My Journey as a Latina in STEM

I haven't fully introduced myself unless you've ventured to my About Page. But I'd like to formally introduce myself on a blog post! My name is Viviana Vazquez but you can just call me V and I'm a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. If I'm being honest, this blog originally started because it is one of my projects for my LCS 432 course. But it had turned into something I can really enjoy and have become passionate for. But let me continue with introducing myself.

I am a first-generation student along with my sister Vanessa which I'll attach her Twitter. But we were both born and raised in Chicago to Mexican immigrant parents. None of our family members had a formal education so when we both decided to pursue careers in medicine, we knew it would be a turbulent adventure filled with both disappointments and satisfactions. My sister Vanessa had it worse than I did, she was the first one of us to go to college. Despite all the detours she took and the tears she and my family shed, she was finally able to attend Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. So in just 3 years, she'll be the first doctor in our family.

For me, my journey started when I was a freshman in high school. For the school science fair, I had chosen to see whether combining ampicillin with vitamin A,C, or E would decrease inhibition of E.coli. That experiment made me realize that I wanted to really understand why ampicillin can inhibit E. coli in the first place. So I went on the internet to see what professions involved medicine. That list included doctors, chemists and pharmacists. Pharmacy stuck out to me and that's when I knew that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a clinical pharmacist, I wanted to be the person that can read medicine labels and know exactly what it does and how it does it.

So as high school continued, I kept taking more science courses and it helped that my school had a STEM program where I would focus mainly on those courses. It allowed me to take both honors and AP courses that would help with my future college courses. But all my STEM courses were always dominated by males, especially white males. But it was nice having mostly womxn teachers, it helped having the extra encouragement especially when I didn't understand things very well. Womxn in STEM were also never discussed in any of my science courses, their achievements or contributions were never brought up unless it was watching Hidden Figures which was until my junior year of high school.

As I said before, it was tough navigating applying to college because the only person I had to ask for help was my older sister. And I had to rely on the internet to find schools with great bachelor's programs that also had great pharmacy schools that I could apply to after. I always thought about how some have it easier because they have family members that can navigate them through these processes. I had one other person and the positive encouragement of my parents to get me through.

Once I got to college, most of my classes were dominated by white individuals with a good 50/50 split on womxn and mxn. But as a Latina, it does get hard to be able to sit in a classroom and be 1 of 10 students of color and being almost 1 of like 3 that are Latinx. There's this pressure I feel and others may too that we have to work harder than our white counterparts because we didn't have the same resources as others to get to where we are. But at the same time, we are in a school that accepted us and wanted us to attend. That we are just as valuable as our counterparts and we belong. Going from a majority white high school to a majority white university was not a big change but I know that it is not the same for other Latinx individuals or BIPOC individuals.

Every day I go through not feeling like I belong but that same feeling is what pushes me to do better. It pushes me to do better for myself but for my family. I want the world to know that womxn belong in STEM and Minorities belong in STEM. Continue to pursue a STEM degree, continue going into STEM careers, continue pushing the limits.

So while I did have some advantages in high school and at least a sibling able to provide some guidance. If you can, find someone to help and hopefully this blog provides some of that guidance you're looking for.

With love and sending positive energy,

Viviana