Victoria
“I have lived here in La Puente for eighteen years now. I started off at Don Julian Elementary School, then Torch Middle School, and now Bassett High school. I did feel comfortable growing up in La Puente because it feels like home to me, and there wasn’t-how can I say this- a racial difference because it was primarily a Hispanic community, so I didn’t face any prejudice. One thing that made an impact on me was when my father became unemployed, and my family struggled a lot, and I think that event influenced me 100% of who I am today; and I’m sure if that wouldn’t have happened I’d be a completely different person. My family most of all has a significant meaning to me because they’re my motivation to succeed. For a living I go to school, since I’m a senior I’m going to be going to college, and hopefully I’ll get a job as well, but primarily school as if right now. My sister is one of many people that have made an impact on me, I feel that she is my role model because she became pregnant at an early age, and everybody told her that she wasn’t going to graduate or that she wasn’t going to go to college. Everybody treated her that pregnancy was a disability, but she proved everybody wrong; and she got her bachelors and now she is about to get her masters, so to me she is like a super hero. The biggest struggle would have to be that since we live in a low income community, there is sometimes not enough money or not enough resources, or to do certain things. But lately, that has been the opposite; lately the community has been trying- I have been lucky enough to have seen the economic help from the community and I am really thankful for that- but money has really been a really big problem. No, I don’t believe in have regrets, I believe that everything happens for a reason, and if you do something you need to make something good out of it whether it is good or bad, and that’s just how your life plans out; you don’t need to dwell on the past, you just need to move on.”
“I enjoy reading and watching movies. I just like how I’m reading a book, and I’m just completely immersed; and I go into a different world, it makes an impact on me. Movies, I just love seeing how beautiful something may look on the screen. Reading books, watching movies, and spending time with my family on nice sunny days are what makes me feel happy. Happiness to me is loving yourself because if you love yourself then you can refuge yourself with yourself, and everything else doesn’t really matter because your happy with yourself, and you can just move on and get through everything.”
“I joined swim my freshman year, and I actually liked swimming a lot, but the coaches and just swimming competitively just wasn’t my thing; so I quit. I somewhat regret quitting because I miss swimming, but I don’t miss being in that environment.”
Whats the worst thing that can happen to someone? “…That’s a hard one…I think it would be losing family, or losing a loved one because after you loose someone that you see everyday or that you just immensely love, its such a heavy absence, and you don’t know how to deal with it, you don’t know what to do. You just want to scream, but you know that wouldn’t do anything. So I think that’s the hardest. Times are the hardest for people is now, going to high school because you’re trapped in between being completely independent and still being a kid at the same time. Politically…well…I don’t know about the candidates, but I like how he has game popularity even though it’s not mostly good popularity. Nonetheless the attention has been geared towards politics, and that’s a good thing because people are not ignoring politics; they are actually going out to vote. People see that elections are actually a big thing, and they influence how we will live the next four years.”
“If I can go back and do something differently…It would be nothing I think because like I said before I don’t have any regrets, and if I do go change something in my past, maybe something else would change; and things would be screwed up. I wouldn’t want to live a different life than I do now because I am comfortable with everything that is going on in my life. I am absolutely thankful for the confidence that I have in myself, I learned at an early age to love myself. I don’t want to be like, ‘”I don’t have problems”‘ because I do have problems, but I didn’t really have self-esteem problems. I feel that it helped because I felt comfortable with what I do, what I say, what I wear. That really has helped me.”
Smiley Squad: Humans Of La Puente 