CHANGE IN PLANS

Dear Mr. Ramsey,

I apologize for my late response to your many emails asking us about our college experiences and I have to say I hesitated in answering for a couple of reasons; one of them being that I would hope all the other ILC students would respond, secondly because I have been preoccupied with other things, but that should not have kept me from writing this simple email and thirdly because I did not want to disappoint you and all the other people who worked hard to help us get to college with what I have to share about my experience and choices at college.

By spring of this year I decided to go to UC Berkeley because I was being offered a full scholarship for all four years and because I thought it would be a great accomplishment to be at a school with a title like Berkeley's. The truth was that I was always known as a “college bound” student in high school, but I was never as enthusiastic about going to college as the rest of my fellow classmates. I think I chose to go to college because that was what was expected of me. This being, mixed with an abundant of other personal reasons drove me to leave Berkeley early November, I did not finish my fall semester there and went home.

I have been working since my time off from school, but I do plan to return. I am not completely ready to take on Berkeley again, that is why I am signed up take classes I want to take at Contra Costa College for the spring semester. If I do choose to go back to Berkeley I will be welcomed back with my placement and scholarship.

If there is anything to take from my experience, I suppose it would be that you should choose the school you want for yourself and not anyone else. You will be a lot happier making decisions based on your interests.

My plans for now are to work and attend community college for a while and maybe, hopefully transfer to the Academy of Arts in San Francisco to study illustration.

The way things went with me was probably not what you expected, but its reality and sometimes things do not go the way you plan. I like to think that things happen for a reason, and I do not let this discourage me at all.

I hope everyone has a happy new year,

Sincerely,

Mercedes Montelongo