By DAN HARTZELL
I am fortunate to teach at Coast Union High School where I hope to change the lives of students for the better. In late April, I embarked on a college tour to help students who were undecided about their college choices. Students attending this college tour had received acceptance letters to schools that they had only visited on websites and were having trouble committing to one. Many students in our school have the opportunity to visit potential colleges with the help of their families, but these students did not, and most were the first generation in their family to be accepted into a four-year college.
The students visited University of California Irvine and then California State University Fullerton, where they were greeted by CSU Fullerton Freshman, and by Coast Alum Daniel Fabela, who took the students on a tour of the classrooms and spoke about his freshman year experience. The students met with other alumni, Michelle Acosta, Crystal Fabela and Andres Quintero who are currently attending CSU Fullerton. Andres, who transferred from Cuesta College, spoke about what it was like to be a transfer student. The alumni talked about college life, and how to balance mental health, jobs, and school demands. Other topics included living in dorms, filing for financial aid through FAFSA, and navigating being away from your family and hometown.
The following day we toured the University of California Riverside. We met up with UCR Freshman and Coast alum Jenny Mondragon. She gave us a tour around the campus, showed us some of her classrooms, and even showed us her dorm room. The students expressed that the most valuable part of the trip was seeing the campus in person and talking with the alumni from Coast who had already made the leap to go away to college. They were so happy to have the opportunity to ask questions and have conversations with alumni who were in their exact same shoes just a few years ago.
Estrella Merced, a senior at Coast, talked about how hard it is to make a decision to go away to college. Estrella summed up the value of the college tour, “Trying to decide what college to go to is hard, especially when you don’t have parents who have gone to college to help you know what to look for when deciding. Seeing the campus in person allowed us to decide if we could picture ourselves there this upcoming fall. We also got to talk to students from our own high school. They explained that it was not just an educational opportunity, but also a chance to explore yourself as a person and meet others with similar interests. They talked about their struggles and how they persevered and how we would do the same as long as we continued to work hard to make college a reality. This experience has been eye opening and gratifying and has definitely helped us choose what schools we want to go to.”
