Portfolio – Priscilla Hernandez

I am enough.

During my first semester in college, fall 2021, I took a history course called “Enlightenment Concept of Self” which to me was more philosophical than historical. I remember feeling very awkward in the class because the reading material was so dense. For my first major assignment, I had to write a paper on French philosopher Denis Diderot’s “concept of self”. If I am being honest, I don’t remember what I even wrote in that paper.

I do remember, however, the meeting I had with the professor for the course, Professor Holmes, discussing that first paper in which I expressed to the professor that I had no prior experience with the level of texts or writing expectations for the course. His response was a question asking where I was from and whether or not I took a writing course in high school. After I had answered those questions, he responded with, “that makes sense”. I do not know whether he understood the implications of those words for a first-generation low income (FGLI) student in an institution like Wesleyan.

I was very off-put by this statement and thought about it more often than I should have. However, after talking about how I felt I realized that it wasn’t my problem. I worked my behind off in a low-income inner city school to get the grades necessary to be able to get into Wesleyan. Professor Holmes’ words taught me to be kinder and more patient with myself while at Wesleyan because I am a part of the minority who are not wealthy and had no extra help before college. I learned that as long as I try my best, that is enough for Wesleyan and enough for me.

Cosplaying as a middle-aged white man

During the fall semester of 2021, I took a history course called War and Religion. In this class we learned about the history of war and religion between early white European settlers and the Indigenous peoples in North America and how both served to oppress the Indigenous population. At the end of the semester, we had a project called “Forest Diplomacy”. In this project, the class was divided into two groups: the white settlers and the Indigenous tribe of the land. Each person in the class was assigned a character to portray in each group and we were to hold a council meeting in order to settle a land ownership dispute.

My role was to portray Charles Tomson, a “middleman” who sympathized with the Indigenous people, however, because he required funding from a white settler to publish a pamphlet, he did not denounce the white settler group. Portraying this role was difficult for me because it involved having to put my own personal beliefs aside and pretend that I wasn’t absolutely disgusted with the treatment of the Indigenous peoples in the land dispute. All the texts that I had to read to prepare for the role clearly showed that the white settlers were making decisions that only benefitted them.

In order to become the Charles Tomson who needed to write an “unbiased” pamphlet I needed to quiet the part of my brain that was against the bias. The skill of balancing my own judgment and the judgment of a man who benefited from the expulsion of a marginalized group while sympathizing with them taught me that there are instances in my academic career where being “unbiased” is actually going to be more helpful than I think. While I hope that I never have to pretend to be neutral in a case of blatant oppression, this skill could help me with future academic assignments.

Priscilla vs. Procrastination: Who will win?

Procrastination is an enemy to many. Unfortunately, I am one of the “many” that could not escape it. No matter how much time I have, I always wait until the last minute to start working on assignments. When there are no impending deadlines, I tell myself that I deserve a break which ends in assignments not getting done. The reason why I struggle with procrastination is because I let deadlines stress me out to the point where I get overwhelmed. This struggle appears in academic and personal aspects of my life.

With academics, when I am assigned something that isn’t due in the coming week, I tend to forget about it until I either remember or am reminded. In my fall 2023 semester, I am taking an Astronomy course in which we have problem sets due every Friday at 5 pm. Even though it’s stated on the syllabus, and we are reminded, I have an issue with not starting the assignment more than 24 hours before it’s due. I look at the problem set questions ahead of time and create the document to put all the questions in, yet I can’t find a way to start. My procrastination is also fueled by my perfectionist mindset in that I cannot move onto another assignment until I am satisfied with the first one.

In my personal life, procrastination is present mostly in my journey of healing. My healing process involves having important conversations with people who have contributed to my trauma. Instead of having these conversations, I put them off and let myself dwell on my trauma . At first, this occurred with family members, but it now affects how I interact with my closest friends. If I can’t find the courage to talk to those I consider to be my safety net, then how am I going to find the courage to talk to anyone else? Procrastination has forced me to neglect important academic and internal tasks that I need to complete.

My Apartment: Exciting to Frightening

I hope you enjoyed the dramatic introduction to my first reflection. It shows the English major in me. If you couldn’t tell by the title and my poetic blurb, I am going to tell you about my relationship with my room. At first, I was excited to be in that room. My room had the space and privacy I craved. But when classes started, the punches started coming and I was not rolling with them. After the first week of classes, coming home to a personal kitchen and bathroom was lovely.

As the weeks went by and the homework increased, my room wasn’t the place I thought it was. I would sit and rot in my room instead of going outside to do any random thing that would help get me out of the funk. I kept telling myself that I would get out of bed or off my phone and start my homework. I didn’t. I slept late and procrastinated. Your room is supposed to be the place where you get to and know you can be yourself. While this is true, being in my room all the time caused me to feel stuck and unmotivated. I know I need to get out, but I don’t know how to do that. How am I supposed to find motivation when there are no incentives?

Sure, getting my homework done earlier sounds nice, but it’s still homework. Wow. That last sentence really shows how much my brain hates me. It doesn’t even want to help the rest of me. I have realized that I just need to get out. It doesn’t matter where, it doesn’t matter how, it doesn’t matter the reason, I just need to get up and go. For the sake of my sanity and all my homework and deadlines I need to get out of this room and go just do.

Old Toys but New Tools

For most of my life, I was forced to be responsible for my caregiver’s emotions. I did not realize this however until I was almost out of high school. This issue was like a domino effect because it caused me to become acutely aware of how other people were feeling even though I didn’t want to. I was always observing people and watching them without even realizing it. By developing this habit, it has caused me to be hyper-aware and hyper-sensitive of my own actions and surroundings.

In order to help myself get through this I started going to CAPS so that I could talk through this and other issues I’ve had to deal with along with school. Going to CAPS really helped me feel affirmed in my feelings and feel heard which is something that I hadn’t felt before. This feeling of affirmation and feeling heard was something that I wanted to continue feeling, so I looked for ways to affirm myself while continuing to work on my healing journey. One of the ways I did this was redirecting conversations away from topics that made me feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed and also started to tip toe over my boundary line.

For instance, there was a time where I had to have a serious conversation with a parent about them crossing a boundary. Their response was disappointing, but I understood that it came from their own trauma and was not in any way my fault. I thanked them for listening and moved on from the conversation. I could go on about this experience, but there’s no point. I know how to detach myself from things that aren’t healthy, and if that means not responding, then it is what it is. This skill has aided me so much because it has become one of the small ways that I am able to separate home from school by just being in the moment and not allowing myself to think about other people’s problems.

Studying and it’s never ending struggles

Since my freshman year of college, I have struggled with studying. I didn’t learn how to study in high school because I didn’t have to. I was one of the “smart kids”, who got good grades, not because she studied all the time, but because she always did her work well. It didn’t help that the administration at my high school separated each grade level into 3 classes based largely on academic performance. There was never an emphasis on consistent studying. You had to make sure you got it right the first time around.

At the university level, you are expected to know how to study. There are no classes that teach you how to study, which is something that I think would be very beneficial, especially for FGLI students like me. I took a test in my Latin class and studying for it was really hard for me to do even though I knew what was going to be covered on the test. I didn’t know how to prepare, so I relied on my ability to retain information which inevitably caused me to forget the grammar structure that was on the test. Knowing how to effectively study would have helped me fill in that gap so that I wouldn’t have to panic or feel insecure about the test afterwards.

I don’t even know or understand what studying actually means. Is it sitting down and reading over your notes over and over again? Is it memorizing certain subject areas? Is it a combination of the two? I don’t know and maybe I will never actually know how to study. It seems to be easier for everyone around me because they just sit down and get right to it. Since freshman year, it feels like I have been bombarded with having to do this skill that I simply cannot and now it feels like it’s too late to even ask. I hope that someday studying will get easier for me, but I know that today is most certainly not the day.

Presenting in College

This slideshow was the first one I created during my freshman fall semester. The process was a little intimidating because I had to do it in a language I had just started learning 3 months prior. I think it was evident that I didn’t have a lot of experience with creating slideshows.

The slides were so wordy and I sounded like a robot just reading the computer. I wasn’t able to engage as much with the class because I was literally just reading off of the screen. From this power point I knew for the future there needed to be more images, less words, and more engagement with the class. I needed to learn how to create power points where I could actually present new information rather than read words that mean nothing to the audience off of a screen.