Daniel Rodriguez

Daniel Garcia graduated from Gilroy High School in June 2021. He has four younger brothers, his first language is Spanish, and he applied for Cal-SOAP services upon entering the 10th grade. Daniel is a few days from finishing his final exams at SDSU and coming home for the holidays. He is the first in his family to attend college and is an SCCC scholarship award recipient.

Moving to college wasn’t an easy process for Daniel. When he arrived at San Diego State University after leaving his small town of Gilroy, he imagined the joy of having freedom, but rather was faced with the dread of homesickness. His homesickness progressively got worse, and that feeling of loneliness led him to wanting to drop out of university. He called up his family, informing them on his wanting to leave school. As he started the process of dropping out of university, he was contacted by people encouraging him to stay in school, one of those individuals being their South County Cal-SOAP advisor. His advisor reminded him of his dream of nursing, and made him feel seen and heard. His advisor then went on to contact the local Cal-SOAP in his new area, who then got into contact with an advisor at SDSU to help him re-enroll and stay in his nursing program. “Although I mainly chose to stay for nursing, I also chose to stay for my future, for personal success, and for the individuals that looked up to me, and most importantly for my parents who were never given the opportunity to go to a four-year university.”