#weareresilient

Wow, thank you so much, Sharon, for sharing your incredible story https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6653290630359339008/.

How can this not inspire anyone to keep moving on regardless of where one has been. Nothing is as precious as the gift of this life, and no one should take it for granted. My own story is a bit like yours but not as daunting. It was the last day of January in 2016, a beautiful Sunday afternoon when we were returning home from San Cruz.

The vastness of the sublime Pacific Ocean to my left and the uninterrupted view of a long and windy Hwy 1 road hugging the headlands along this coastline was nothing short of a Hollywood movie scene. But as we neared a more straight section of the way, I spotted a car waiting at the stop sign, perhaps to cross over to the road on the other side of this Hwy, and another vehicle stopped at the right side of the road signaling to get on to the Hwy. It would have been an uneventful day if the driver waiting on the left side of the road had just waited his turn to cross the Hwy. But something in him must have snapped because just as our vehicle approach this crossroad, he decided to pump the gas to try to make it across the road in a dash. Unfortunately, he came start for us, t-boning his car into ours and the whole impact swirling the two vehicles around and hitting the guy waiting on the right side of the road to get onto the Hwy.

None of us were getting far that day. We were in a significant Hwy accident, and I was rushed to the nearest hospital in an ambulance. The Hwy was shut down for at least a couple of hours. The guy who hit us had to be rescued out of his car with the ‘jaws of life’ equipment and airlifted to hospital, and the local news channels broadcasted this accident. I remember the moment of the impact like it was yesterday. I knew we were going to get hit by this car, and at a crazy fast speed, but we were helpless to do anything about it. A split moment of realization that my family or I might die, but I didn’t want this to happen. I remember telling myself repeatedly, “Not this way, not now.”

I was days away from defending my dissertation for my Ph.D. and completing a long journey of earning my degree when this accident happened. I was unable to do much of anything the rest of that quarter, but having come out of this accident alive gave me so much more resolve than I thought I had. The accident fundamentally changed how I was viewing my career and my goals in life, and it breathed new life into what I saw was meaningful to me. I have spent the last five years in higher education, helping educators and administrators improve the quality and effectiveness of different programs to serve the learning needs of all students. But what has become more evident to me than ever before is that not everyone in education seems interested or even capable of doing the right things. There’s too much emphasis on politics and power play that what would seem to be the best practices are often ignored for other reasons. What I cannot ignore anymore is the lack of commitment and consistency in how we set up systems within our organizations that put the best people in charge of making the improvements we need. It’s like the coronavirus pandemic; every nation invested too much elsewhere but in prevention. I see myself as part of the change many of us are seeking: to pause and think about what we’re doing and how we are serving or not serving others through our work. I may never be in a position of authority in higher education. Still, I know I now have an influential role in contributing to the improvement and well being of how we transition diverse students through higher education. And this is my story of how I found my grit and resilience to challenge the established status-quo everywhere.