Amy

BTSV CLass of 2019 - University of Redlands

As a child, I dreamed of working at McDonald’s. Free french fries and Happy Meal toys sounded pretty awesome! My classmates wanted to hurry up and finish high school so they could start working. Sadly, that was the final goal for most of us. We didn’t know we had any other options after high school.

My parents attended school in Mexico and didn’t have the chance to finish college. Today, my dad is a truck driver and my mom works in cafes. They have always had this belief that I could go farther, accomplish more. I wasn’t so sure.

Then Breakthrough happened. It opened my eyes to the world of college. Before joining Breakthrough, the only colleges I knew about were the ones in Mexico. I didn’t even know that Stanford was in California until Breakthrough took us there on a field trip! After taking exciting biology and chemistry classes at Breakthrough, I dream of becoming a doctor. I’ll need to overcome my fear of blood to get there – but I know I can do it, just like I have to overcome my fear of being the first one in my family to go to college. Stronger than all of these fears, is my belief that anything can happen because I am college bound.