*all stories are based on the life of Quinn Gonzales and details may be *exaggerated* for creative purposes
April 18, 2009: The day of my eleventh birthday. Most kids my age would be decorating their houses with banners, balloons, and ribbons all in the shade of their favorite color. Don't get me wrong-- I was thrilled to be turning 11, but for a seemingly-odd reason. Years earlier, my mother responded to a question that I had asked, saying that in order for me to start babysitting, I had to be eleven years old. In my family, my mom's word was considered as good as gold. So on April 18, 2009, I spent my birthday canvassing the neighborhood, knocking on every door asking if anyone needed a babysitter. With little to no experience, besides watching after my own 5- and 7-year old siblings, I was excited and surprised to get hired. At the age of 11, I was earning a whopping $4 an hour (which was more than plenty to invest in my Polly Pocket collection) to watch after a 4- and 6-year old.
My babysitting "empire" soon grew and I began watching after dozens of families in my neighborhood. The passion I had to spend my eleventh birthday wandering around SE Portland is the same passion I have carried throughout my years of education. This love for caring after children blossomed into a dedication to learning about child development and education. In high school, I spent countless afternoons teaching a speech and debate class at my middle school. With each new class came new challenges and adaptations of my own teaching style to accommodate the needs of the students. I carried the skills I had gained into the summer after my freshman year at Santa Clara, when I packed my bags and moved to Seattle to teach science classes to children ages 5- to 13-years old. The summer was equally challenging as it was informative, and I came into my sophomore year at Santa Clara knowing that learning about children was not just a hobby-- it had become fundamental to my identity. As an urban education minor, I have been able to integrate child studies classes into a science-packed schedule and gain a different perspective on public health issues facing my community.
April 18, 2009: The day of my eleventh birthday. Most kids my age would be decorating their houses with banners, balloons, and ribbons all in the shade of their favorite color. Don't get me wrong-- I was thrilled to be turning 11, but for a seemingly-odd reason. Years earlier, my mother responded to a question that I had asked, saying that in order for me to start babysitting, I had to be eleven years old. In my family, my mom's word was considered as good as gold. So on April 18, 2009, I spent my birthday canvassing the neighborhood, knocking on every door asking if anyone needed a babysitter. With little to no experience, besides watching after my own 5- and 7-year old siblings, I was excited and surprised to get hired. At the age of 11, I was earning a whopping $4 an hour (which was more than plenty to invest in my Polly Pocket collection) to watch after a 4- and 6-year old.
My babysitting "empire" soon grew and I began watching after dozens of families in my neighborhood. The passion I had to spend my eleventh birthday wandering around SE Portland is the same passion I have carried throughout my years of education. This love for caring after children blossomed into a dedication to learning about child development and education. In high school, I spent countless afternoons teaching a speech and debate class at my middle school. With each new class came new challenges and adaptations of my own teaching style to accommodate the needs of the students. I carried the skills I had gained into the summer after my freshman year at Santa Clara, when I packed my bags and moved to Seattle to teach science classes to children ages 5- to 13-years old. The summer was equally challenging as it was informative, and I came into my sophomore year at Santa Clara knowing that learning about children was not just a hobby-- it had become fundamental to my identity. As an urban education minor, I have been able to integrate child studies classes into a science-packed schedule and gain a different perspective on public health issues facing my community.
December 25th, 2004 (or was it 2005...?): It was around 3am on Christmas morning and I was wide-awake. A 3am wake up may seem odd on a day meant for rest, but my house was buzzing and it was time to start the day. You see, my family has an untraditional way of celebrating Christmas. Every Christmas, we wake up, pack the car with our presents from Santa (we called ahead to schedule an early delivery from Old Saint Nick), and start driving to Folsom, a suburb of Sacramento where my mom's parents live. With four young kids needing bathroom breaks every thirty minutes, it takes about twelve hours to drive from Portland to Folsom, hence the 3am wake up. Alongside my "I Love Lucy" pillow and dolls, I packed a bag almost as large as my luggage containing markers, paper, glue sticks, old magazines, scissors, and every color of sparkly glue you could imagine. You see, this 12 hour drive was prime crafting time for me. While my one-year old sister, three-year old brother, nine-year old brother, and forty-something year old mother use the early hours of the drive to catch up on sleep, I was wide-awake, designing a new outfit on paper to construct for my dolls. As the sun began to peek through the windows of our 1996 Gold Dodge minivan (the same van that would meet its demise on the same day and on the same drive almost 6 years later, but that's another story), I remember looking into the rearview mirror ahead of me to see my dad, smiling at me.
Although I can't pinpoint quite why, this image is one of my earliest memories. I carried this same determination and drive to incorporate art and creativity into my later years. As a 12 year old, I started my own card-making business (a young entrepreneur, you could say), designing a website and making weekly deliveries to addresses within the 97214 and 97202 postal codes (the only neighborhoods I could reach on my bike). As a high school student, I became involved in my school's newspaper, becoming the advisor on the Love Column (and boy did I need to be creative in some of my responses). After learning the techniques of InDesign while working on the newspaper layout, I became obsessed with graphic design, starting my own zine to combine my love for creative writing and design. During my years at Santa Clara, I have learned to be creative in ways unrelated to the arts. On some days as a teacher in Seattle, my lesson plan and materials would not arrive until two hours into the school day; I had to learn to be creative in order keep elementary school kids educated and entertained without materials. Being creative and crafty is fundamental to my being, and I am still attempting to incorporate these skills into my work in public health. As a highly organized and highly strung individual, the Global Social Benefit Fellowship initially daunted me. With the main theme of the fellowship being "ambiguity," I was characteristically intimidated. But as much as I was scared of not having a plan, I was equally intrigued by the intellectual creativity required of this fellowship. As a fellow, you have creative license in every step of the way, and I am excited to utilize this creativity in my role at KadAfrica.
Sometime during Fall 2015: I am a senior in high school. As a part of my IB diploma program, I am required to have 50 service hours a quarter. I am reluctant to initiate this process, but I eventually start tutoring at a neighboring Catholic Charities community called Kateri Park. Kateri Park is an affordable housing apartment building for refugees from Somalia, Burma, Bhutan, Iraq, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. I started as a homework tutor, and eventually start helping an 11-year old student from Ethiopia named Chara. After a few weeks of working on math homework, we start to work on an essay she had to complete for her English course. As we start to brainstorm, I encourage her to write down her ideas as we think of them. Despite this, she doesn't lift her pencil. I say something along the lines of "you should probably start writing down what you want to say," and hand her the pencil. She then excuses herself and doesn't return, leaving her blank assignment on the table. After asking my advisor what I had done wrong, I learned that Chara had not yet learned how to write. My assumption that all 11-year olds knew how to write caused my interaction with Chara to be negative, due to my misinformed perceptions of her abilities. This was the first, of many, times that my assumptions were challenged through interacting with communities that I was not a member of.
Service has always been a large part of my vocational discernment process. Additionally, service has been an opportunity to challenge my own bias and assumptions, becoming more structurally and culturally competent through these classifications. During my years at Santa Clara, I have been involved in SCCAP, leading a program called Best Buddies last year. Weekly, students from Santa Clara would meet up with young adults from the San Jose community with developmental disabilities and collaborate on gardening projects at the Forge Garden. Through this experience, I learned about the incorrect and correct terminology used when discussing disabilities. I also saw first-hand how individuals with disabilities are such an integral part of our society. The young adults I was working with were gearing up to graduate from their programs and many held part-time jobs outside of school. My assumptions about what people with disabilities could and could not do were consistently challenged with each new week.
This past summer, I was an intern at Transition Projects, a nonprofit in Portland, Oregon that serves people experiencing homelessness. Although my main focus of the internship was to create a protocol for how to treat lice and scabies within the clinic, I spent a majority of my time on site volunteering in the hygiene center. My role was to supply people with materials to satisfy their various hygienic needs, such as towels and shampoo for the showers, coins and detergent for the laundry, and pads and tampons for the bathrooms. Through this experience, I had an unexpected realization. For years, I had only a few generalized images of what a person experiencing homelessness looked like: on the streets, unhygienic, and having severe mental health problems. During my time at Transition Projects, I met many individuals who identified as experiencing homelessness, few of whom fit my original description as a "homeless person." (Names and jobs have been adjusted for privacy) I met Jake, the man who came in every day for a shower before starting his job as a manager at the Banana Republic. Carl came in every week to do laundry before heading to his regular hospital appointments, which he had to walk over three miles to get to. A few weeks into my internship, I learned that my coworker at the hygiene center had been homeless for seven years before finding the job that led him to Transition Projects. During my time interning, I began to see the true magnitude of the problem of homelessness in Portland; something has to be wrong in our housing system if a person who has a full time job at Banana Republic can’t afford rent. But I also started to see the potential for homelessness to be temporary, as opposed to chronic. Although my coworker lived on the streets with his young son for years, he would tell me about his son’s plays at school, his own involvement on the PTA (Parent Teacher Association), and how he was able to join a gym. Through this service experience, I was able to change my image of what a person experiencing homelessness looked like, as well as the potential for homelessness to be a temporary state. Part of my motivation behind applying for this fellowship was to challenge my views once again. How can you develop if you aren't constantly reevaluating your opinions?
I hope to integrate my love for learning about children, being creative, and challenging my own views into my time with KadAfrica. Although this piece may convey that I have a strong sense of self-identity, I am constantly struggling with the existential question that we all frequently ask ourselves: who am I? I am optimistic in this fellowship leading me closer to answering that question.
I hope to integrate my love for learning about children, being creative, and challenging my own views into my time with KadAfrica. Although this piece may convey that I have a strong sense of self-identity, I am constantly struggling with the existential question that we all frequently ask ourselves: who am I? I am optimistic in this fellowship leading me closer to answering that question.