Leaving Las Positas College
Kelly Sheeran & Julian Lim
Issue date: 5/21/10 Section: Features
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You're coming to the end of the street and the time is right to make a turn onto a new street, the path of life.
As another year draws to a close, the lives and careers of many Las Positas College graduates begin as they walk down and jovially receive their diplomas.
For each graduate, there is a story behind it all.
There are students straight out of high school, students who have been here for three years, and even those who return to school decades after grade school.
It is different for each student. Their journey through community college was made by their choices and decisions.
Here, two graduates share their stories.
In she comes and out she goes
For many students, the pressure to get straight into a four year university is overwhelming, often causing the student to scrap their four year plans and ease their way into the college scene.
Reyhaneh Rajabzadeh, a just turned 20-year old speech pathology major, used community college as a bridge to give her time but also the resources necessary to continue after the two years required for transfer. After attending Amador Valley High in Pleasanton, the race to apply to as many universities was on.
"I got into San Diego and I got into Santa Cruz, Davis and I got into Irvine too," she said.
With acceptance to four UC's as well as a full-ride to San Francisco State, giving up the smooth transition would not have been on the agenda of many students. About a month before classes were to start, Rajabzadeh made the decision to enroll at Las Positas instead.
"I didn't really like the idea of going off to a four-year school without any kind of plan," she said. "There's more freedom if you go here in terms of becoming more independent. You have more time to decide what you want to major in and I didn't know what I wanted to major in."
Starting out in the Visual Communications department, Rajabzadeh put her focus into a graphic design major. She soon, however, became unhappy with idea of the job market with which she would have the potential to work with. She continues to do art and graphic design as a hobby but has since changed her major to speech pathology. She said that if the universities will allow, she would like to pursue a double major in Spanish.
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