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My parents grew up really, really poor. My dad, he worked for the Long Beach Naval
Ship Yard as an Equal Opportunity Specialist, so he—and my mom stayed home and watched
us. We were lucky she was able to do that; but he had to work and he didn't go to college
'till he was older. So once, you know, with me, I didn't go to college after high school,
so my parents were really disappointed just because they gave us everything and my dad
thought "Well that's what you're supposed to do, like, she knows" and well that wasn't
really what I wanted to do. And so I just decided years later, I had a daughter, I worked
ten years, and you know, it's just a struggle and I realized I had to have an education
to back-up everything and one day, my dad saw in the paper that they were opening up
a school here in Ontario, and the name was Ameritas, and I was like, "Well, what's
it about?" and he said, "well, it's here for Latinos" and I'm like, "really?",
like, that's just like awesome because being a Latino and you just don't hear of schools
like that. We came in, I talked to the counselor and I was like, "this is the school for
me". What I love about more is like, I feel like it's a family. For a long time, I didn't
even know what my purpose was, and like, I feel like, I know, like now I know what I
wanna do in life. I just wanna see where I'm gonna be in a couple of years and if i—if
I can be that person, you can do it with me. I encourage all of you to, you know, go online.
Find the phone number, call Ameritas. There'll be somebody out there answering the phone
call and will tell you to come in, or you can just walk in—that's what I did. I
just walked in, and I was signed in within about 30-40 minutes. I have my financial aid
plan set up, I had the classes I was gonna take, what major I was gonna do. So why not
do it? I mean, it's just exciting. And, overall, what I like the most is that you
can feel like a family. You can come and don't be embarrassed if you speak only Spanish,
there'll be somebody here to help you. They'll speak to you in Spanish or however you prefer.
Bienvenidos a nuestra familia.