ABSTRACT
I wish I could say that I have a secret formula for success in academia. I don’t. In fact, I have struggled to think of how to write my story about a childhood in the rural agricultural lands of California to the halls of a well-known university in the East as a professor. I am not special. I am not exceptional. I am not being humble. This is the truth. I cannot compare my educational story to those of other Latinos and Latinas, such as Laura Rendón (1992) in her essay on being a scholarship girl, Ruben Navarrette (1994) and his experience as a Chicano at Harvard, or Richard Rodriguez (1983) in his account of reaching the most elite scholarly circles only to leave it for a new life.
