How College Helped a District Representative at Placer County Succeed

I want to say that I slept a lot because it was college, and it was stressful. But managing yourself, learning those things is like in finance, opportunity cost. You can't be in two places at once, right?

What's the opportunity cost of staying up late and having fun versus getting an A on your test? Especially in high school, I was like, "I don't need this stuff. I'm not doing algebra at the grocery store. I just need to know how much my groceries are going to cost."

You don't realize what knowledge will eventually become important. What knowledge will you remember one day and think, "Oh, wow, I wish I paid attention to that more"? It's happened to me. I think, "Oh, I wish I would've listened more to that."

But at the time, because of what you're going through in life, or if you have issues and need assistance, living assistance, things like that, sometimes not knowing where you're going to sleep or what you're going to eat is more important than how you're going to grade on a test.

Communicating with your professors was something I did quite a bit. One of my professors said, "Hey, look, I'm completely checked out for the rest of the semester because I don't know where I'm going to live. I also need to pass your class so I can graduate, so help me."

And so, really finding a way to communicate, because we're all people, you know, we all have things happen. Being upfront about it, learning how to be open and honest with yourself. It's not that people are necessarily unable to tell the truth, it's just they might not face it sometimes.

So, learning how or where you can get a support group and find that safe space to be vulnerable, so you can not just put a band-aid on a problem, but overcome the problem. In my case, I learned how to become an advocate for people with that issue.

Speaking up sometimes sucks. Asking for help really sucks. And unless you learn how to do it, you might not feel like you're going to get the help you need, or you're going to get ridiculed or accused of things. All of those things go through your mind when you're stressed or in a position of discomfort.

Learning how to move past that in college, passing classes is a lot easier than getting fired from a job. Once you're fired, you're fired, right? So learning how to fail and move forward quickly.

I had a class that I could not get above a 45 on a test, and I needed it to graduate. Even study groups and working with people next to me during tests wouldn't have helped. Except for communicating with the professor and saying, "I'm not understanding this. I'm not getting this."

The point of me saying this now, fast forward to a job situation: if you have a hundred percent understanding of what's about to happen, tell me, because I want to know the lottery numbers. I've never met one person who actually knows wholeheartedly, unless you're a trained athlete or musician.

Whenever you're working with people or businesses, things change every day, right? Even working at a restaurant for many years, you run out of food, the power goes off, people have a problem. All of those variables you can't figure out or plan for.

And in the process of that, what do you do when you're not at school? What do you do when you're not cramming for tests? I found an outlet in volunteering and giving back to the community. That got me in front of people I wanted to model, like, "This person's successful. This person has what I eventually want to have. Where did they start? How did they get through it?"

That sort of helped bump me up a little bit quicker in life. I like to quote the whole Charlie and the Chocolate Factory thing. He wasn't looking for an adult to take over the candy factory because the adult would've changed it. So, finding that curiosity, I found mentors who enjoyed my curiosity. They opened up and explained things in ways they might not have put down in a book.

So, finding, building yourself up, really getting in touch with yourself, and really knowing that the world's not necessarily out to get you. Sometimes that's just life. No one's coming to save you. But once you get through that and you realize, "I've overcome this," that level of confidence, and that level of, "Wow, I didn't think I was going to get through this," with the demands of college and career on top of that.

Looking back, would you change that? Personally, I wouldn't change any of that. I'm glad that I went through what I went through because that shaped me to be the person I am today. And I think now I can help pay it forward for others.