You know academically, I was really lucky that I had gone to a pretty good high school, where I was able to take a lot of the hard classes and so I think that academically I felt like I was pretty prepared for the work. What I wasn't ready for is being the only female, being the only Latina in many of my classes. So, at the university that I went to there wasn't a lot of diversity. And so, feeling like you were the only one and being treated differently and having professors not really connect with you and feeling a bit invisible or ignored --- that was hard. And so I think that part of the reason I started as a Physics major and then I went to Business, and then I ended up as a Spanish major. And I really think that the reason I became a Spanish major is because the Spanish Department was the only place that I really felt like I belonged. People would listen to me and the professors were very nice and they would work with me, and I felt connected to them and to some sense of community, whereas in physics, I just thought “Wow, nobody even knows I'm around here.” Business just didn't fit very well either, so I think that was one of the difficulties. With family issues, I think for me it was hard because I was growing up in two cultures at the same time. So at home, we were very much about speaking Spanish and about keeping our cultural values, and you know, eating foods from our country and everything. But then outside everything was U.S.-based and sometimes the values would clash. And then I was also trying to help my parents financially and making sure that, you know, that if they needed something that I was there. I was usually the family's interpreter and translator with English because my parents didn't speak English very well; they speak better now but still not fluently. And so I had to be available for a lot of family needs. And that was rough because I was working and then I was going to school fulltime and then I had to be available for family as well, making sure that I was around if someone needed me. I had a younger brother and so he also had his own needs and wanted me around. If my parents were working full time, I had to make sure that I shifted my schedule and so sometimes I would have to miss class. And then the other thing too is that my parents really weren't willing initially to let me go too far, so I didn't live on campus, I lived at home, and that was one of the things that they just would not let me do. They would not let me move out on my own. So I had to be on campus and even as a college freshman my curfew was midnight, you know, I had to be home by midnight. So figuring out how to manage all those expectations of living at home, while being a university student is pretty challenging.