Blog #4 - The Benefits of Helping A Grade-Schooler

Nicholas Garaycochea
7-8-2009

When I was first assigned to take on the task to work with a fellow Summer Scholar in the assignment of helping a grade schooled child develop an interest for college and higher education, I was very curious whether my partner and I were going to make an impact in the child’s life.
When my partner, Camille and I arrived to North High School for our first meeting with the student, I was a little nervous. I can recall awkwardly reaching my hand out to the assigned student in front of one of the crowded class rooms and introducing my name to her, “H-hello, I’m Nicholas,” with the crowd responding in boisterous laughter. But once we found a quiet room, sat down and began asking questions to our student, a young eighth-grader named Bryonna; my senses seemed to simmer down. After a short while, we composed a collage of newspaper clippings and magazine cut-outs. This poster was to be called, the “Dream Careers Collage.” When the collage was completed, we discovered that Bryonna’s main interest revolved around clothes, and babies. After the meeting, Camille and I decided that I should find more information about the study of Fashion Design, and that she would find more information about occupations and studies involved with child care.
After our successful first meeting with Bryonna, Camille and I created two PowerPoint presentations that would summarize both of the studies that Bryonna had inclined herself towards to during our collage brainstorming activity. Thus, our next Service Learning Project was to further enrich our student by delving into each of these studies. When the day arrived for our next assignment of presenting those presentations, our young Bryonna could not make it, so our meeting with her was unfortunately cancelled.
Because of Bryonna’s cancellation for our second meeting, Camille and I decided for the next meeting to be a combination of the PowerPoint presentations and the next assignment: helping the student write a Career essay about a specific area of interest, be it Fashion design, or Child Care.
When the date for the third meeting finally arrived for us to present these two assignments, the meeting was again cancelled, this time without any word from the organizer of the meetings due to the Independence Day week end.
Tomorrow, Camille and I will once again attempt to meet with the student, this time combining not two, but three assignments with the final one being that Camille and I need to help our young student develop a strong and focused “Action Plan,” that will help her stay on track of her goals throughout all the confusions and disruptions of focus that too many uninformed students will have to face during their high school years. I believe that if Bryonna embraces this plan tomorrow, she will be able to turn to this plan whenever she needs to clarify what goals need to be done in order to be successful and to reorganize or change them as her interests and capacities to think in broader spectrums grow.
So far, other than the disappointing cancellations of some of the meetings, I think that volunteering to help younger kids who are interested in college made an extraordinarily positive impact on me, not by just getting out of my comfort zone to assist people I didn’t know to well, but also to guide my little brothers and sisters at home to likewise create plans of action that will help them in their future endeavors in higher education and whatever else might be out there for them.

Where I want to study...

In a privileged country, home to over four-thousand universities and colleges, the desire to pursue higher education should be a common goal to achieve for every aspiring individual. I, as an individual who wishes to make his mark in life have gone through the process of assessing my strengths and interests to discern what I want to do for a career, as well as which university I want to study at in order to better achieve those goals.

In a fascination of large scale and modern architecture as well as in older, Romanesque, and Gothic architecture, I always have had a great interest for architecture as a possible career path and as a way to express my nature of creativity. In the spring of this year, I took this interest a step further when I began searching for colleges that offered this major, one of them being the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska. I scheduled a tour of the college, and I was very impressed with all the potential wealth of experience the major had to offer.

Another chief interest that I have is in the science of engineering. I was drawn towards this field at a very early age because of my love for locomotive trains, hence, the occupation of being a train engineer. I was also influenced to pursue a career in engineering because my father was a manufacture engineer at the Ford Motor Company. My insight to his fast-paced, problem-solving and hands-on approach towards engineering eventually leads me to seriously consider this major.

Since I am considering two fields, both with their share of interesting attributes, I decided to combine the two with my gift of creativity and with technicality to major in Architectural Engineering. No sooner did I decide to pursue this career when I discovered that the University of Nebraska was one of the only fifteen schools in the United States that offered this major.

I believe that deciding to receive a bachelors degree at my university choice, The University of Nebraska Lincoln, is an excellent one because of the invaluable opportunity to study what I want to study at a high-class school for the major and to receive a curriculum rigorous enough to ensure preparation to swiftly begin working in the field as an intern, and as a successful graduate.

A Week At School

Hello!

I am now back home, as of the day before yesterday from spending four nights at the Scott Residence Hall in UNO's southern campus. While I was there, I got a chance to make many new friends to play, study, and to bond with. All-in-all, I think it was an extremely great experience for me!

Some of the activities that we did during the week stay on campus were playing sports, watching movies, exercising at the HPER building, playing board games, ping-pong, eating delicious meals, dancing, working as a team on a high-ropes course, studying and last but not least, hanging out with buddies!

The most interesting activity for me probably would have been playing "pole-ball" out in the parking lot of the resident hall. The object of the game was very similar to soccer, only that there was one gole and it was actually a lamp post that the ball had to be contacted with to score a point, and that the goalie was called, a "polie."

Hello!

Hello,

My name is Nicholas Garaycochea, and I am the only homeschooler enrolled into the Summer Scholars program at UNO this year.

Today is the last day of my first week studying on campus, and so far, it's been an amazing experience for me! On the first day of class Monday, I attended the class called, "College 101," which was designed by the faculty at the Multicultural Affairs office to help the summer scholars enrolled in the program to better prepare themselves for the daunting task on finding the right school for them, and to simplify the challenges of appying for scholarships and financial aid. This class meets three times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

In addition to being in College 101, I am also in a class called, "Introduction to Native American Studies," which introduces the complex history of Native Americans and their present-day struggles as well.

I am also working with a fellow student in the program on a Service Learning project, which we are assigned to help a younger child in the community to learn and underdstand the challenges of preparing for highschool, as well as College.

To sum it up, I made many friends already, and I look forward to another challenging, as well as exciting week in this program.