I went to high school at Yorktown High School. I grew up in the Columbia Forest neighborhood.
My family has told me much about when they first lived in Barcroft Apartments. That is where my brother grew up. My parents then purchased a home in Columbia Forest, near Columbia Pike. My parents, they started out in Barcroft. They're immigrants from Cochabamba, Bolivia. They came in the late '70s, '80s with my brother when he was around five years old. I have really vague memories at that time in the Barcroft Apartments. My brother really remembers it way more. I read somewhere that this area here has the most amount of Bolivian immigrants in the East Coast.
I grew up speaking Spanish at home. In my house, it was only Spanish, so I was forced to really learn and speak it. It was kind of tough for me at times. My brother was born in Bolivia, so Spanish was all he knew. And for me, in America, listening to English and Spanish was kind of like a fight because I wanted to speak English, but I really had to communicate with my parents in Spanish. They learned English through NOVA, the community college. I'd hear Quechua in the folklore music, but my parents don’t speak it, mostly just Spanish and English. My dad would play a lot of classical or folklore music from Bolivia. That’s how I was introduced to that part of the culture.
I would be in the Pike all the time because I actually went to elementary school and middle school in Our Savior Lutheran School. It's in the neighborhoods behind where Food Star was. I remember going there all the time and then to Food Star afterwards, getting a treat, getting groceries and stuff. I remember walking around my neighborhood a lot, biking on Bluemont and Four Mile Run. Yes, it was really nice.
I had friends from all over the world; Ethiopia, Eritrea, basically all of south & Central America, Philippines, India, Pakistanis, Egypt, Sudanese, Mongolian, Chinese. It wasn't quite as diverse in Our Savior, though. It was a little different from the County public schools since it was a private school.
I ended up going to Yorktown High School in north Arlington. My parents thought I would maybe get into trouble when I was at Wakefield HS. I was kind of like a wild child back in the day. Things could have turned out a lot different if I was at Wakefield, though. At Yorktown, it was kind of weird because there weren’t so many other Hispanic kids. I faced some kinds of racial tension sometimes, racial jokes towards me. I witnessed that. Sometimes it was lighthearted. Sometimes it was more trying to hurt my feelings, calling me a Mexican or questioning my green card status, even though I was born here. That’s something I faced when I was younger, too. I was always accustomed to that. It was really kind of terrible thinking back to it. I never talked to my parents about that. I wouldn't really ever talk to anyone about that. I just dealt with it.
I finished high school and then I went to Radford University for a bit. It was good, but I don't think I was ready, so I went back to NOVA [Northern Virginia Community College] after a semester. I did that for a while and then I was able to move to George Mason University. I'm studying information systems and operations management.
When I was younger, I didn’t think I was really a technical person, math person, and now that's what I’m studying. Looking back I really didn't imagine myself in this position, although I'm really happy I am. When I was younger, when I was in middle school, I would hear, "Oh, to be really successful you need to do engineering or coding or something with the computers." And I would think to myself back in the day, “oh, that'd be really nice, but I'm terrible at math.” I would have to repeat Algebra a couple times back in middle school. Math was always a really tough subject for me. But once I did Algebra II, something finally clicked and then I was able to really get the hang of it and get A's and B's where before I was just struggling to get C's. I was able to push on forward and did Calculus. Once I was at George Mason, my original plan was to do accounting, because I did really well in accounting back when I was at NOVA Community College. But then I heard about this program where they blend tech and business. At the time I was really thinking towards the future. I was really hyper aware of the difficulties that my peers who already graduated, who are my age, how they're facing this tough job market. I thought I should probably do that tech and business program, that I should find the one path to finding employment that would probably be the easiest path once I graduate. I thought, all right, this may be really hard for me, but I'm going to try to do it. And now I'm one more semester away from graduating. I'm really looking forward to it.
At times it’s been difficult because I would have a little bit of Imposter Syndrome at times. I would think “wow, I'm here, but am I as good as everyone else?” I didn't really understand how the program would work out. At times I would question myself “Am I really cut out for this?” But I realized slowly that everyone else was in the same position, so I was able to move forward.
One thing that I'm really happy about in my program is that it gives a lot of opportunities to build a portfolio. When we're working with tech and analytics and different coding languages we have so many different examples of us doing certain things that are actually applicable for businesses. I have a huge portfolio of different skills that I've attained through this: data filtering, visualization, bar graphs, line charts, scatter plots. It's a language where you have a certain way that you write things out. You have access to this huge database whether it might have hundreds or thousands of entries, kind of like an Excel spreadsheet of different columns and rows. And through writing code you can mine and filter out certain information. And through that, you can have summaries of what you want to understand, such as perhaps how many people in their 20's who live here who have been on a particular website and for what amount of time. What do they purchase? You are subdividing information and then presenting it to find new kind of insights. Data analytics.
The program I am in has students from a number of backgrounds, but not from everywhere. it's mostly men and mostly people who are from South Korea, Pakistan, India. There really aren’t too many other Hispanic people in my program that I noticed. Probably in my class I'm one of two or three. At times it kind of gets at me because I don't see too many people who look like me. I didn't see many other Hispanic people doing this. Sometimes when someone's the first in a field there's extra burdens on them, but they're opening doors for others. That's kind of how I see it. My parents are very supportive and happy about what I am doing.
My mom did psychology and my dad studied accounting in college. They're both professionals. They graduated in Bolivia but when they came to America it was kind of hard for them to transition their degrees from Bolivia to here. So they had to make do with what they had. My mom has her own business and my dad is in the hotel business. They pushed education. I developed a strong work ethic from my family. My mom had a daycare business growing up. I really got to see it flourish. I remember being a kid and my mom would be taking care of kids. It really allowed me to spend a lot of time with my mom because my mom would work at home. I really feel privileged in that because I know a lot of other people didn't really have that, to have their parents at home all the time. So I have a really strong connection with my mom. The daycare and everything that's happened has been such a blessing in my family. Being in Arlington it's such a nice location to have a daycare because there's so many people who come to Arlington for their work or they go to DC. It’s been great. It's enabled my parents to own two homes. It's enabled me and my brother to get our degrees. My brother, he got his degree at James Madison University. If I was going to say anything about myself, I'd really talk about my brother because he's been such an inspiration towards me and such a great role model. He studied business administration at James Madison. A few years ago his job sponsored him to earn a master degree in economics. He's 10 years older than me, and now he's really well established. He has properties in DC and he's doing great. And for me in life I really kind of just look towards him and try to think of what he would do.
I’ve been in the Pike area my whole life. I’ve seen some changes. I've seen certain things in the area get built up, like Centro. I've seen Food Star go. I've seen a bunch of apartment buildings being built up. I still see so much diversity, but I know that might change in the future. I feel comfortable with the diversity here. It’s the area that I grew up in. I feel amongst those crowds I really fit in because it was the White people who were telling me that I was Mexican or questioning my green card. It was never anyone else. I didn’t have that happen in my own neighborhood. I always felt accepted here.
In five to ten years I really hope to see myself working for one of the big tech companies, whether it's Amazon or IBM or Google or Facebook or one of the banks. And I'd really like to just encourage other people who felt like how I felt when I was younger to pursue their dreams, to feel like they have opportunities in tech because I used to not feel that way.
That change happened when I just started visualizing in my head different future outcomes and I had to make a decision of what would be best for me and what would be best for my family or the people I really care about. Definitely I'd say my relationship has inspired me also like, oh, like I have this person I care about. I want to get a job so things aren't so tough for us. And she feels the same way.
There are some very positive things in the area that would keep me here. The diversity, for sure. It’s the nature of the community. I really feel at home here. I mostly felt that way also in North Arlington when I was at Yorktown, but I felt the racism or racial prejudices there, too. I wouldn't say it led to like a resentment or hate or anything like that. It's just like, it just doesn't make me feel so welcome. iIn this part of the community I feel at home and welcome.
Interview by Lloyd Wolf / Photography by Lara Ajami.
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