FEATURES | Vol. 25, Issue 1 | 1

Refresh Your Self Reliance, Reimagine Barriers

Over the summer, familiar faces Brittney Plascencia and Candice Uy filled a professional staff opening on their team at the Office of Student Engagement (OSE). Open to what her passion for serving students will ask of her, one visit to Yvette Aguilar’s lovingly decorated office brings a treasure trove of ways to get back to trusting one’s sense of direction.

It’s hard to imagine that many six year olds think years ahead, wielding a green crayon with an express purpose to write “Program Coordinator” next to the words “Dream Job” on their Student of the Month posters. Aguilar’s path to dreaming this dream might not be what is thought of as typical, but it is real and lived.

As a first-generation student amassing an impressive Bachelors in Liberal Arts and Masters in Applied Psychology to her name in just five and a half years after graduating high school, Aguilar discusses her changing understanding of barriers to her success in higher education.

“It was the fact that I was first-gen playing into […] I just didn’t feel like I was as smart,” Aguilar recalls.

Aguilar is upfront about her multitudes. Before graduating high school, school had yet to really speak to her and yet, at home, her parents supportively expected results. Going to college was no question; Aguilar was destined to unpause her mother’s dream of experiencing higher education.

At the University of La Verne, she made her way. Her job with work study at the Financial Aid office opened her eyes to a career of serving students in higher education. With no hesitation, she got in touch with folks at an appropriate Masters program at University of Southern California (USC) and the rest was history.

Until the record scratch came down quick and swift on this fairytale moment. Aguilar awoke from her calm assuredness, to the reality of walking around higher education within a first-generation’s perspective. She saw only limitations and setbacks where mentors were about to suggest looking closer and thinking again.

Aguilar remembers turning to another first-gen woman of color who beat the odds. She was her mentor and acting Dean of Students at Harvey Mudd.

“I’m young, I’m a woman and I’m first-gen–I don’t know everything, it makes me feel insecure. There’s a hidden curriculum that I don’t know yet, I need help!” Aguilar recounts.

Her mentor came back with the unexpected, inviting her to spend more time with the source of her self-doubt until it became her “secret sauce.”

Amidst debates about whether Whittier College’s training should be liberal arts or professionalization oriented, stands the truth of students’ sustaining themselves in college until they are onto the real world.

Uncertainty around the “right” move is natural but it sounds different coming from a student than an administrator. We can thank this uncertainty for creating variety in students’ navigating their education while forging an underlying idea of what matters most to them.

First-generation students like Aguilar through self-reliantly developing a trusted sense for what is realistic, taste their “secret sauce” and expose the debate’s terms for assuming a “one-size-fits-all” approach to student success in higher education.

What it means to be “realistic” is subject to extensive risk in our changing world where trusted information goes bad quickly.

Resources at the OSE are dynamic in their approach to sharpening a young person’s sense for what is possible for them. Their team facilitates the operations of clubs, new and existing. On the operations side, they educate and empower students to access valuable infrastructure on campus and elsewhere for events.

Aguilar has high hopes for how her time at the College will look. Fresh off of orientation, she took in the nervous faces and saw reflected in them, her younger self alongside their own budding confidence.

Be sure to stop by and introduce yourself to Aguilar and the rest of the OSE (underneath the Spot) if one has not already.