Personal Ethnography Analysis

Moving constantly, never having a place to call my own, I finally moved to a city that eventually shaped me into the person I am today. I spent my elementary years in Sylmar, then I moved to San Fernando, and later we alternated between the United States and Mexico, never staying in more than a year in one home. It was rare if we stayed in any city longer than two years. Unfortunately, due to the constant packing and moving, I never made any true friends; I was isolated, lonely, awkward, and kept everything to myself. No one taught me that in life it would take more than just hard work and good grades to succeed in life. It would be the economic disparity present in my city, a school staff that knew about my socioeconomic background and wanted …show more content…
Moving to Lancaster had a positive impact in my life I would not realize until I got to UCLA and attained a little more knowledge on how the real world works. I say “real world”, because we are raised to trust that hard work and dedication truly triumphs over those who are privileged. This is not the case. In the real world the way it works is that a University, for example, takes into consideration, the economy of the area where you are living, your ethnic or racial self-classification, on top of having good grades. They evaluate the applicant’s social location and decide whether the student is worthy or not. Zavella defines social location as “ looking at the social spaces created by the intersection of class, race, gender, and culture. I come from a low working class Mexican family. Even with universities requiring specific charactestics for students to be accepted, a lot of other variables need to be taken into consideration. These other variables are the education that your parents received, the surrounding resources, and how much you yourself truly want to meet your goal. Although I was not raised in one single home, I had parents that were always by my side and had engraved into my head that the only way to succeed was by going to college. I did not go to the best high school in my side of town, it was mediocre, but it was to my advantage since the school staff new how to exploit that “disadvantage” to my …show more content…
I did not have to work hard because I never sensed that school was an obstacle. I slept through my freshman year of high school in almost all of my classes because they were easy. I was “misrecognized”(Rios). I was “misrecognized” not by my teachers, but by my peers. Since I was always sleeping in class when I did show up, they thought I did not know the material or did not even bother to try. However, they were wrong. I would just finish my work ahead of time or the night before so that I would not need to do it in class. My sophomore year my school offered AP classes, but even then I slept through them. This pattern continued my senior year. This does not mean I am smart because it was not just I who perceived this. It was the whole “valedictorian” graduating class that felt this way because there were around thirty students who all graduated with the same title. Our “AP” classes were as difficult as the “Normal” classes for the privileged students on the opposite side of town. To us, or me at least, my grades meant nothing. They were nice, but they did not really count for anything because I knew I was being taught at a mediocre level. I did not get this epiphany until my graduating year, and when I did, I already had “the background that most universities love” is what I was told by the school staff that helped me apply for