‘’Being the first person to go college felt great because I was going to a new life experience.’’

Ivan Diaz

Cynthia getting ready to go to her classes.

Interview Audio

Cynthia Diaz is currently a student at  Cal State Dominguez Hills. 

She’s the first person in the family to go to college and she is facing many challenges while she’s there but she is still continuing to learn and do her best.

With dreams of becoming an ultrasound technician, she stays up all night studying and typing essays.

She is trying to keep her brothers on track and doesn’t want them to get bad grades. Every time they have bad grades she pushes them to stay after school and raise their grades.

 

 

Transcript:

Andrew Diaz (AD): Hello, my name is Andrew and today I’m going to be interviewing my older sister Cynthia Diaz. Cynthia how was it like being the first person in the family to go to college.
Cynthia Diaz (CD): Being the first person to college felt great because I was going to a new life experience. I was excited for meeting new people and finding out the new challenges I was gonna go through, the new classes with new people I didn’t know and it was gonna be a new experience because it was like starting over.
AD: Did you enjoy your new experience?
CD: Did I enjoy my new experience? In the beginning I didn’t because I was not making friends and it was harder to get an idea of how the whole schedule was going to work. It was harder finding the counselors that can help me get into my classes and most of the times when you go ask for help those people tend to think about other people first and they tell you come back later o call in this time but they never answer, so its like you have to keep insisting to be out of there.
AD: Did things end up getting better?
CD: Did things ended up getting better? Sort of because they were giving me the help but not all the help I that I wanted.
AD: What were you studying for in collage?
CD: I was studying to become an ultrasound technician.
AD: What does that do?
CD: To be an ultrasound technician you have to use different types of machines that your able to do, you put gel in a women’s stomach and you see inside of her stomach you see how her baby starts growing through 9 months. It’s something cool that I don’t think most people wanna do but I was exited for seeing how a baby grows inside a women. from going from a tiny tiny little bean to a baby that comes out to be 7 to 9 pounds out of a women’s stomach.
AD: What college did you go to, to study all these things?
CD:  The college that I went to was Cal State Dominguez Hills. 
AD: Did you like it their? [inaudible]
CD: Did I like it their yea I like the campus I like the activities going on, um they have a lot of programs you can join you can meet new people from different grade levels that talk about they talk about the classes their in and the stuff their studying about. they tell you here and there.
AD: How long were each of your classes?
CD: Each class was about 45 minutes their not long but in each class you either get to read and take notes or you just get to see a professor teach up front and talk the whole day and you just take notes and it not the best experience but you try to make the most out of what their trying to teach you and its hard sometimes when to comes to exams because in the beginning they may teach you how to do a problem and then in a test they may throw you something else you haven’t studied before so it was difficult.
AD: ugh What classes were you learning in college?
CD: Um, In collage I had to take English 110 English 111 and if i talk about English 111 it’s something you don’t go through in high school [inaudible through rest of what she was saying]
AD: Was that class hard for you?
CD: It wan’t hard because I had a great teacher she had office hours and when I had questions I would go to her and when I had different ideas of what to write I would tell them to her and she would help me develop my ideas and I would go to her so she could check my papers like 2 to 3 times that way I know I would be certain I would get a good grade because most of the professors there some of them can be mean some of them can be very, they can tell you very little about what to write and some of them can talk about a lot about what to write. So I really like my teacher. She was great. She would help me out a lot.
AD: She was your favorite teacher?  
CD: If I could say that yea she was one of my favorite teacher she was very nice and every time i needed the help she was there to help me and she helped me out a lot I was able to pass the test I got a good average through out the whole class because I was getting good grades and most of the things she was doing to help us get good grades in the test was reading about poetry, reading long paragraphs finding mistakes in grammar that way we would practice in our own  writing and in the homework she would leave us certain topics that we would have to write 2-3 pages and then we would go in class work in groups and correct each others papers and that way we would help one another and we’ll become better.
AD: Did you frequently go to her office hours every week?
CD: Yea, I went a lot and she would help me a lot like I said every time I needed help she would be there and it wasn’t only me going for help it was a lot of student because she was able to give us the confidence to come into her office hours and give us the help we needed.
AD: Is that why me and my brother get a bad grade you get mad and tell us to fix it?
CD: Yea, because in collage you don’t get that opportunity that you have now in middle school or high school. Because in middle school you can go to the teachers’ office hours retake a test redo a test and she’d give you a more point average and in college your not able to do that because its like you have a essay you do it you get certain help from the teacher your able to fix it but sometimes it could either be a good point average or you just get a A or a C average because in collage you do not have [inaudible confusing] 
AD: I think that’s all thank you for the great interview and that all.