After the 1989 revolution, my parents and I immigrated to the United States in search of a better life. What we found was a lot of hard work and many social challenges to distract us along the way. In high school, I focused on fitting in but failed at it. I hardly ever attended class and never completed my assignments. I struggled to graduate, having to use work credits to bring me to the number of credits needed to graduate, and I didn’t take the SAT because I thought no college would take me with my low grade point average. My mom forced me to go to community college.

Highline Community College was close to my house and had made the application process simple and easy, so I enrolled. After my first quarter, I enrolled in a coordinated study class where, at my first absence, I received a phone call from my professor, Dr. Clinton. She wanted to let me know that the deadline for the paper due that day had been pushed back to the next week. She said she could tell that I was a driven, meticulous person and she wanted me to benefit from the extra time. Because of her high regard of me, I worked hard in her class and soon came to know Dr. Clinton as a mentor. She encouraged me to get involved in the Honors Program and suggested that I think about going to law school.

Never had I thought that I would get good grades, much less participate in an Honors Program. The Honors Program motivated me to maintain my level of hard work in my classes and was a vital part of preparing my application to UW and later to the UW law school. In the Honors Seminar, I produced and fine-tuned every type of document that might be needed for jobs, scholarship applications and college applications. This not only allowed me to narrow my focus on what I actually want to do, but it made it so that if the going got tough, I had resources to draw from so that I could overcome obstacles that might deter other students. With my Honors portfolio, I was accepted to the University of Washington, where I made the Quarterly Dean’s List every quarter. I graduated from UW last June and I am bound for the University of Washington Law School. Even though it has been two years since I finished the Honors Program at Highline Community, the primary tools I used when putting together my law school application came from my experience in the Honors Program. Furthermore, I attribute every success I’ve had and every goal that I’ve set, to the motivation that the Honors Program has ignited in me. Every time I achieve a goal, I feel like writing back to Dr. Clinton and telling her that the Honors Program has helped me achieve something once again.