a three-year-old child… We know you are trying to better yourself to give your child what she needs but maybe you should think about giving up and realize your dreams are now dead and can never come true. Go get a job flipping burgers making minimum wage and realize you dreams died on your daughters conceiving date. Because here at our community college we will make it harder than hell. Have a nice f****ng life.

Should this be the new letter format they send out to the women today? If not, then why not offer a program that helps those who want to attend college and make better lives for the kids of our future?I must say this is very different for me I have never shared my stories or anything with anyone and now I am about to post in a place where all can see... I have been writing and writing rough drafts and felt like everything I wrote would be judged, or my ideas would be taken as someone else's... So I am toughened up and ready to do this. Ha Ha.

I come from a hard background but have learned how to take the negative that was in my life and look at it in a new way, positive ways of viewing the bad things that have happened to me has made me who I am and I wouldn't change my past if I could. If I changed my past I wouldn't be who I am today. I wouldn't have a voice of empathy but a voice of sympathy. I would rather have a knowing how it feels so that when someone talks to me I am able to sincerely say \"I am sorry for your pain.\" Let that person know that they are not alone. I want to help people and change the world to view things a different way.