User:Evelynperez72

Evelyn Perez

Evelyn Amparo Perez Montenegro (born on January 14, 1972 in Guatemala City), is the daughter of Jose Victor Perez Sanchez and Maria del Rosario Montenegro Morales. She is the first female in her nuclear and extended family to seek a Doctor of Philosophy. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Illinois. Evelyn Perez completed her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Irvine, where she was a non-traditional undergraduate student at the age of twenty-five. As an older student, she was immediately challenged to acclimate into an environment where her peers where significantly different from her. These students were younger, came from high-income backgrounds, had attended highly acclaimed schools, and most of them were ready to go to college as this was a natural next step for them. Evelyn, on the other hand, had to get acclimated to a city that didn’t resemble her community, she had to personally deal with having very little money to support her education, and finally had to study for longer periods of time given for she had been removed from education for many years. Despite these challenges, she was persistent and succeeded with the limited resources that she had. Like every student, Evelyn have had to reflect on her own experiences and reason for pursuing a higher education. This process was difficult for someone who was the first female from her family to attend college. She did not have the guidance or support that most of her peers had while she was an undergraduate student, but this experience made her stronger. Consequently, in this schooling process, Evelyn learned one major lesson and that is that even if one is pursuing something that requires one to get acclimated to an environment and this task challenges one academically, one has to be resilient and push forward one day at a time.