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Why did she immigrate
Maria’s decision to leave her home was not made lightly. Maria’s decision to leave Mexico was driven by economic necessity. For Maria, the struggles of daily life and the lack of opportunities made her look north to the United States for a better future. Stories of others who had made the journey and found work gave her hope. María luckily received a sponsor through her education that allowed her to join a group of many other students who headed to various prestigious universities in the United States.
Her first stop was Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Where she began her study for one semester, then went back to Mexico to finish her degree. This was one of the best experiences of her life, as it was her first time out of the country and saw all the new opportunities available in America, but especially New England. Luckily for her, a new education experience arrived for her, she really wanted to get into book publishing because my degree was in literature. So she looked and looked and looked into where one can study book publishing, and at New York University, there was a big opportunity to do a master's degree in book publishing, but it took a lot of convincing. Her Dad was very skeptical as publishing and literature were not very sought-after skills in Mexico, but "because it was like a degree that didn't exist in Mexico and they needed more professionals related to book publishing in Mexico, I was able to find a scholarship from the government of Mexico to come to NYU, which is a very expensive university and started my graduate degree. So once I got into NYU and I applied for these very specific scholarships in Mexico, they sent me to study for my master's degree pretty much for free and they paid for my room and everything, which is only like my family wouldn't have been able to afford".
Maria at New York University where she received her master's in literature.
OPT year + Job
OPT year + Job
After you finish your degree, there is a thing called an OPT year (a.k.a optional training year). So now there were two options, she could either go back to Mexico or stay. If she chooses to stay, it is to only further train herself within her area of study. So for her to stay she had to find a job within six months. For her, it was extremely hard because the publishing industry at the time had many new applicants for jobs. This put a lot of pressure on Maria as it was a race against the clock, and not in her favor. "I remember that I started applying to like a ton of jobs and it was super tough, I think I had one month left and finally, finally got an offer". She received an offer in the Spanish department of Scholastic, which allowed her to fulfill her OPT year without the company having to pay extra for her to be in the United States. "So that's when I actually started my career at Scholastic. By basically bringing books from an American background, introducing them to the big Hispanic population, and teaching students Spanish and English through books".
Few of the books she used during her OPT year
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