Inside the mind of a graduating senior

It was more than six years ago when Natalie Perez, a senior consumer affairs major, found herself sitting in her high school’s library with 25 students also trying to apply to college.

Making it to her final semester wasn’t easy, Perez said. Along the way, she had a few setbacks. During this past summer, Perez was living in Northridge, Calif., when her father passed away of a heart attack.

“When my dad died, I wanted to pack and leave,” Perez said.

Natalie Perez, after experiencing the passing of her father, will be the first in her family to graduate from college this spring.

Instead of packing and leaving for good, she made frequent trips to her parents’ home in Palm Springs, Calif.

“I went home a lot,” she said.

Perez often wonders how she made it herself.

“Even now I still don’t know how I do it day by day,” she said. “Some days are good and some are not.”

She leans back in her chair. For a moment, Perez is silent. Soon, Perez will be sitting amongst thousands of graduates, but among those thousands she may be of the minority; she will be the first in her family to both attend and graduate college.

“(Now that I am graduating,) my family expects me to get rich all of a sudden,” Perez said with a grin.

She doesn’t see the “getting rich” happening anytime soon, but she does feel rich in other ways. Perez will be able to say that she is a college graduate.

While she purchased her cap ‘n’ gown she said, “This is it. I’m done.”

“No more school,” she said.