Hello, my name is Lucero Mendez. I am 25 years old and was born and raised in the Yakima Valley. I am currently a college student getting my Associate’s degree at Yakima Valley College. With my degree, I hope to transfer to a four-year university to obtain a master’s in psychology and become a school psychologist.
I want to use my experience of working in the mental health field for the past five years to help advocate for my community, especially those who are minorities.
Coming from a household with a single Hispanic mother, I have faced many barriers in pursuing my education. After graduating high school, I had to teach myself how to drive due to my mother being busy with her full-time job to provide for our family. This resulted in me getting into a car accident, leaving me with post-traumatic stress disorder. My mental health forced me to put my educational dreams on hold as I dealt with my PTSD through counseling and relearned how to drive again, overcoming my fears. After that, I was able to get a full-time job and worked enough to be financially independent and enrolled in college.
I chose to enroll in community college at YVC because it felt like a welcoming environment due to it being local with people who may come from similar life experiences as me. However, my financial situation left me to face paying for tuition out of pocket as well as contributing to household bills. In addition, my full-time job disqualified me from receiving any financial aid, making paying for tuition, books, and any other curriculum for my classes extremely difficult.
I believe free community college would lift the weight off my shoulders and allow me to concentrate more on my academic education and flourish in my classes. I would be grateful to go to college for free, giving me more time to participate in my community rather than working full-time. Based on my experiences, free community colleges would transform our small valley, which is mainly Latino, by giving students more career pathways to pursue.
Lucero Mendez, Yakima