By Esly Reyes, Fellow Class of 2016
Regis University
When I was younger, I had lofty dreams, but I never knew what it would take to achieve them. My parents never went to college, and that is what motivated me to pursue a higher education. I wanted to be many things, but then I landed on wanting to be a lawyer. To be truthful, sometimes I felt that my dream of becoming a lawyer was to make everyone else happy, or proud that I wanted to do something “big.” It felt as if I was not doing it for myself. During high school, I had doubts about this, whether to pursue becoming a lawyer. It was not because of the slim pipeline into law, but because I did not think I was good enough or strong enough to stay on top of everything in college that would enable me to attend law school. Then I heard about Law School… Yes We Can, and I saw a support group for students who wanted to be lawyers. It felt like a sign when I wanted to give up on my dream.
The biggest benefit this program gave me this year was not all the classes, not that those did not help. It was knowing that there was a support group with the other Fellows, and especially my mentors, when I felt that I could not keep going in college. My mentors have helped me so much. For a while, I thought that I would not want to go to law school because I felt like I would not belong, but my mentors, who are still in law school, took me to sit in on one of their classes. I really was out of place because I am a freshman in college, but I felt that I could do it. I could go to law school and belong there.
Having classes was so helpful. They weren't classes without a purpose. In each class we learned something about how to succeed or about ourselves. We learned about how we learn and what to do to help ourselves while in class. We learned about our personality and what that meant. So far, the class that I found the most helpful was the one on how to write a resume, a cover letter, and how to ace an interview. This class would have definitely been helpful in high school when I had to do interviews for scholarships. I went into those scholarship interviews unprepared and, in some of them, I was lucky enough to receive the scholarships, but, in others, I believe that I would have succeeded if I had a stronger interview.
