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My Path to Public Service
My Path to Public Service
Lifelong learning encompasses many of my personal, educational, and professional experiences, but also many of the hardships and obstacles I have overcome in my personal and family life that have pushed me toward the field of public service. To me, lifelong learning encompasses more than solely receiving a formal education, but it is also learning from the academic and personal experiences that come along with it. Lifelong learning requires adjusting to new situations, a lesson learned from the many moves my family made when I was young, and the moves I made in my adult life. These experiences have helped guide my decisions and have significantly changed my outlook on life, shown me the value of friendship and family, and have ultimately shifted my professional aspirations to a pursuit in public service.
Early Lessons
Early Lessons
Building my lifelong skills directly correlate with my love for learning, the financial hardships my family experienced growing up, and the values shaped by my familial and academic experiences. As an introvert who loves to learn, and with the constant changes happening around me at such an early age, I grew up honing my academic skills, while never letting myself feel comfortable to settle in a single place. Branching out and taking advantage of new and exciting opportunities was not a trait I grew up with. As the eldest sibling with both a brother six years younger and a sister 12 years younger than me, living in five states and attending five different schools before the age of nine with two working parents was not an easy adjustment.
After my family permanently settled down in Manteca, California, at nine years old, I found out several years later the reasons why we packed up and moved away from all of our family and friends so many times before: corporate bankruptcy. After dealing with an abrupt layoff, my father found a job in California, and we finally felt comfortable when my sister was born in early 2006. However, our financial stress and feeling of insecurity did not subside when the recession of late 2007 majorly impacted our family. My father was once again laid off from his job, and for years we lived off of savings and almost lost our home before he found employment in late 2009. This was another obstacle my family eventually overcame that had a significant impact on what I thought would be my future in the private sector.
True Values
True Values
The values of loyalty and benevolence, along with my love for school, surfaced in my undergraduate career and transferred to my graduate program at the Bush School. After moving away for college in 2013 with interests in the private sector, I quickly learned that my intentions of monetary and occupational security were not the true values I had learned from my experiences, but instead, I was driven to learn and help others. These challenges I had experienced over the early stages of my life aided in my personal development and my devotion to public service. I moved back to Manteca in 2015, changed majors to focus on economics, and began to prioritize my family and giving back to others. While I pursued my undergraduate education, I worked part-time while also making time to tutor elementary school and college-level students. It was not until I took a political economics class that I gained an ardent interest in welfare policy and knew what I wanted to do after graduation. My personal development and the lifelong learning principle of community service urged me to apply for a master’s program in public service and administration.
The values that had become instilled in me from my family’s hardships growing up transferred perfectly with the students, organizations, and faculty at the Bush School. I was accepted into graduate school in the spring of 2018, after expressing my passion for welfare policy, and my aspirations to make a career out of helping others during my interview. When I moved to Texas later that year, I made friends who essentially turned into family, became involved in the Public Service Organization (PSO), and for once in my academic and professional life, I felt like I belonged.
A Future in Local Government
A Future in Local Government
My commitment to learning allowed me to learn about myself and understand that a future in local government would be a more fulfilling aspiration. My research and internship in welfare policy fostered my interest in social programs at a state and federal level, but my volunteer work with local organizations and my capstone project with the City of Bryan pushed me towards work at the local level. These more recent experiences, along with my volunteer work during undergrad, showed me the importance of giving back to my community. These experiences have motivated me to pursue a career in local government, where I can have face-to-face interaction and see the direct impact my work has on those who I serve.
Entering a profession of public service at a local level will require me to continue my passion for learning, while also applying the lessons I have learned throughout my life. With my strong familial values and dedication to giving back to others, I hope a career in local government will not only have a substantial impact on me but also positively impact my community.
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