- My name is Jordyn McCarley.
I'm from Santa Clara, California,
and I attended Mission College.
I ended up at Mission College through the Admission Middle
College Program, which was a bridge program
with my high school district and Mission College.
At Mission College I had a really great experience.
The classroom experience was phenomenal.
I had a lot of really good professors
and the career services as well as the transfer expertise
I found at the school was really helpful
in propelling me to my next step in my education.
Growing up with a single parent I did see a lot of the struggles
my mom went through and especially those struggles
that had to do with her not having an education.
So seeing all those struggles I wanted something different
for myself.
That's what really motivated me to want to go to college.
And Mission Middle College and Mission College
was instrumental in helping me do that.
When I transferred to Fisk I decided to major
in Political Science.
I've been really happy with the results of my program
so far.
I really wanted a small college environment
and Fisk was definitely able to provide that.
They have that one-on-one atmosphere
that I was looking for.
I also wanted to try a new city pretty far from home,
and Nashville seemed like a great place to do that,
especially because Nashville is growing so quickly
and it's becoming a really diverse,
great place for young people
to begin their professional careers.
Because Fisk is so small I was really able
to get the help I needed to achieve here,
especially my department, Political Science,
was very helpful.
Both of my professors really mentored me along the way
and gave me connections I needed, to people
in my potential career field, also people who could help me
get connected to different grad school paths.
All of that was really great.
And because I was able to get so much one-on-one attention
I was able to do great in my classes and also on the LSAT.
Upon this fall I'll be attending Vanderbilt Law School.
I would definitely encourage current California
community college students to transfer to an HBCU.
It's a really great experience.
You learn so much academically, culturally,
just moving to a new place.
You're able to experience things you wouldn't get to experience
in California.
California is a great state and it is my home,
but it is a bubble.
So it's important that we expose ourselves to opportunities
outside of that and, of course,
bring our talents back to California.