Office of Graduate Studies No-100-010 April 2016 Holly Pierce: The Importance of an Information Session 1 Fall 2014 Holly Pierce walked quickly across the UC Davis campus, picking up her pace as she neared her sociology class, the last one she needed to complete her major. Holly was both a re-entry and transfer student and her journey to the university had been circuitous. Now, faced with the challenge of another application, this time for graduate school, she wondered if she had fulfilled all the prerequisites. Holly aspired to complete a Masters in Social Work (MSW) at California State University Sacramento (Sac State) and move into a career where she could help others. But she knew that she needed work experience in the field of social services in order to be admitted. As a single mother, trying to raise her daughter and get on with her life, Holly hoped she could go straight into the degree program and not have to find employment in an entry-level position. She had worked as a bus driver for a nonprofit earlier in her life and she wondered if that would count towards work experience. Holly had been studying for her degree for four years, starting first at the community college and obtaining an AA in Chemical Dependency Studies, an AA in Human Services, and one in Individual and Society. Each step of the way she became more confident in her academic abilities and a clearer path began to open up as to the direction she should go. Once she had been admitted to UC Davis, Holly rented out her house in the North Highlands area of Sacramento and moved to university family housing to make things simple for herself and her daughter. She knew that in earning a college degree, she was not only gaining skills for a more stable and rewarding career, but also setting a good example as a mother. Reaching her classroom with time to spare, Holly took a seat on the side and took out her phone, searching quickly for the Sac State URL. It had just occurred to her that the information she was seeking could probably be found on the Sac State admissions FAQ, but unfortunately the answer wasn t available. However she did discover that the Sac State Division of Social Work held information sessions for potential MSW applicants approximately every two weeks. 1 This case was prepared for use as the basis for class instruction and discussion by Carlos Andrés Barragán, PhD and Sylvia Sensiper, PhD, Director of the Guardian 1
As the teacher came in and started writing things on the board, Holly noted the first info session date on her calendar and made plans to go. Opening her notebook, she jotted down a reminder, and then a list of the other questions she wanted to pursue. Although she needed to study for a test, taking the time to go to the information session and ensuring that her questions were answered seemed to be time well spent. Early years and Foster Care Until she was 12 years old, Holly lived with her parents and siblings in Sacramento, California. At that point, her parents divorced and she and her brother and sisters went to live with various different relatives. Despite the family connection, the relationships were not easy, and Holly felt a lot of responsibility for her sisters. I went from knowing what it was to have a family, to having all of that totally taken away, she said. Although Holly liked school and performed well, her responsibility for her siblings made it difficult to attend regular classes and participate in the day-to-day activities of a traditional high school. Instead, in order to save time, Holly decided to finish her degree by attending a continuation school. Work and Marriage By the time she was 15 years old, Holly was working, mostly taking on various jobs in the fast-food industry. Then, by the time she was twenty-one, she had moved into what she thought was more stable employment, driving a school bus for the Sacramento City Unified School District. Unfortunately, however, the job didn t pan out to be what Holly had anticipated. She was only employed for the ten months of the school year, the workday started very early and the shifts were very long. Holly was only paid minimum wage and district budget cuts loomed often making the work seem unpredictable. Not comfortable with the uncertainty of the position, Holly started to look around to find employment with greater stability. During this time, she contemplated going to back to school and getting a college degree, but while the idea sounded intriguing, her primary goal was to find a more secure job situation and a higher salary. Studying for something that had a faster turnaround time seemed more logical so Holly looked into obtaining a real estate license and was able to complete her tests by the time she turned twenty-three. She also got married and had a child, but neither her work life nor home life brought her the stability she desired. You need a huge network to be successful in real estate and with my upbringing and background I just didn t have that and I couldn t create it fast enough, she said. She also tried being a stay-at-home mom but her husband wasn t dependable. I ended up leaving that relationship when my daughter was three, and because I didn t have any family to turn to we were homeless. This was a difficult time in Holly s life but also a time of great growth as it strengthened her resolve and cultivated her ability to be resourceful. 2
Housing and Community Faced with the dire situation of needing a place to live, Holly began to navigate various state networks to find out what kinds of resources might be available. What would happen is that they would give me one instruction and when I followed that, I was given three more instructions, she said, so it made me a professional at following through and helped me develop the ability to keep moving forward. Sadly, Holly s mother had also become very ill during this time and Holly decided it was her duty to take care of her. After some searching, she was able to find a little two-bedroom apartment in Serna Village in Sacramento, a community project to support homeless people to rebuild their lives and careers. 2 But the community s policy didn t exactly fit Holly s situation, until she was able to help the administrators see that she and her family needed their support. They said, we ve never done this before, it s always been parents and their children, Holly related. And I said Well, you guys are an out of the box organization and we are out of the box, and they agreed it was fair enough. Holly s skill to see things through and identify steps and directions to overcome difficulties made her an asset to her new community. Once she moved in, she engaged almost immediately in support activities by volunteering and helping her neighbors to move from a homeless situation to having a job and taking care of themselves. It was almost as if she had a 24/7 life-coach and job sharing position, a task that was perfectly suited to Holly s life experience and strengths. Her involvement in foster care and her own struggles with homelessness gave her an instant rapport with those needing help and she developed a way of working with people that was free of judgment. When I look at someone else, Holly said, I can feel what they re feeling. Being able to talk to somebody because I m coming up beside people, not across a desk makes a huge difference. I was able to help a lot of people. For Holly, her time at Serna Village was instructive and life-affirming. She did not regret having to take care of her mother as the only alternative would have been to have her reside in an institution or hospital without substantial family contact. I was able to clean up my credit, save some money, and help my mom, Holly said. And then I went from there, and I got a job with regional transit driving for the city and I was able to buy a home. Going Back to School One evening after a community gathering at the Village, Holly walked back to her place caught up with the idea of returning to school. Had my family not broken up, my life would have taken off into a complete different direction, she thought. I would have already had a PhD in my twenties because I had the ability, I just didn t have the support or the guidance. Going back to school had been in Holly s mind for years as there were 2 Serna Cottages is one of a number of housing projects that provide housing and programs to families and individuals in order to nurture and restore stability and hope. See https://cottagehousing.org 3
countless episodes in which people valued her experiences and opinions but were not able to give her a stable position because she didn t have a formal education. Holly was curious to see what would happen if she took one class as an experiment. She was uncertain whether she could read the academic texts and meet the deadlines of constant homework, and was also afraid that her math and writing skills were weak. But she decided to take the plunge and enrolled in a psychology class at American River College. After receiving an A Holly decided to take two classes. I took a sociology class and a yoga class over the summer and I got two A s in those classes as well, she said. Then I took three classes and finally worked up to 16 units until I got my first B, after which I backed off a little bit. The adjustment process was not easy, but Holly developed a system and she made sure that she always showed up and always delivered her assignments. Her experiment turned into a three-year experience in which she achieved three different Associate degrees. Perhaps most importantly, Holly fell in love with sociology at American River College. In her third year, Holly had a meeting with her counselor to review her grades. You can be anything you want to be the counselor told her, noting her high GPA. It was at this point that Holly realized that although she cared about the individual, she did not necessarily want to be a drugs counselor. Intellectually and academically she was more inclined towards a big picture understanding with an interest in examining society s inner-workings. So she took her counselor s advice to attend a TAG agreement orientation session. Then she received some help with her application, was admitted to University of California Davis and finally transferred in Fall 2013. Her transition was bittersweet as her mother also passed away during this period. Holly and her daughter moved from Sacramento to live on the UC Davis campus to be close to Holly s classes and also make it easy for her daughter to take the bus to school. I wanted to be fully present for the experience, Holly said, and that meant fully immersing myself into being available. So if somebody said, Can you do this? I wanted to say, yes!, because I live right here. It was perfect. The workload during each quarter at UC Davis was considerable and Holly took some time to find the best strategy to avoid taking time and attention away from her daughter. During the first quarter she experimented and finally settled on a schedule of taking three regular courses and an honors class plus summer school. Holly felt this would help her achieve great grades, enjoy her studies and move on quickly through her program, without being overwhelmed like too many of her peers and classmates. The Feel of Success Early on Holly decided she needed to think strategically about how she was going to fund the two years she would be attending UC Davis. A lot of students decide to work while they re going to school and what I saw was people making Cs and making $8 an hour, she said. So those students were not excelling in any direction, they were just getting by. As an older student, Holly felt her age required her to think differently. I didn t come here at forty years old to just get by, she said. I ve got one shot at re-creating my own life, so I ll take the loans with everybody else. 4
Holly also realized that intramural scholarships might impact the funding she already received and that it wasn t a good way for her to find extra resources. Instead she applied for outside scholarships designed to help former foster students and other grants offered by organizations like the Soroptimists International and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. I had to learn how to balance study and work and how to ask for help, Holly said. Applying for grants was demanding and time-consuming but it also had a benefit on top of the additional funds. Being able to include grants and scholarships on a resume are immensely positive for a student s academic record and CV, particularly if a student wants to attend graduate school. For example, in April 2015, Holly received the Live Your Dream Award from Soroptimist International of Davis in recognition of her life and academic achievements. 3 This is an award that is given to outstanding women that are pursuing undergraduate schooling and vocational training program while still active as the head of a household. (See Exhibit A) Thinking about the Future: The MSW Application Holly planned to finish her BA in sociology in Spring of 2015, and as the time grew closer, she began to consider obtaining a graduate degree. Uncertain where to start, she contacted the UC Davis Guardian Professions Program (GPP) and received some assistance including help with her application and funding to take the GRE. Deciding that a Masters in Social Work would complement her sociological understandings she checked for programs available in the region and set her sights on CSU Sacramento. Holly would graduate with honors in a few short months but as she began to prepare her resume, she became concerned that she might not have the relevant professional experience to substantiate her interests and potential for the MSW. Knowing that she could get answers at the Sac State information session, she double-checked the time to make sure she could attend. The session would be presented by an administrator and there would be time for Q and A. Holly also knew that having a personal contact who could match her face to her name if she needed to find additional information in the future would also be useful. 3 See http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/uc-davis-student-receives-soroptimisteducation-grant/ 5
Exhibit A Local News UC Davis student receives Soroptimist education grant By Special to The Enterprise From page A5 April 30, 2015 Soroptimist International of Davis, the chapter of a global organization that works to improve the lives of women and girls through social and economic empowerment, presented a UC Davis student and mom with its Live Your Dream Award on April 15. At a luncheon honoring the recipient s life and academic achievements, the women s service organization presented Holly J. Pierce with a $2,000 grant. The Live Your Dream Award is an annual cash grant given to women who remain heads of household as they continue their undergraduate schooling or vocational and skills training program. The award is often used for tuition, books, child care, car fare and other education-related expenses. Pierce, the single mom of a daughter, is graduating with honors in June from UCD with a bachelor s degree in sociology. She has maintained a 3.8 grade-point average while juggling her family responsibilities and her studies. She has been accepted into the master s of social work program at Sacramento State and is slated to begin classes this summer. The Live Your Dream Award, formerly known as the Women s Opportunity Award, was created in 1972 to help female heads of household overcome difficulties and obtain training or schooling so they could better support their families. The Live Your Dream Award provides more than $1.6 million in cash grants each year to women in need. Since the program was established, the Soroptimists have given out $30 million in the form of grants and scholarships to improve the lives of tens of thousands of women. For more information about Soroptimist International, visitwww.soroptimist.org. Soroptimist International of Davis meets every Wednesday at 11:45 a.m. at the Odd Fellows Hall, 415 Second St. Visitsidavis.org and like Soroptimist International Davis on its Facebook page. 6
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