Do the following words ring a bell? “Someday, I’m going to come back to you and let you know how I am doing, or you’re going to read about me.”
Many of us have had experiences during our developing years where someone – a relative, friend, teacher or mentor – voiced low expectations about our potential only to see us turn that negative into more fuel to achieve, even if only to prove them wrong.
The journey of Frances Contreras at the University of Washington reminds us how to deal with those who voice low expectations. A guidance counselor tried to dissuade her from attending a four-year university after high school, although Contreras was an AP student who had earned better than a 4.0 GPA and was accepted to the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Contreras ignored the advice and took the challenge. She attended UCBerkeley, setting the foundation for a stellar career as a professor of education, author and researcher, studying, of all things, Hispanic educational achievement. Today, she is being featured in these pages as one of Diverse’s Class of 2009 Emerging Scholars.
“Emerging Scholars,” now in its eighth year, is one of our favorite editions. Who wouldn’t marvel at the extraordinary accomplishments of this select group of inspiring under-40 scholars?
They’re curious: Instead of being pricked daily with pins and needles, why can’t diabetic patients receive insulin another way, wondered the physiologist who devised an artificial pancreas to produce insulin in diabetics.
They’re driven: While some 1970s television viewers wanted to be like “The Bionic Woman,” one future electrical engineer decided, as a child, she could build a real bionic woman.
