A Visual Journey

My name is Kate Atienza and I am a high school senior in the Bay Area. I am a Filipino who also goes by she/her pronouns. Though I am born in the Bay, I continue to acknowledge the sacrifices and hardships my parents have gone through to get me where I am today. Everyday I try to show kindness to everyone I encounter as well as to be helpful to anyone; though I know I won’t be able to satisfy every single person I meet, being kind to everyone is something I truly value. As a student I want to be educated and to educate others on the things that affect our world today. I hope that striving to learn more about the world and educating others will inspire people around me to advocate for what they believe in and to educate the people around them as well. I want to help create positive change in the world to help ensure a better future for my friends and family because they are the people who motivate me to get through another day. The people I hold dear to me are also the people who keep me at my highest point and inspire me to keep moving forward despite how difficult things may get.

I am from the Bay Area in California, born in one of the many Kaiser Permanente Hospitals in Santa Clara. The very first year of my life started in Milpitas, California, with my two older siblings and parents. Both my parents were working in Milpitas at the time, so my older siblings took care of me while they worked their days away. Regarding me, there aren’t a lot of memories anyone had of me in Milpitas because as a family, we were moving from apartment to apartment almost every couple months. However, we settled down in Union City when I was three, and have been living the rest of my life here. Where I am today and how I lived my life to this day wouldn’t be possible without the immigration journey of my grandparents, specifically my grandpa.

My grandpa went through the struggle of trying to provide a better and sustainable life for his family and future grandchildren. Back in the Philippines where they lived, poverty, famine, disease, and starvation was prevalent, and despite their comfortable living, he saw that it was not suitable for a new and upcoming generation of his family. Moving to America, he found it difficult trying to start a brand new life in America, as there were low wage jobs, and only enough money to get by for the day. He managed to push through though, because he knew that the end result would be worth all this hard work.

After successfully bringing his wife to America from the Philippines, my grandma and grandpa had to give up some key aspects of their life. For example back in the Philippines, my grandma had to sell her hair salon in order to make a sufficient amount of money to live off of in the States. Additionally, my grandpa had to say goodbye to a good amount of his family, in which he wouldn’t be able to see them in a very long time. They both knew that this had to be done though, they knew immigrating was not going to be an easy experience.

It all paid off in the end, though. Together, my grandma and grandpa were able to successfully bring their children from the Philippines to the United States to provide a foundation for the next generation. Without my grandma and grandpa’s sacrifices, my family and I would not be living here today and would totally be leading a new life.

With senior year I want to really focus on mental health. In times like this such as virtual learning, mental health is most of the time, at the bottom of our priorities. I want to be able to educate people on how taking care of not only our physical state, but our mental state is very important. To be able to do that I want to teach and guide others into bringing up and maintaining their mental health through some of the things we learn in class, and some based on my own research. Beyond senior year, I want to go to college and major in psychology to understand how our minds work the way they do, and use that as a guide to further help people in maintaining the best version of themselves. Career wise, I'm not entirely sure, since there's a lot of career choices regarding the major I want to pursue, but I'm thinking about going into clinical psychology to diagnose mental illnesses and continue to work with patients to help them along their journey to recovery.