“I’m still who I am still, I still have my culture.”
September 2022, Brockport, N.Y. — Sado Isak
By Graciella Dressler and Elisabeth Blair
“I feel like I’ve been deprived of education. So that’s why I went to school.”
“I grew up in Rochester. I was born in Uganda. I lived in the United States for 15 years. I come from a small family. Not that big. I’m a first-generation college student. The first of my family to go to college. Obviously, it does come with hardship. I’m the oldest daughter so there’s pressure within that and then there’s pressure in being a first-generation student because you want to leave some sort of impact on your family and have my siblings go to college and get an education. So we can build, you know, homes for our families.
“My education background is kind of iffy because after my parents separated, back home in Uganda, I was taken out of school. We didn’t have the money to attend school so I wasn’t at school for two years or so. So coming here and then going to school again I was just a bit delayed with a lot of things because I didn’t speak English obviously because you get taught English back home and I got taken out of it that early. So I feel like that situation just made me grateful for having an education. Obviously, my mom does encourage us to get educated and stuff like that. So yeah, like that’s crazy. That’s like a big impact on my life to go out there. Learn as much as I can, so I can be there for my family.”
“I don’t think I had a very impactful teacher in my life because there were certain incidents that happened while I was in elementary school, and the teachers never did anything about it. I’m just going to be honest, I got bullied. Literally in class. Teachers would never do anything about it. So half of my elementary years were terrible. Middle School was okay, but I don’t think I’ve had very impactful teachers.”
“We used to always have one of those student teachers and I would always have her read this one Hello Kitty book to me. Like every day I came in, I said, “you want to read this book for me? Read this, Read this. Read this.” And then I think after that, that’s when I picked up English a little bit with just that one book. I don’t know what it was called. But it was the Hello Kitty book.”
“All I knew is that I had to go to school. That’s all I know. Because I feel like that was the only way for me to like, get a good job to support my family. Yeah. So after I graduated from high school, I went straight to college. I went to community college and did my three years there. I was technically supposed to be a nursing major. But I don’t think that was for me. I graduated in 2020. It was not the best experience to graduate when COVID-19 hit but I graduated. So then I took a year off because I didn’t know what I wanted to do because there was still COVID out there and I didn't want to do online classes again. Like, it just made me more hungry to get an education after I took my year off because I was like, “we’ve taken a year off and then you’re coming back,” and exactly what I did.”
“I try to be as involved as I can and I try to be there for people because that’s my passion — to help people. It’s all a learning experience. I’m always learning and trying to become a better person and a better me for the future and career-wise.”
“I don’t think I’ve lost my identity. I’m still who I am still, I still have my culture. I still have my religion. I’m grateful to be here because of the opportunities that come with being in the States. But it was hard coming here.”
