{"id":1080,"date":"2020-04-30T02:23:04","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T02:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/?p=1080"},"modified":"2020-04-30T03:30:13","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T03:30:13","slug":"irma-zamora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/2020\/04\/30\/irma-zamora\/","title":{"rendered":"Irma Zamora"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI was born and raised in Santa Ana, California, which is a predominantly Mexican city in Orange County, Southern California. I come from a mixed-status family, so both of my parents are undocumented, but me and my sister were born here. We do come from a low-income family.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t realize how poor you are until you go through certain processes. I was homeless for a bit, and I remember by the time I was in high school, my parents had a good kind of job, and we lived in an apartment. It was a one-bedroom apartment for the four of us, but I had food. I had a home. I didn\u2019t have to sleep in a car. I remember being like, \u2018Well, we made it. We\u2019re fine!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut then, when you go through the FAFSA process, and then you have to write, \u2018Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,\u2019 when you have to physically put in and look at all the zeros, it\u2019s when you realize how poor you are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEven going through the process, like having to apply to the fee waivers, is hard. But also, even knowing that you have to apply to the fee waivers is a whole \u2019nother monster. If I didn\u2019t have the counselors that I had, and if they didn\u2019t know the population they were working with, I would not have applied to the schools that I applied to.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing that there\u2019s fee waivers, even having access to that knowledge, is a lot. Some people didn\u2019t know that there were fee waivers, even with the SAT and ACT.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat aspect of being low income is especially frustrating. I'm the oldest in the family. I only have one sibling, but I\u2019m the oldest even with my cousins, and so knowing that if I mess up, it\u2019s a lot of pressure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really tough for my parents to be like, \u2018Yeah, go to college.\u2019 I tried to explain that I\u2019ll be out for four years, but then I\u2019ll come back and bring more wages. It\u2019s so difficult to explain when the need is so urgent, in terms of money. We need this wage coming in this house. Otherwise, we\u2019re not going to survive, like you\u2019re literally living paycheck to paycheck. How do you tell your parents or how do you tell people in your community this is a good idea?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI remember I ended up crying for a couple of days. But they were so incredibly proud of me because I was the first one in the family to make it to college.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI went to undergrad at Amherst College in Massachusetts. I got there because of this program called Questbridge. It supports a lot of underrepresented groups, specifically low-income folks. Through Questbridge, I was able to go to Amherst with a full scholarship.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got there, I had to go by myself because my parents couldn\u2019t fly. Everybody else was there with their family. It was hard to go through this big transition without my mom, who I\u2019m really close to. That was really hard.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI remember my first year, I didn\u2019t think I had that strong of an accent, but people around me thought that I did. Every time I said my name, my name\u2019s Irma, people couldn\u2019t say that. I had a professor who was like, \u2018Where are you from?\u2019 And when I said my name, he said, \u2018That name doesn\u2019t sound Californian to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThankfully, my roommate was really understanding of all this and she always said my name right. We were really supportive of each other. If I hadn\u2019t had my roommate and some of my other friends there too, it would\u2019ve been really hard to be at this elite, white institution, like navigating through all of that. It was still really rough, but I don\u2019t know what I would have done without other people supporting me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThroughout my whole four years there, I worked at least two jobs. One semester, I ended up working four jobs, and that was ridiculous. If you don\u2019t work, you\u2019re not going to have extra money for smaller, essential things, like toiletries and supplies. I was living away from home, so I had to buy clothes for the winter, too.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy mom got sick my junior year, and I remember stressing so much about that. \u2018How am I going to do it?\u2019 Which is why I had four jobs that semester because I needed to send some money back. Having to worry about if they can\u2019t pay that bill, and I can\u2019t go back yet because I\u2019m still in the middle of the semester. \u2018Do I just drop out? What\u2019s going to happen?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy sister, who was going through community college at the time, had to be working two part-time jobs that were not on campus. I was fortunate to be working on campus, but she was not. She had to drop out of college because it was too much, and she wasn\u2019t keeping up with the work in school.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you come from a middle- or upper-class family, if you drop out, you still have access to things. Your dad might be working for a company, like \u2018OK, you\u2019re an intern.\u2019 or \u2018It\u2019s fine, I\u2019ll support you for now. You can go ahead and do that.\u2019 You still have access. Other people, like me, who are from working-class, low-income families, if we drop out, what do we have access to?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe just have to keep pushing forward. Now that I\u2019ve made it to grad school, all thanks to the support of my family and my community, I know for sure I\u2019m going to succeed. I\u2019m going to make it. After this, I will have access to a job and hopefully be on a tenure track as a professor. Every time I move up, it means security for my family now and to come.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>

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Irma Zamora, a Ph.D. student in the Department of English and member of the Latinx Space for Enrichment and Research \u2014 a community of Latinx students and scholars engaged in expanding their presence in higher education, according to its website \u2014 is on a track to achieve her dream of becoming a tenured professor in Latinx literature. Along the way, she has faced struggles such as homelessness and working overtime to support her family back in California. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4076,"featured_media":1095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"

\u201cI was born and raised in Santa Ana, California, which is a predominantly Mexican city in Orange County, Southern California. I come from a mixed-status family, so both of my parents are undocumented, but me and my sister were born here. We do come from a low-income family.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cYou don\u2019t realize how poor you are until you go through certain processes. I was homeless for a bit, and I remember by the time I was in high school, my parents had a good kind of job, and we lived in an apartment. It was a one-bedroom apartment for the four of us, but I had food. I had a home. I didn\u2019t have to sleep in a car. I remember being like, \u2018Well, we made it. We\u2019re fine!\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cBut then, when you go through the FAFSA process, and then you have to write, \u2018Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,\u2019 when you have to physically put in and look at all the zeros, it\u2019s when you realize how poor you are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cEven going through the process, like having to apply to the fee waivers, is hard. But also, even knowing that you have to apply to the fee waivers is a whole \u2019nother monster. If I didn\u2019t have the counselors that I had, and if they didn\u2019t know the population they were working with, I would not have applied to the schools that I applied to.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cKnowing that there\u2019s fee waivers, even having access to that knowledge, is a lot. Some people didn\u2019t know that there were fee waivers, even with the SAT and ACT.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThat aspect of being low income is especially frustrating. I'm the oldest in the family. I only have one sibling, but I\u2019m the oldest even with my cousins, and so knowing that if I mess up, it\u2019s a lot of pressure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cIt was really tough for my parents to be like, \u2018Yeah, go to college.\u2019 I tried to explain that I\u2019ll be out for four years, but then I\u2019ll come back and bring more wages. It\u2019s so difficult to explain when the need is so urgent, in terms of money. We need this wage coming in this house. Otherwise, we\u2019re not going to survive, like you\u2019re literally living paycheck to paycheck. How do you tell your parents or how do you tell people in your community this is a good idea?\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI remember I ended up crying for a couple of days. But they were so incredibly proud of me because I was the first one in the family to make it to college.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI went to undergrad at Amherst College in Massachusetts. I got there because of this program called Questbridge. It supports a lot of underrepresented groups, specifically low-income folks. Through Questbridge, I was able to go to Amherst with a full scholarship.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cWhen I got there, I had to go by myself because my parents couldn\u2019t fly. Everybody else was there with their family. It was hard to go through this big transition without my mom, who I\u2019m really close to. That was really hard.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI remember my first year, I didn\u2019t think I had that strong of an accent, but people around me thought that I did. Every time I said my name, my name\u2019s Irma, people couldn\u2019t say that. I had a professor who was like, \u2018Where are you from?\u2019 And when I said my name, he said, \u2018That name doesn\u2019t sound Californian to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThankfully, my roommate was really understanding of all this and she always said my name right. We were really supportive of each other. If I hadn\u2019t had my roommate and some of my other friends there too, it would\u2019ve been really hard to be at this elite, white institution, like navigating through all of that. It was still really rough, but I don\u2019t know what I would have done without other people supporting me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThroughout my whole four years there, I worked at least two jobs. One semester, I ended up working four jobs, and that was ridiculous. If you don\u2019t work, you\u2019re not going to have extra money for smaller, essential things, like toiletries and supplies. I was living away from home, so I had to buy clothes for the winter, too.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cMy mom got sick my junior year, and I remember stressing so much about that. \u2018How am I going to do it?\u2019 Which is why I had four jobs that semester because I needed to send some money back. Having to worry about if they can\u2019t pay that bill, and I can\u2019t go back yet because I\u2019m still in the middle of the semester. \u2018Do I just drop out? What\u2019s going to happen?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cMy sister, who was going through community college at the time, had to be working two part-time jobs that were not on campus. I was fortunate to be working on campus, but she was not. She had to drop out of college because it was too much, and she wasn\u2019t keeping up with the work in school.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cIf you come from a middle- or upper-class family, if you drop out, you still have access to things. Your dad might be working for a company, like \u2018OK, you\u2019re an intern.\u2019 or \u2018It\u2019s fine, I\u2019ll support you for now. You can go ahead and do that.\u2019 You still have access. Other people, like me, who are from working-class, low-income families, if we drop out, what do we have access to?\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cWe just have to keep pushing forward. Now that I\u2019ve made it to grad school, all thanks to the support of my family and my community, I know for sure I\u2019m going to succeed. I\u2019m going to make it. After this, I will have access to a job and hopefully be on a tenure track as a professor. Every time I move up, it means security for my family now and to come.\u201d<\/span><\/p>","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"coauthors":[13],"class_list":["post-1080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hilton-sp2020"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/files\/2020\/02\/Zamora.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1120,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions\/1120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}