By Jany Kim
DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR
[email protected]
 LU ANNE DINGLASON/Daily Bruin
Yvette Heredia, a sixth-year sociology student with a minor in
policy studies, will be the first among her family to graduate from
college.
As the school year draws to a close, UCLA students set to
graduate, wait in anticipation to don their caps and gowns.
For students like Yvette Heredia, who is part of the first
generation of college graduates in her family, graduation means
more than freedom from papers, exams and school in general ““
it marks individual achievement and a drive for success, regardless
of circumstances.
Heredia, a sixth-year sociology student and single mother who
will graduate with fellow students in the College of Letters &
Science and participate in a celebration for Raza Womyn this
weekend, recalled that “college was not even on (her) list
when (she) graduated from high school.”
Growing up, her parents did not emphasize the importance of
higher education. But Heredia decided to follow her brother’s
footsteps and entered college six years out of high school to
support her daughter, 9-year-old Lenise.
“I knew I had to get an education if I wanted to provide a
decent life for her,” Heredia said.
Initially, Heredia was reluctant to attend UCLA as a single,
full-time working parent because of the competitiveness among UCLA
students. Although she was eager to return to school, she felt she
worked harder than other students, yet did not do as well
academically, noting that she was always the last to leave
exams.
Returning to school after six years, Heredia described feeling
out of place because of the number of younger students and the fear
that everyone else would be smarter than her.
“That type of life wasn’t for me,” Heredia
said. “It was for smart people.”
Nevertheless, she adjusted to getting herself and her daughter
ready for school early every morning, dropping Lenise off at
school, then going to classes, working late hours after school, and
picking her daughter up from her mother’s at the end of the
day.
The new routine allowed Heredia only to see her daughter in the
morning while getting ready for school and at night as she carried
her sleeping daughter up several flights of stairs to their
apartment after a tiring day.
Heredia recalled when her daughter, as a pre-schooler, would cry
and cling to her as she dropped Lenise off at her mother’s,
begging her not to leave for work.
To keep up with papers and exams, Heredia sacrificed attending
her daughter’s first-grade cheerleading practices and school
open houses.
She had to turn down her daughter when she asked, “Mom,
can you make it?” with another reply from Heredia that she
“didn’t think so.”
“(Lenise was) paying the consequences for my
lifestyle,” Heredia said.
A social life was out of the question as she balanced school,
raised her daughter, and maintained household responsibilities.
But she continued on at the university, falling in love with
sociology after an initial interest in social work.
Her interests in immigration issues among the Latino community
and the exploitation of workers stem from her own upbringing as the
daughter of immigrants.
Her father came to America between the 1950s and ’60s
under the government-sponsored Bracero Program, which began in
1942. The program was devised to compensate for the shortage of
workers drafted into the war, by employing immigrants as
agricultural laborers.
Having grown up in a Latino community after moving from Mexico
at age 3, Heredia chose to pursue a career in social welfare.
“Because a few of us make it … (there is the) obligation
to go back and help your community,” she said.
Though UCLA did not offer the undergraduate degree in social
welfare that she first sought, she found her niche nevertheless
with a sociology major and policy studies minor.
For Heredia, graduation marks the end of her undergraduate
career and the beginning of her future aspirations toward a Ph.D.
in social welfare and work in policy-making.