Growing Up In A Mexican-American Family

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My interest in psychology and research stems from a unique experience growing up. I come from a small family that migrated to the United States from Mexico. Spanish was our primary language in our home. I’m a first generation, Latina college student who learned English as a second language who has overcome a language barrier. Growing up, in a Mexican-American family has given me the opportunity to understand the importance of culture, family obligation and ethnic identity. In my personal experience being the first in my family to attend college, who lacked the family support towards my education has sparked my interest to understand the importance of social support in a student’s college experience coming from immigrant families. Although my …show more content…
I have also excelled in my communication skills by doing in-person presentations of our research to human services agencies, private practices, and community development corporations. By doing these presentations that I have been part of we have been able to collaborate with them so we can better assist victims of IPV. Throughout the stages of this project, I learned I had a passion for research and a passion for examining culture, relationships, and identity. I realized my drive and passion devote so much effort stemmed from the fact that I felt a personal connection to the topics in question due to my experiences with my culture. Throughout the stages of these projects it has allowed me to present my research findings in multiple conferences. I’m also working in an independent project that examines The Impact of Culture Beliefs on Rape Myth acceptance among college students. I’m currently in the process of data collection. This independent project has allowed me to gain experience using the SONA system which is an online database that allows researchers at CSULB to recruit participants for their studies. I look forward to my research findings, this is particularly exciting because I have put all the hard work into creating and revising this study. Every step before this revolved around speculating and hypothesizing what would be revealed and to finally bee so close to …show more content…
As I made the transition to move to Santa Barbara for the whole summer, I was given the opportunity to work in Dr. Romo’s Child and Adolescent Development Laboratory. This project aimed to examine the relationship between mother and daughter in specifically, the dating rules that were implemented by the mothers of the adolescent participants. We also examined how the relationship between mother and daughter deferred among the American culture and the Mexican culture. Our findings revealed that there were cultural differences in the expectations mothers had regarding dating for their daughters. With these findings came my favorite step, putting