With my youngest daughter at a field trip. (Photo courtesy of Francis Regalado)

My college degree is in sight despite all the obstacles

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EL PASO – Ever since high school, I was categorized as one of the students who could never get a college degree, but now I am only months away from earning my diploma at the University of Texas at El Paso, part of the first generation in my family to graduate from college. In high school they had two kinds of plans, the advanced and the general plan. The advanced plan was for those students identified as college material and the general plan was for those students tagged only as high school graduates. My first D in geometry prompted the counselors to switch me to the general plan. Although they said I could still attend college, they pulled me out of geometry and put me in consumer math, which was an interesting class but not a class I feel I really needed.

A Mother’s Day tribute to an immigrant mom

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EL PASO —When someone is asked, “ What do you think about your mother? ” the immediate answer is “my mother is the best.”

But could one really describe a mother with all her attributes and her flaws? Personally I describe my mother as brave, with a bold attitude someone who has worked non-stop for her family and her community. Veronica Macias, 46, a single mother has sustained her children alone, and without an education for 26 years. Born and raised in Ciudad Juarez, and the youngest of 11 children she immigrated to El Paso in July, 1973.