Success paths of young immigrants in higher education and the professional world.
I remember the time when my mother came
to pick me up, and... My mother wore the veil and when he came to pick me up
I was very tense, for what my schoolmates would ask me.
"How will I explain why my mother wears the veil?".
That did create a little stress in me, a little confusion.
As I say, school success doesn't mean you getting good grades
School success means much more
It is that and feeling comfortable and going out to the schoolyard and
being with this group of equals and so on.
It's having a good relationship with the teachers. It's feeling comfortable and enjoying going to school
and not wishing, as in my first year in school, the time to run out and go home.
You could say that my parents have always been by my side
Empowering us to study. We have to study
We have to have a good future. We have to be able to fend for ourselves in the future
And I think that's an idea that they have instilled in all brothers
We are five brothers and everyone has the job he or she wants
Everyone has at least a high school degree. Everybody has studied.
And... They always tell you "you have to study"
If something goes wrong it's alright, you have to pay attention, you have to put the effort.
This whole effort capacity, all this will
I've always been grateful to my family for them.
Especially my mother
My girlfriends are 100% Catalan, a I always say
I have lived in the Eixample all my life and thus I don't...
I have no Moroccan friends.
But they have given me so much.
I remember that before we only spoke Spanish in school
Then my language was Spanish
And when I came to basketball in the Escola Pia, in BUP, high school now
And in high school it was 100% Catalan
And it was, whether I speak Catalan or here I become autistic, because
people spoke to you in Catalan and you had to respond in Catalan
or at least I wanted to answer in Catalan
I worked for half a year as a waiter in Girona
in a restaurant of a friend of my aunt
And I learned there...
I saw how I wanted my life to be
I didn't want to be a waiter for the rest of my life
Or work as a Chinese
That is to open a "dollar store" or a grocery store
I didn't want that
Don't stay sitting on your hands waiting for things to come to you.
You have to do it yourself.
And if you can do in a country that can help you, the better
Because maybe if you are a foreigner
from Latin America, my country, for example
If you stay there sitting on your hands you'll do nothing
If you stay there and try to do something you may succeed
But if you can leave and come here, you will surely do something
I advise mobilization, in order to improve yourself