The Chexican

Tag: College

  • What a Year

    What a Year

    From being a fresh transfer student at the beginning of the year to now coming up on my final semester. Eleven demanding months of academic rigor, 16 units over the regular semester and 10 over the summer session, now fully reflected in my degree audit. To have gotten this much completed while simultaneously self-representing in civil process and appellate proceedings has given me a massive boost in confidence over my own capabilities.

    I finished at San Diego City College in the summer of 2024, and walked at the next commencement in the spring of 2025 after my first semester at SDSU. Now, in less than 6 months, I’ll be in another graduation ceremony at the university level from San Diego State; back-to-back graduation years.

  • A Trying Year Completed

    A Trying Year Completed

    I did it. All final exams and presentations done. Opening appellant’s brief finished and filed. Final “group” written report that I ended up self-writing to about 13 pages of copy, 25 pages total with cover page/table of contents/appendices, riding the momentum from all that legal brief preparation.

    What I feel most is accomplished. Dealing with full-time academic course loads all year while also self-representing a case through the appeal process has felt like running two mental marathons at the same time for 11 months straight. So much pressure and stress, all kinds of mental and emotional duress, all powered through to bring me to this moment in time when I can look back on them instead of having to actively live them.

    Relatedly, the other major feeling I’m having is one of cathartic relief, like I finally have room to start being the “real” me again, not that myopically-focused forced stoic facade privately brimming with resentment and anxiety. I physically feel like magically I lost 15 lbs overnight, and my full capacity for a gratitude mindset has returned.

    At this point, both matters are no longer future unknowns, they are now mostly-done. As the year winds down and the upcoming personal decade milestone of 2026 gets ever closer, I’m feeling confident and capable in driving my undergraduate studies and appeal case to their conclusion.

  • A Note From the Underground

    A Note From the Underground

    The SDSU Fall 2025 final exam period has been a capstone gauntlet on a very challenging year.

    Back in January, I was a fresh transfer student having just completed all of the final requirements for my associate’s degree in the summer of 2024 and applied on a whim during the final month of the admission period for the Spring 2025 semester just to see if I would even be accepted. When I accepted the offer that was extended, I took on an accelerated curriculum to ensure that I’d be eligible for graduation at the end of Spring ’26. This would serve the dual purposes of minimizing student loan debt over more semesters, and allow me to graduate both one year after graduating from community college and on the milestone turning year of the next age decade in my life, reasons both practical and symbolic.

    The months in between have been a mentally and emotionally demanding sustained pressure, the high stakes of this undertaking ever present in my mind. As an independent returning adult student with no financial support or safety nets, this has all been a very real do-or-die stakes journey. It’s only through both my own student loan debt and state assistance grants/scholarships that I’ve been able to even attempt this academic climb to begin with. So there’s no room for failure, either with individual courses or overall. Not only do I not have family to be able to fall back in an emergency, my obligations to my dog demand that I achieve continued successes to be able to care and provide for him.

    Those fears and feelings of obligation to myself, my animal, and my financially supporting home state of California have been my sole motivators for the entirety of this year. With 16 units in the spring semester, 10 units over the summer session, and another 16 units this semester, this year has had only the briefest 1–2 week respites from the burdens of academia. Consequently, there’s so much I’ve sacrificed along the way. Gatherings with friends, holiday celebrations, engaging with my neighbors, weekend days dedicated to doing something special with the dog and maximizing his lifetime experiences, and so on—everything that didn’t involve my studies and tending to my pet’s basic needs.

    And all those sacrifices carried a dual cost. It wasn’t just the forfeiture of the experience on my part, but also the toll on my interpersonal relationships. For as much as the words of encouragement and support flow when one pursues academic achievement, it’s not so simple and clean in practice. There’s a certain exasperation, and in some cases even resentment, for not having the bandwidth to be your usual self as it relates to everyone else. It takes the form of peer pressure to take “earned” time off and deprioritize academic obligations in favor of socialization. And the impatience of having those invitations declined. Or resentment for not being able to indulge a sudden and unplanned visit. The inbound communications dry up, and the endeavor feels that much more isolated and costly.

    This balancing act of fears and expectations, worries of clinical depression/anxiety resurgence, existential demands and guilt, and academic course loads was harrowing enough in itself. But all the while, I’ve also been contending with the legal matters around my civil harassment case. My final petition hearing was on January 29th, a week into my first semester at SDSU. Since then, I’ve been managing moving it through the appellate process.

    Right now, I’m in the final stages of this end-of-year crunch. All final exams have been taken, and I’ve only got a single written assignment to complete academically. By next week, all of the big burdens carried this year will be alleviated. The collegiate obligations of 2025 will be satisfied, and those other matters will finally be on their way towards their final resolution.

    In other words, one more weekend to go before I’m free to be “me” again. At least until the next semester starts.

  • Re-Graduation Pending

    Re-Graduation Pending

    Last week, I had my registration appointment for next semester’s classes.
    Yesterday, I got an email notification about the graduation application period opening.
    Today, I got the confirmation.

    It’s jarring to go from the excitement of becoming a new inbound student at San Diego State University in January and find myself staring down the finality of this University student life only 11 months later. Having such a very short window in which to get to know more people and form that alma mater connection makes this current goal of lining up graduation with my upcoming milestone birthday year bittersweet.

    In a more ideal timeline, I would have taken semesters 12 units at a time, a two-year University experience with more bandwidth to engage in extracurricular activities and relationship building. Instead, extistential pressures and economic reality drove me to pursue efficiency, this current timeline where I’ll be having graduation commencement cermonies back-to-back: 2025 from City College as a Fall 2024 graduate and 2026 from SDSU.

    It’s been an exhausting endeavor, a near-monastic state of being with such a high opportunity cost that I exist only as a scholar and a walker to my dog. I’ve done very poorly at maintain other areas of my life in balance, from my fitness workouts to my journaling/blogging.

    However, there’s still much left to do at SDSU before it’s truly done, including the coming end—and related final exams—of the current Fall semester.

  • Eight Months of Academic Progress

    Eight Months of Academic Progress

    With the start of the Fall semester looming, I keep reminding myself that at the end of this next term I’ll only be 9 units away from major program completion, 12 units from completing all requirements by the end of the Spring 2026 semester.

  • Graduation

    Graduation

    It’s been a few days since I graduation from San Diego City College on Thursday, finally getting to walk after having completed all my required coursework in the Summer of last year and my degree not issued until the conclusion of the Fall 2024 semester. Dated December 16, 2024 and received in the mail back on March 3rd of this year, it’s an accomplishment that’s been stuck in a state of suspense and nice to finally have played out in full.

    I was curious as to how I would feel that day, having never done a graduation walk before; I had tested out of high school at the start of my senior year, obtaining a legal diploma equivalent by way of the California High School Proficiency Exam (CHSPE). Thereafter, I had made peace with living a life in which I would not be a college student/graduate, and the opportunity to walk for a graduation ceremony a faint and highly unlikely possibility. I never really felt like I missed out on anything special by skipping my high school senior year and its processions, and after 20 years of mentally treating graduation ceremonies as something so personally meaningless, was unsure where my perspective would land that day. 

    It ultimately ended up being a very gratifying experience. I wore my regalia while I took the dog out for a walk before heading down to Balboa Park to check in for the commencement ceremony in the early afternoon. It was nice to show off to everyone I know, and to get congratulatory acknowledgements from strangers throughout the entire day. 

    While it’s been great to bask in the accomplishment, reality doesn’t wait, and I immediately have the matter of financing the summer session and choosing classes for the upcoming Fall semester to contend with. 

    Not only that, the commencement ceremony also brought a bittersweet poignancy to matter. Getting my associate’s degree is something I’ve already done, it’s time and effort already spent that I no longer have ahead of me as my future but instead as my past; that much older and done through this life. And in a more immediate context, the challenge of putting these degrees to work and materializing a return on this investment—and pay off the student loan debt incurred to obtain them—isn’t that far away off. Seeing as how even graduate-level professionals with advanced degrees are facing high uncertainty and competition in the modern job market, getting academic credentials is only a part of the process.

    This student life of mine is only slated to last for another calendar year, presuming everything goes according to plan between now and then. That means that on top of keeping things together academically between now and the slated finish line next Spring, I’ve also got a lot of other areas of personal development to vigorously work on: health & physical fitness, real-world social networks, creative output and hobbies, interpersonal relationship management, the list goes on.

    All my adult life, my approach has been to keep my head low, do hard and good work, and learn as much as possible. Doing that independently taught me a lot, now being further reinforced by the standards of collegiate education in business studies. But I also realize it’s time to start changing tack and doing “more” to make something out of both myself and my recently-changed legal name.

  • Spring 2025 Semester: Completed

    Spring 2025 Semester: Completed

    Had the last two final of exams for this semester today, one at late morning and other in the early evening.

    It’s hard to believe it’s already over and done with. As much I’m glad to progress and keep moving forward, there is a certain melancholy over how fast it all seems to be passing. One down, two more to go.

  • Preoccupations

    Preoccupations

    Time really seems to pass a lot quicker the older I get. I’ve been meaning to push an update, but with everything that’s been going on over the last few weeks, even my private journal hasn’t been seeing much action.

    Last month’s points of distresses ended up being a massive time-sink for me. In the end, I followed through with attending San Diego State University and accepting the federal student loan being offered, finally entering the world of student loan debt after having successfully evaded it all this time. When it came to registering for classes, I enrolled in 16 units across 6 different courses. Using the university’s degree audit feature, I noted that my 69 units of transfer credits had me starting the equivalent of my third year at 58% completion towards my Bachelor’s and leaving only 51 required for completion—meaning that at a full-time clip of at least 15 units per semester and some infill during the summer/winter intersessions, I could potentially be done and ready to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree at the end of the Spring 2026 semester.

    Getting used to having an academic workload again was a bittersweet transition, glad to have the opportunity to keep advancing my studies while at the same time resentful that my celebratory freedom from homework, exams, and that awful Canvas platform had to end up being so short-lived. It was a very “back in the car” a la *Jurassic Park* feeling.

    Screen capture of the car from Jurassic Park at the end of the tree fall scene
    Well, I’m back in Canvas again…

    It also didn’t help that the first few days of the semester were lost towards preparation for my evidentiary hearing in my Civil Harassment Restraining Order case. That didn’t play out as it should have, with the letter and spirit of the law upheld. Instead, I found myself at the receiving end of even more judicial misconduct and failure to uphold the law. I have follow up actions planned, some of which I’ll be forced to move on fairly soon, but for the moment am dedicating all my care and focus to my studies first. I have a lot of vested interest—personal, financial, and opportunistic—in at least maintaining if not elevating my cumulative GPA and finishing my Bachelor’s degree with a high academic standing.

    Beneath all of these short and long term goals is the pressure to self-actualize, and the anxiety of having a timeframe imposed on it. If all goes according to plan and I do complete my Bachelor’s in under two years, I’m under no illusion that it’s going to be a golden ticket to a prosperous happily ever after; even professionals with graduate degrees are having difficulty finding employment. And with everything going on socially and politically, I don’t even have the assurance that the student loans that afforded me this semester will still be around in the ones to follow. All that in mind, I have it in my head that it’s not finishing the degree that’s incumbent upon me, but also optimizing myself for life afterwards.

    In these short two years I’m going to have at SDSU, I’m going to want to make the most of the resources available, from simple things like making connections with faculty/students to the more involved effort of venturing on campus to attend networking and career-focused events. Both of these simple actions, like so many other personal plans and projects, require moving past my hermetic state of being. To bring this long era in my life of keeping a reserved low profile and focusing solely on the required work in front of me to its end. To start assembling an online presence, including fleshing out this blog. To start building a real professional network. To polish my personal elevator pitch and overall image.

    Feels like a daunting additional set of things to do, given how much my academic workload is taking up the vast majority of my time and I’m admittedly struggling to keep pace with. But it also feels like I’m still only starting, like there’s still so much more I can get out myself. The closer I get to that ideal personal state, the easier and more manageable things should start to feel, until I’m able to once again live in a confident state of flow I remember having in adolescence.