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Miriam Lopez Hernandez

CHHS 301
Jennifer Berry
February 18th, 2014
Personal Statement
Teenagers have feelings of self-doubt at different points in their lives. They begin to feel
like they have no support and that the entire world is against them. They feel like their abilities
are not good enough. I personally have gone through various negative experiences and moments
of self-doubt. Having overcome these moments of weakness helped me realize that I have a
desire to help those in similar situations. This need to help others combined with my personal
experiences has led me to want to work with at-risk youth by providing them with psychosocial
and academic support. The Collaborative Health and Human Services (CHHS) major here at
California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) will prepare me properly for this career by
giving me both theoretical knowledge and field experience.
Self-doubt is great obstacle in life that only gets bigger once you realize that others doubt
your skills as well. Walking in to my high school counselors office was never an easy thing to
do. I either had to decide what classes to take or I would get the bad news of missing credits.
Now, I wish these were the only things I had to worry about. When the time came to meet with
my counselor, I was excited to choose all the Advance Placement (AP) classes. I was so sure
about my choices I had filled out my class request form in pen. My counselor took one look at
the paper and with a grin she told me that there was no point for me to take all those AP classes.
She told me that based on my background I was going to drop out of high school, become
pregnant as a teen, or work in the fields like my father. She said it would be selfish of me to take
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that class spot from someone more suited for such demanding courses. I was shocked at what
was said to me, but she was the professional; what she said had to be true.
I decided to talk to my parents; even though they tried to help me, they could not. My
parents had no idea what an AP class was. My father said, Just do what the lady at school tells
you, do not cause any problems for us. He did not want any problems because he would not be
able to fix them. The language barrier my family had made this more difficult to deal with. My
mother, on the other hand, said that I should be able to take whatever classes I wanted, as long as
I was sure I would be able to handle the pressure of whatever an AP class was. I couldnt
really do much with their advice. All their advice accomplished was to confuse me even more.
After this, I slowly started giving up on school.
Suddenly, because my father was a migrant worker, I was assigned a migrant counselor.
I always wondered why I had a migrant counselor and not just a normal counselor like my
friends. The first thing she asked me when she looked at my grades in math and science for the
previous year was: why arent you taking the AP classes for math and science? When I told
her what had happened, she was outraged that a counselor would say such things. She was able
to place me into various AP classes throughout my time in high school. She helped me with
everything I needed to do in order to get into college, though I never really understood what was
happening. She always did everything for me while I just sat by her desk and answered whatever
question she asked me. I am grateful that she was able to help me get into CSUMB; but my first
year here I was completely lost because I never learned how to do things on my own.
All these moments in my life led me to realize that there is a need for better support
systems. Even systems that seem good have flaws, flaws that may impact the individual
negatively in the long run. Because of the experiences in my life, I feel like I have a
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responsibility to make sure that the youth I come into contact with knows they can achieve any
goals they set their mind to. In order to achieve my goal, I want to help the at-risk youth
population in two ways. The first is to have a form of academic support. I want to provide
different services, such as tutoring where they will not only study but we will create a
personalized study structure so they can study on their own in a productive manner. In addition, I
would like to offer different workshops where they will learn about the different higher
education systems available and how to get into the system they want, whether it be a 4 year
university, Junior College or technical school. The third way I want to contribute to their success
is by offering psychosocial support. In other words, helping the students cope with stressors at
home or work (Psychosocial Support, `2012), such as family problems, negative peer
influences, or violent community environment. Psychosocial support can look many different
ways. I want to offer a way for the youth to evaluate their lives and find which stressors are
negatively affecting them the most. The next step I would take after getting the results would be
to create a personalized guide on possible ways they can overcome these stressors. This would be
done alongside the individual in order to create a flexible guide that they would be willing to
follow and modify in the future if needed. The reason I want to work in this manner is to get the
youth to understand the importance of self-improvement. If they do not want to work on
improving themselves nothing I say or do will have any effect on them. Combined with this I
want to get them involved with the community by volunteering. This will let them see that they
can make a difference in a community if they only put the effort into it.
In order for me to achieve this goal, I believe CHHS will prepare me the best. CHHS
offers an array of classes that will give me the knowledge I need. For example, I will be taking
the Human Development class HDEV 351: Lifespan Development: Transition & Change.
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According to the CSUMB catalog (2013-2014), this class will teach me about the complex
array of social, psychological, and cultural forces that combine to determine each individual's life
course. This class in particular will help me gain the knowledge necessary to assess the outside
forces that will affect the youths decisions. Having this knowledge will help me determine what
type of assistance each individual will need. There are many other classes that will develop my
skills in collaboration, conflict resolution, financial and information management, leadership,
professional communication, and development & ethics.
But the CHHS major does not only offer this theoretical knowledge to us; it also offers us
real world experience. CHHS requires we take three classes that have a field placement
component. In other words, these classes require that we complete 240 hours of service at an
agency that will allow us to practice all the skills we learn about in class. The agencies from
which we can choose to do our service in are well trained so they will provide us with a well-
rounded work experience that can vary from acquiring communication skills for different type of
situations whether it be written or oral all the way to proper procedures to filling out important
documents as well as proper ethics for work or when dealing with individual seeking services.
This work experience will depend on the types of factors the agency we choose focuses on, such
as age groups, demographics, population, or culture. Not only are we getting this experience, but
we are doing it in a safe environment that will gives us great opportunities to learn these and
many more skills while being mentored by professionals. But, in order to learn as much as
possible we must be open minded and know that it will be complicated at times. We have to be
able to take every obstacle we face as a learning experience and not as a reason to give up.
Throughout my freshman year here at CSUMB, I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted
to do for the rest of my life that would make me happy. I came in as a Biology major but as time
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passed I realized that my experiences and my passion for helping others was greater than my
ability to learn math and science in an easy manner. Because of all the reasons stated above and
throughout this paper, I came to the conclusion that CHHS will be the best major to prepare me
for the career in the health and human services that I desire.














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References
HDEV 351: Lifespan development: Transitions and change. (2014) In CSUMB 2014-2015
Catalog online. Retrieved from http://catalog.csumb.edu/description/HDEV/351
Psychosocial Support. (2012) In Medical Dictionary online. Retrieved from http://medical-
dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/psychosocial+support