Educational Journeys
Seven students from diverse backgrounds share their wisdom and knowledge about what makes the college experience positive and successful.

TEXT PREPARED BY BARBARA SORENSEN

Franklin Dollar, Dry Creek Pomo
University of California, Berkeley
Declared major: Engineering Physics, May 2006

I was born in San Jose, California and raised in Santa Clara, California. I lived with my grandparents until I was 12. However, when they moved away for health reasons, my family moved back to our reservation in Northern California called the Dry Creek Rancheria. A good portion of the time that we lived there in our small trailer, we did not have luxuries such as electricity, phone, or running water. We bathed with water that was boiled on a propane stove. We used candles and lanterns for light. We were 16 miles away from even a gas station. The reservation was in a very rural environment, one that was the opposite of the Bay Area I had previously experienced. My siblings and I had to wake up especially early for the bus that would take us to a nearby public school. I had to work throughout high school so that I could have some money.

Recommendations
Because I attended a very small high school, I had little opportunity to take classes that are considered college prep or advanced placement. However, I recommend that a student take advanced placement classes, because the work ethic needed in college is drastically different from high school. If you go to college not putting anything into it, you won’t get much in return.
I attended a program called “engineering boot camp” which was sponsored by the Multicultural Engineering Program at University of California, Berkeley. It compressed the major points of the toughest first semester classes down to a two-week session. The classes and workshops ran from dawn until dusk for two solid weeks. I endured staying up at horrible hours, sleeping little, and operating under lots of pressure. It turned out to be a great training experience because the friends and skills I gained throughout the program allowed me to handle most situations college could toss at me.

Receiving Support
Once I had decided that I would pursue a career in science, the first person I went to talk to was my science teacher. Having a couple of science degrees, he was able to help me narrow down what field I really wanted to do and what schools would be best for it. Unfortunately, neither my family nor tribe had any experience in the sort of fields I was interested in. I had most of my help from high school teachers. I had never known anyone who had applied to college, and I was pretty scared about the whole application process. I felt alone, but the teachers at the high school helped me whenever I needed it.
I did receive good advice from my Elders, such as: “The ones who go to college aren’t the exceptions; they are just as capable as the others. It’s those who choose to recognize their own capabilities who understand that they really can follow their dreams.”

Getting Through
I financed my freshman year mostly through subsidized loans. I did have the University of California, Berkeley grant, which helped immensely, and other federal grants. I worked on the side for whatever other bills financial aid couldn’t cover.
I still have fears that I might not be able to make it here in the university setting. There are always ghosts of doubts that I am not strong enough, smart enough, or hard-working enough. But the thing that I realize is that the fears are mostly a confidence problem and that the university doesn’t admit people that they believe would fail.
I have a lot of really good friends that I can rely on, and they can rely on me. I keep plugging away because people like them are out there in the world. This gives me hope in what our generation can accomplish, and hope for generations down the road.
I am a regional representative for the American Indian Science & Engineering Society (AISES), a very good national society that supports Natives in the sciences. Other important clubs that I am involved in are the Native American Recruitment & Retention Center, and the Coalition for Diversity. I also help out with the Hispanic Engineering Society and the Black Engineering and Science Students’ Association. The number of clubs and programs here are nearly endless, and they are all here to support the students.
Here at UC Berkeley we have academic support through the Multicultural Engineering Program (MEP), which provides tutoring for engineering students of any year. We also have a student learning center, where students can meet up with other students, and be tutored for free by upper classmen.
My words of advice to high school students who are about to apply to college are: “Don’t sell yourself short. You have a lot of potential and this could be your shot to express it. The path to changing the world is about to be at your fingertips.”

I did receive good advice from my Elders, such as: “The ones who go to college aren’t the exceptions; they are just as capable as the others. It’s those who choose to recognize their own capabilities who understand that they really can follow their dreams.”