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15 June 2010
Helping Family, Friends, and Her Community
By Megan A. Wong
This essay is excerpted from Pop Culture versus Real America, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs. A profile of the TV show Gossip Girl appears here.
On a summer afternoon in August, Katheryn Conde’s California home is socked in with fog. Conde, 18, lives with her parents in a working-class neighborhood of San Francisco. The homes here are modest: no mansions, no swimming pools. In fact, many of the houses in the neighborhood could use a new coat of paint. The sage green Conde home is neat and well-kept, however, with three recycling bins responsibly placed out front.
Conde, who likes to be called Kathy, graduated from an all-girls Catholic high school. Like most teens, she enjoys hanging out with friends and playing with her dog, a Great Dane named Tobby. She was even on the cheerleading team during her sophomore year. But Conde and her pals don’t “shop ’til they drop” for entertainment — their school requires uniforms. For fun, Conde’s friends mostly watch DVDs at each other’s houses, and no one in her group has a car. Conde describes her friends as supportive of one another, not back-stabbing or competitive. They often confide their problems to one another and rely on each other for advice, especially about boys. But Conde’s romantic life is not filled with dating drama. She does not currently have a boyfriend, but she did attend her prom — with a male friend from another school. Students at Conde’s school do like to have fun and throw parties but she thinks that TV shows tend to exaggerate the social aspect of American teenagers’ lives. “In those shows, it seems like all the girls are focused on the social part of their lives,” says Conde. “But in reality, I have to balance my academics and my social life. You don’t have to be a superstar or a nerd. You can be a little of both.”
Conde’s real passion is community service, which takes up virtually all of her spare time. During high school, Conde peer-tutored classmates, volunteered as a counselor at a sleep-away camp for middle school students, founded a college/scholarship awareness club called S.T.R.I.V.E. (Scholarship Team Researching and Inspiring for the Vitality of Education), and organized a successful toy drive for underprivileged children. She was also elected to the student council and assisted voters as a poll worker in the last four elections.
Conde’s home life is typical of her classmates, many of whom are also the children of immigrants. While she was born in the United States, Conde’s parents both immigrated from El Salvador in hopes of a better life. Yet, on their modest salaries (her mother is a housecleaner and her father works in the kitchen at a local hotel), the Condes cannot afford to send their two daughters to college without financial assistance. Conde knew that if she wanted to attend her first-choice university, she would need to find a way to help fund it. Raising awareness about enrichment and scholarship opportunities among her school’s student body is what the S.T.R.I.V.E. Club aims to do.
Despite such challenges, Conde refuses to feel sorry for herself. She keeps her situation in perspective by focusing on all that she has in comparison to others around the world, and she is driven by a desire to succeed and give back to those who have given her so much, including her parents, teachers, and school. “All these people really want me to do good. And I can’t let them down. I want to go to college and actually have it all pay off at the end,” says Conde, her young voice animated with urgency. “There was a point at which my dad had two jobs, to pay for my school. [I want] to show them that I appreciate what they’ve done for me.”
Despite a challenging course load (including several honors classes) and a heavy load of extracurricular activities, Conde maintained excellent grades during all four years of high school. She is bilingual, proficient in Spanish and English, and also fluent in conversational French; and she took math as an elective during her senior year — just because she liked it. In recognition of her high academic achievement, Conde was admitted to two prestigious scholastic honor societies, the California Scholarship Federation and the National Honor Society.
Her efforts have not gone unrecognized. Conde received numerous awards and scholarships, including several community service awards and the Spartan Award, the highest honor for a graduate of her school in recognition of superior academic performance and demonstrated commitment to school and community. But while Conde has received plenty of accolades for her accomplishments, public recognition is not what drives her. “Doing community service felt rewarding,” says Conde. “Just to know that it’s actually going to make a difference in someone’s life.”
One might imagine that maintaining such a demanding schedule during the school year would leave Conde exhausted and ready to do nothing but watch television all summer. But Conde is not one to rest on her laurels. This summer, she is working two jobs — totaling six days a week — in order to save money for college textbooks in the fall. She interned at the San Francisco Superior Court and also worked as a program assistant at a local real estate office. Through her determination to apply for and win multiple scholarships from various organizations, Conde attends the University of San Francisco (a private college and her first choice school) without paying tuition out of pocket. But Conde still lives at home, which enables her to save on rent and stay connected to her ongoing community service activities.
More than anything, the experience of Conde’s parents convinced her that, if given basic opportunities, most people can make something of themselves in the United States. “They came during the war,” says Conde. “They had to start over. Just to see that they came here and were actually able to do something … what’s stopping me? I’ll bet what they had to go through was harder than what I do.” Conde feels not only pride and inspiration from her parents’ story but a responsibility to do well and make their sacrifices worthwhile. “What they do make they have to spend on food, on clothes, and things that we need, so we don’t have a lot of extra money,” she says. “I want to get a good job and a house and then help out my parents because I feel like they’ve done so much for me.”
If the past is any indication, Conde will be doing plenty with the opportunities she has been given.
Megan A. Wong is a writer and editor in the Bureau of International Information Programs of the U.S. Department of State.
(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)
