As a college freshman, I went to UC Davis, which is the University of California Davis, in Davis, CA. So my major was Community and Regional Development and minor was in Education, and that is what I teach now. So or one of my areas so. Rican: I'm from, well I was born in Hastings, Minnesota, and my parents came there as refugees from Laos. So they, have you ever heard of the Secret War in Laos? Student: A little bit yeah in a history class, sounds familiar. Rican: Yeah, so it's a related conflict to the Vietnam War, but it happened in Laos. And so my parents were, and many other Hmong people, so that's my ethnic background, Hmong American, were sort of fled as refugees at that time which was around the 1970s. And so they came and ended up, well before coming to the U.S. they were refugees in Thailand in refugee camps. So, they didn't know where they would end up. Eventually, they ended up here in the U.S. and in Minnesota. And the reason why they ended up there was because of the refugee settlement agency was working with a lot of religious organizations, and many of them were in the Mid-West, Catholic organizations, and so they took in my family and that's where I was born. So a little bit about that, like the trajectory. But then we moved to California when I was pretty young. So and I think I mentioned this before, but I see myself as a Californian. But that's a little bit about me and then I'm a first generation student. My parents didn't have any sort of education in Laos, they were just like farmers, living in villages, that sort of thing. So education is like pretty, I don't know what the word is, not new, but it's, I guess it is new for my family. So I went to this school in Sacramento called Grant High School. Have you heard of it? Student: No, but the way you said it like Grant High School. Rican: Okay, it was a, you know I think it was a good school in some ways, it had a lot of community, but it was also like, it wasn't known for academics it was known for sports. We had a really amazing football team; it was in a very low income, sort of low income, people of color, communities of color concentrated neighborhood. I think we had, I don't know like five white students or something like that, I might be exaggerating but I don't remember barely any. And so I think that sort of shaped my experience. What was the question again? Student: How do you think your hometown and community shaped your education in college? Rican: Yeah, I mean I think it was a good experience but I knew I wanted to, like I always knew I that I wanted to go like pursue a higher education. And I think actually, a lot of that had to do with like a lot of people who really cared about education around me. Like my teachers. Like it's weird because you wouldn't think that like education was something that people really cared about if you just looked at our school, but we had really amazing and caring teachers. Not everyone was that way, but like we had some, the ones who we had made a huge difference in my experience and so.  And in my community, my ethnic community, again it wasn't like, I think people from my parents’ generation not a lot of them have any sort of formal education. And so, I think that impacted me just wanting to get one because I just saw like the way that they lived was so hard, you know, because they didn't have an education, they didn't speak English, that sort of thing. So I knew that I wanted to be able to do something about that for my community, for myself. And so, I think that sort of inspired and motivated me to wanna go, to do the best I could in education I guess. So all of those sorts of experiences have sort of shaped who I am, and why I care about education. The thing is I'm not sure I got the best education in my high school, like we had this chemistry teacher who, and this is like not the norm but the fact that he was a chemistry teacher in our school. Like, I hate math and sciences, I had a really amazing calculus teacher - I still hate math - and he cared about our learning a lot. Our science program was like horrible. Like my chemistry teacher, he would go, we had this lab, and we were like in the honors chemistry, he would, we would go to class and literally just talk to ourselves because he would be in the back getting drunk. Student: Wow. Rican: Yeah. So sometimes, yeah it was, me and my friends that sort of made it out okay, like unscathed, from this place, like we all graduated from college. I mean not everyone graduates from our high school and not everyone goes to college and graduates, but the ones who did, we were really shocked like, “Wow, we actually made it out of there!” – right? But yeah, my first couple years of college were so hard, I felt like I was so behind. I remember talking to like one of my professors once or was a TA, I can't remember. I remember she looked over my paper and goes, "Man, your ideas are so like great" and then she goes, "Do you speak another language other than English at home?" and I said, "Yeah." Well actually I didn't really get what she was asking so I said "no" because i grew up speaking English right, but of course my parents speak to me in Hmong. And I was like, "Well, I grew up speaking English" and she was like, "Well do you speak another language?" I said "Yeah" and she goes, "I can tell from your writing, you know, that you need a lot of help." And you know she told me in a way that I could tell she really cared, but like ahh! - it hurt me so much right, and like it was so hard and I always felt like I tried so much harder. I always felt like I'm trying so much harder than all these other people who are like out there having fun and it was so hard for me. And I was really discouraged, but at the same I was like, “fine, if I like have to spend like 10 hours reading this, then I'm going to spend 10 hours reading it, because I really want to understand.” So I did feel a little bit behind, I felt that I had to try harder, but it made me, I don't know, I think like it made me try harder you know, which I like. Student: That's a good thing. Rican: I mean it felt like I was angry and stuff about it at first but now I realize like oh okay I got something out of that experience, you know.