Jossanny’s Final Blog Reflection

My project was about my experience as a first generation Latina in the United States. My group mates and I delved into how it felt growing up in an immigrant household and how it affected our transition into college. We also had a guest speaker that isn’t part of the class and asked about his experience growing up in similar circumstances. This was able to help us see things from a guy’s perspective.
This related to how we talked about citizenship and identity in one part of the class. I had written a discussion post before on how I have a dual citizenship since I was born in the Dominican Republic but acquired a US citizenship. The fact that I have a dual citizenship makes me see things from a different perspective than other people. It also means that I grew up with immigrant parents who didn’t know how the US college system works or how important mental health is to one’s being.
I was the first one among my siblings to go away for college away from my parents, and this fact alone made me pretty scared. There was no one who was going to help me and guide me anymore, I had to figure out things by myself. This is something that usually happens when you are a first generation college student. You don’t have your parents helping you how to go through the college process, since they themselves don’t know how it works. I was lucky enough to have my older sister and college counselor help me through the application process, but once I went to college, I was by myself.
This new-found independence was not only scary, but necessary for me to grow as an individual. I had to finally learn to be by myself. This made me relate to Randall’s autobiographical essay, which we talked about in class. In one of my discussions, I talked about Randall questioning the difference of wanting to quit or wanting to go home. Randall felt like an outcast because there was no one who related to him, and overall had a low mental health. I felt like this once I entered college, and growing up in a Hispanic household meant that I didn’t really know how to deal with my mental health.
Once I was alone in college, I was able to learn the importance of mental health, and it made me realize how growing up in an immigrant household meant mental health was really disregarded by people. In the podcast, I talk about how I hate crying due to how I was ridiculed growing up for it. Overall mental health is not talked about enough within the Latino community, and we made sure to emphasize this in our podcast.
This podcast was a great experience because I was able to see differences and similarities in other Hispanics through their stories. I was able to talk about my difficulties and give advice to incoming students. I would love doing another project like this in the future in which we were able to talk about things that not only relate to the course but relate to our identity.