Aces Answers

1.     What are your expectations going into engaged scholarship? 

2.     Have you spent much time off campus since you got to Cal?

3.     Are you from the bay area/not enrolled?  If so, how does this affect your relationship to ACES?

4.     Which projects did you select and why? 

5.     What are your hopes & fears? 

1.       I expect to learn more about the American Culture, how schools are organized, how students perceive they place in their community and the world. I expect to be surprised, to drop misconceptions and to listen to what people have to say. I expect to grow as a person, to become more international, more multicultural, and more engaged in my community. 

2.       Actually yes, but minding my own stuff and not helping the community. I have a very limited interaction at Cal, great part of it was my own fault, but I kept myself in the periphery also because I took several classes at the same time (I am a transfer and am graduating in 1 ½ year at Cal, and also because of all the personal problems I had past semesters it was hard to commit. I was way more engaged in both CC I was before – College of Alameda – which I was in several clubs, participated in trips, protests, open mics (organizing) and at BMCC in NY which along with my honor society I volunteer in the day-care, organized trash collections in beaches, and was all over the community. Back home I volunteered in the abandoned kids’ house and helped organizing hunger campaigns.  Bottom-line is – at Cal I don’t sense that I belong, I think it is too hard to join an already existent group (many other intnl students I talk feel the same) and it is way harder to find time to enjoy extracurricular activities…

3.       I am not from the bay area. In the US I consider myself from NY – all my friends are there… I am enrolled at Cal (I am not sure that was the question…). In my case I think I have 99% to listen and learn and 1% maybe to contribute… I am an outkast hehehe

4.       I have selected respectively B-Tech residency, BCC residency, and BCC Open mic. I chose B-Tech because I was a high school teacher in Brazil and I crave for entering a high school class again and the students. My whole family (my side and my husband’s) have dedicated their lives to be educators and I followed the same path. When I got to the US I decided to change careers because I felt that I would never be suited to teach the kids in here, given the cultural differences and many other silliness that was going on in my head. So now I can have a minimal taste of what is like to be in classroom and I am willing and expecting to learn a lot about what it is like to be a kid in the US, in Oakland, in their families, in their lives… I am scared, but excited! The other selections are because I am from two CC and I loved it a lot (would never change my path) and the open mic is super cool – I even went with my husband in the first one and read my silly poem – it was embarrassing but cool! People are great in there!

5.       Enough with redundancy, but that’s my sin… I hope to learn more about the community I am in, what are the social problems, to become more engaged. Here in the Bay area I only joined in walks for Cancer/AIDS, etc which you don’t really mingle and helped the shelter socializing with cats, so I think it is about time that I can do something more meaningful. For the most I expect to change me. My fear is not being able to do a good work, but I guess it is harder to fail when you are working in a team!