By Brianda Castro

The last time I wrote to you, I wrote to you asking for hope. I needed you to see the vision I held of the better future I’d been eagerly chasing since my arrival in the United States. The last time I wrote to you, I wrote to you as a candidate for a scholarship. Although I had doubts, I believed that it was worth a try and that it couldn’t get worse from where I was standing. Thankfully, I was chosen and my vision was allowed to continue on.

For the past three months I’ve been away at school. I’m enrolled at UC Riverside and took an introductory course to Religious Studies, English, and Math this past quarter. In Math and English I found the comfort that I’ve been familiar with throughout my schooling: mathematical problems and essays. Religious Studies was my favorite class. For most of the quarter I wondered what the point of the class was and why I always felt attending every lecture was important, even when I almost fell asleep listening to the professor. The lectures seemed too detached from the readings and the readings seemed out of reach from the focus of the class. We read four books during the quarter that provoked thinking that I hadn’t done in High School. The first book we read, and perhaps my favorite, was The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Armand M. Nicholi. The debate between these two thinkers pushed my beliefs and allowed me to transition from High School mentality to College mentality. I had to annotate, understand concepts, learn important names, and most importantly, think critically about what I was reading. By the end of the quarter, as I studied for my final exam, the whole class came together for me. I realized that I learned and really understood the first step to studying and understanding the way religion influences people. Religion, to me, is no longer about whether there is a God or which God is the right God, but rather about the truth the followers seek in their worship. Religion is the way of life followers seek and the moral law they measure themselves against. This course sparked interest in an area that I had never taken seriously. College, in this sense, was an escape from the standard education that I was exposed to until this past quarter. Ultimately, I have to pick a major and focus more on an area of study but I’m having fun learning new things. Next quarter I’m officially enrolled in an introduction course to Cultural Anthropology, Macroeconomics, Math, and English, but plan on sitting-in in other classes to take advantage of all the resources available to me.

Being away from home was not as easy as I thought it would be. At first I was drugged by all the freedom living on my own gave me. I was free to do whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. I would eat every meal with my friends and talk about our “new life”. Our first conversations were about buying cheap books. That was my first adult responsibility as a college student. Buying my own books made my feeling of independence grow stronger. In a sense, education is my child and I had to make sure that all its needs were met. School became my social life. I became involved in student organizations and campus events. The organization that I was most active in was Mujeres Unidas - an organization that focuses on community service and the empowerment of women. At the end of the quarter I was awarded the certificate for most community hours service and next quarter I am looking forward to the mentoring program they sponsor between the local high school girls and the college women of UC Riverside. I’ve also begun attending the meetings of the Buddhist club and the Nigerian club.

I live in a triple and have been blessed with two really good roommates. We get along and have found a way to communicate with each other what we’re thinking. I love living on campus but the food gets worse with every meal. My mom used to cook for every meal and on the occasions we went out to eat, it was a treat. Now getting a home cooked meal is the real treat. I don’t think there has been another point in my life when I’ve enjoyed the plain meal of beans, rice, and queso fresco more than I did on my third night back home.

Coming back home after has been amazing. My mom prepared my favorite meal and my brother looked at me with new interest. The questions flooded me at the dinner table and smiles were everywhere I looked. There is a poem by Pablo Neruda that talks about silence as an aid to remind people of how much we love them. The time I was away really helped me appreciate the role my family and the city of San Francisco play in my life. I used to complain about the buses always being crowded because they ran late and now I appreciate that the fact that there is a bus that will take me to every corner of the city. I missed the crowded streets and the tall buildings. I missed my people and their familiar liberal mentality. I missed home.

College was a big challenge for me. There were times that the obstacles seemed too big and I wanted to give up. There would have been no way that I could have attended college without the help of all the organizations, such as 826 Valencia, that believed in me and invested in my future. Thank you for the support and for the seed of hope that allowed me to venture out into change.

Yours truly,
Brianda