My name is Vianey Gonzalez and I just graduated from Wichita State University, I’m 24, and I got my bachelors degree in elementary education, so I do plan on pursuing my masters but not at the moment.

What advice do you have for other first-gen students?

I think my biggest advice is it’s okay to ask for help and it’s okay to struggle. Learning how to persevere and just like continuing. Just knowing where to find your resources and asking for help is my biggest advice.

How do you recommend keeping good mental health during college?

You’re just stressed in trying to get homework and everything done, like I have to cram everything in this time. But just letting all of it go and go take a simple 5, 10 minutes and go walk or just go color. Or sometimes social media doesn't really help all that much just because  of everything that you see. But maybe just going out to eat with your family, or doing stuff that you really enjoy doing. Even if it’s not for like 30 minutes, even if it’s just like a short 5 minute break it can be very, very helpful.

What motivated you to pursue higher education? 

So what motivated me to pursue a higher education is that since nobody in my family has graduated from college, I really wanted to make my parents proud but only make myself proud too. Just cause I know I was capable of doing it and there was really nothing holding me back. I was able to prove myself that I can overcome all the obstacles. We are capable of doing it.

What was an obstacle you faced during your college experience? 

I think my biggest obstacle was that since all my classes and all my programs were online, I never had a single class in the building or at WSU. So for me it was a little harder to ask for help because if I needed help right away, I wasn’t going to get an answer right away. So if I had an assignment due and I needed help or something, I didn’t have that help so for me that was the biggest obstacle. Through that I learned how to manage my time and I knew if I needed help with something I could have looked at it way ahead of time before it was due and get that help if I needed it.

How do you find resources?

So a lot of the resources when I was in high school was through my teachers or just like the community center through my school. But now, being out of high school, since I work at a school, a lot of the resources were through co-workers that I have. But also even through the universities and stuff, there’s a lot of resources that you can find. Just going and talking to the advisor or even through your own teachers, like sometimes they will send you like links and say ‘hey if you guys  need help with this or that, reach out to this number’ or anything like that. Or even on social media there’s a lot of resources that you can still find.

What advice do you have for students who are undecided on a major? 

Find your passion and whatever your passion is, take classes that you know,  get resources, like okay what can I do with this passion, like with drawing  maybe an art teacher, or just giving art classes to older kids. Just finding your passion and going from there. Cause I know Hispanic parents can be like “oh you know don’t you like this cause it pays very good or like this is less school”. Like don’t even worry about the school or the money or anything like that. Worry about what you want to do and your passions because if you’re not going to enjoy doing it, then you’re not going to like it. But if it’s something that you’re passionate about and you really like doing it, then you’re going to enjoy what you’re doing or what you’re going to do.