​​SCC CAMP Program Participant Discovers Her Pathway

First-year sociology major, Leilany Vega was able to get the help she needed at Santiago Canyon College (SCC) when it looked like there was no other option.

At the end of summer prior to when Vega intended to enroll in the same four-year university as her older brother, she was told she would no longer be able to enroll as planned. Due to a poor grade in high school that she didn’t realize needed to be made up, she would not be attending where she had planned. When she found this out, she did not know what to do, and she did not know what her other options were.

Her intention was to be part of the College Assistant Migrant Program (CAMP) program at her brother’s college. So she turned to that college’s CAMP program for help. The other college’s CAMP program contacted SCC’s CAMP program and they got her started down a new path. She thought that because it was so close to the beginning of fall semester that she would not get any of the classes she wanted or needed and just the opposite happened.

The SCC CAMP program not only helped Vega to get the classes she wanted, but it also helped her make connections with other students on campus since she knew no one at SCC. This program has also opened her eyes to the quality of community that students experience while at SCC and it is not what she had expected. She now knows that if she ever needs help or a favor she can ask SCC faculty or friends she has made while here at SCC.

Students in CAMP get the opportunity to go to leadership conferences during the year and Vega went this year. At the conference, she attended one of the workshops which had the students write their intended major. The students were then asked to write why they wanted to pursue this particular major, who they wanted to help, and how they wanted to help. Through this exercise, she discovered that she wants to be a high school counselor and she wants to help kids through situations that were similar to what she had experienced.

“Because of this exercise in this one workshop I was able to focus on what I wanted to do,” Vega said, “I wasn’t wasting my time and I had a direction that I wanted to go in.”