When Your First Steps into Higher Education Become Life Lessons

In this first episode of my September series on higher education, I open up about the tug-of-war I felt as a teenager—caring for my grandmother while craving freedom, being accepted to UMass Amherst but landing at community college instead, and realizing I wasn’t ready the first time around.

This is a story about leaving and staying, guilt and grace, and the small seeds that stay with us—like the moment a professor told me, “You have a talent.” It’s proof that even when we think we’ve failed, we’re actually carrying the foundation for what comes next.

✨ Preorder my upcoming novel The Ordinary Bruja here: haveacupofjohanny.com.

 ☕ Mentioned in this episode: my journey as a barista college dropout—and why that detour mattered more than I knew at the time.

📧 Email me: joa@haveacupofjohanny.com

 📱 TikTok: @acupofjo_hanny | @thebookbruja

 📸 Instagram: @haveacupofjohanny

Chapters

• 0:00 Birthday Celebrations and September Theme
• 3:30 Caught Between Leaving and Staying
• 7:15 Hospital Days and Grandmother's Influence
• 12:00 Unprepared for College Freedom
• 17:33 Learning Through Failure and Growth
• 22:18 Finding Your Way Forward

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh we could, we could fly. Welcome back to have a Cup of Johnny. This season isn't about hustling harder. It's about coming home to yourself, to your voice, to your breath, to the quiet truth that you're still here and you're not starting over, you're starting again. This is your space to reflect, reset and remember who we tell you. So pour your cafecito and let's begin. Hello everyone, and welcome back to have a Cup of Joannie, just reeling from celebrating my birthday.

Speaker 1: 0:47

As you may have heard me, or if you follow me on social media, you will see those tags on the show notes. By the way, you know that I celebrate my birthday from August 1st all the way to August 31st. That is just something that I do. I feel birthdays are very special and I like to take that time to celebrate me because I know there will be future days, future upcoming months where I'm going to feel like I'm not worthy to be celebrated. So I take advantage of this month to do so and I have those moments that I did to look back and to be held as a reminder that I am worthy of happiness, I am worthy of joy, I am worthy of celebration. So, just you know. Food for thought for you. If you're wondering if it's a good thing for you to do, I highly recommend it. Five out of five stars, highly recommend. Celebrate you as much as you can, all right, okay, september, though.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Because we're in September, I took a few days to think about what the theme will be for this month. Think about what the theme will be for this month, and September always comes to me with smells of pencils, of classrooms, those creaky chairs when you sit on them, of dry erase boards. You know boards, you know it. Just it reminds me of education. So I'm like you know what this month? I want to talk about what higher education taught me, and I'm not talking about, like, scholarly lessons. Maybe some of that may leak in there, but that's not the focus. I'm talking about life lessons. Okay, what that execution of that decision to go into higher education and through all those micro phases of my life as I got an associate, a bachelor's and later on, a master's what they taught me. I want to share that with you this month of September. I hope y'all are ready for this. All right, we're going to start with this episode, because this episode I'm going to focus on leaving. This episode, I'm going to tackle that first step out of the house, right, leaving, staying. Do I go me? Voy me quedo? What do I do and how? Sometimes those two things can happen at the exact same time. That sounds very confusing, but let's begin. All right, y'all.

Speaker 1: 3:47

When I was 15, going on 16 and I did start at college early I was skipped a grade, so I went into that phase of my life a little earlier than most people. So when I got to be 16, all I wanted to do was to leave my house. I was very constricted there. By then. I was living with my mom. She was holding on to me tight and I know part of that was just her protecting me. But I also know because I have to be honest right that it was also about having me there so I can help with certain responsibilities in the house. You know, particularly I was caring for my grandmother who had immigrated to the United States.

Speaker 1: 4:40

She was a woman that raised me while I was still in the Dominican Republic with her, before I was able to get papers and come to live with my mom. And after a few years of being in the States my grandmother got really sick. She was battling cancer and I was just a kid, you know. But at that age, yes, I was a kid, but I wasn't thinking of myself as a kid. I was thinking of myself as being like this pre-grownup that was ready to start my life, to get out of that pod.

Speaker 1: 5:21

It just felt so constricted, so much pressure there, you know, like I didn't have room to breathe and I just felt like I couldn't do the things that I want. I was going to school, I was living in my mom's house and I couldn't do much there except for do chores and then be at the hospital so I can stay there with my grandmother, who needed someone to translate for her, and also like a personal nurse of sorts, because the nurses there didn't know how to speak Spanish. We were in Massachusetts, and to ask for a translator just took more time to get things done. So at one point during my childhood I was living in the hospital and my mom was picking me up from there to go to school, and then I'll go back there, you see, so I was really. I think that was part of the reason why I wanted to get away.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Looking back at that, though, there's some guilt there as well, because this is my grandma y'all Like. This is the woman that raised me, you know, and I feel guilty when I think back about wanting to leave, you know, because wanting to leave meant me leaving my grandma behind as well, you know. So it's like I'm always so conflicted whenever I think about that time, because I'm like I just want it to be me, but then I didn't want to leave my grandma behind, but I ended up leaving her behind anyways to go to college. Eventually, while I was there, though, she did get out of the hospital, but after I left, she got sick, and, as with cancer right, it's like when it comes back it just comes back worse, and it came back really bad. She got a little bit better, and then she ended up just wanting to go back to the Dominican Republic, because, you know, she was like, if I'm going to die, I'd rather die in my home country. And then we did as she wished, and eventually I want to say like close to a year after that she ended up dying, and to this day, it's still something that I haven't really fully grasped, because I don't allow myself to think too much about that. This is the most I've talked about it, to be honest with you.

Speaker 1: 7:45

But yeah, but before all of that happened, I was just a kid, spending a lot of my junior and senior year in the hospital, not because I was sick but to help my grandmother, to the point where, once I graduated, I was like, let's go, let me get out of here already. And I did get accepted to UMass, amherst. But my mom was like no, that's too far away. You know, you need to be closer to the house so that way I can help out, you know, and be close, in case I needed to go back home for whatever. And I was like, ok. I said OK, but that's the thing with me, right? I said okay, but that's the thing with me, right. Even if I say okay and I'm not truly okay with it, even though I do it, my heart is not gonna be in it. And that's what happened.

Speaker 1: 8:32

I ended up going to the local community college and while I had fun and there I did meet some great people, you know, and some really great things happened, like I had my first boyfriend, I became part of the Third World Society, while I met other people from marginalized identities like me, right, and I got into a writing class, even though that was not my major, because my mom didn't want me to major in writing because she said that you cannot make any money off of writing. So even that right, my heart was not into the nursing thing. But in this writing class, the professor, she saw one of my papers that I had written and she got in front of class and she was like there's some of you that have exceptional talent, you know. And then she handed me my paper and she was like there's some of you that have exceptional talent, you know. And then she handed me my paper and she was like that's you, young lady, and I will never like forget that moment. I was like, wow, it was such a validating moment, you know.

Speaker 1: 9:35

So, while, like, I was trying to get away, I felt restricted, and then there was like so many other things that were pressuring me and stressing me out during that time. There were like these pockets of joy that occur there that I'm able to look back and was like, ah, okay. So you know, after everything is said and done, like some good came out of all of that. And I'm also very grateful as well that I listened to my mom and I stuck around and I didn't get that very far during that time, because I got to spend more time with my grandmother and I was able to be there until she became a little bit more stable and we all thought like she would come out of all of it right From that point forward and she wouldn't relapse because she overcame the cancer during that timeframe. So we were all so very hopeful. So all those great things were happening during that time. So it's not all bad right, and maybe things were just meant to be this way because I got to learn so much from that. I got to learn that sometimes the very thing you're desperate to escape from whether it's caregiving or the pressure of family or being the kid who feels trapped in their own home ends up being that soil where your roots are planted.

Speaker 1: 11:09

My grandmother loves books. She used to love books, I should say, and I got to spend more time with her and to this day, I am so grateful that it happened that way that in a way, I was able to give back to her everything that she gave to me, because she was the woman that taught me how to read and write, you know. So through her, I am this author that I am now. I'm this expressive person that can express myself through writing, through podcasting, you know, and I can read and escape and just have these joyful moments in the pages of books. Through that I found the encouragement of that professor in my writing class. That fueled me and continues to fuel me to this day, you know. And even my mom saying no to UMass when I look at it, it's still a blessing, you know. It all shaped me.

Speaker 1: 12:12

So leaving, but not really leaving, staying, it isn't always physical, it's emotional, and sometimes the lessons don't show up until years later when you realize you carry those gifts with you all along and that's the thing, right, that I take away. That's why I love talking to y'all and even though it's so hard to look back at some of these moments and just be super, super vulnerable in this room in front of this mic, but I'm able to see, like I said, those pockets of joy that occurred to me in the face of darkness. There was sunshine there, you know, and through that I was able to, like, come up for breath before diving back in into those muddy waters where I couldn't even see in front of me. And then it was another joyful moment. Teacher told me something oh, I'm breathing now up again and then I go back down and my grandma gets sick, go into the hospital, I stay there and it's just that's how life is. We have these moments that are really tough, really stressful, and then we have these other ones that are just delightful, that are light, that are joy, and you're able to see that once, you kind of recollect and go back in time and are able to be introspective about it.

Speaker 1: 14:02

But something else besides time and how hindsight is 20-20, that I learned during that time is that I feel that I was too immature for college at that time. I'm just going to be brutally honest and I'm kind of happy that I didn't go to UMass Amherst, because I feel like the debt that I would have gotten myself into would have been way bigger than the debt that I incurred at the community college. I came out with a lot of debt from that Read the Ordinary Bruja because the reason why I made Marisol a barista who's a college dropout is because I lived it. This is my story, this is what I'm telling you, like Marisol, and I think I gave her that line where she's like you know, I just didn't even finish college and I came out like thousands of dollars poorer and then with this diploma-shaped hole in my life and that's how I felt. That's how I felt when I left college, because I just couldn't hack it. No, you got to understand. I was like a 16-year-old kid. I turned 17.

Speaker 1: 15:19

I had been held so tight in my home that I didn't have the life skills to be autonomous. I didn't have any of those skills how to keep time, how to keep a schedule, how to be self-sufficient, how to create my own day where I can get things done and also, like, have fun. And I think that's where procrastination began as well and, like I said, to this day I'm a recovering procrastinator. It started there, but I know now that it's more like this perfectionistic trauma that I had, because I just feel that if it's not perfect, I don't want to release things because I fear rejection and humiliation off of that. So those are things that I have to work on.

Speaker 1: 16:15

But also back then I just I didn't have the skills to maintain a day schedule and I felt as if, if I use my time to do schoolwork, to do the things that I had to do, I would not get any fun time, because at home time, because at home there wasn't no fun time. All the time that I had was just time to do, do, do, do, do chores, be with my grandma in the hospital. I can steal some time away and then I'll find things to do. I will go to the library, go hide in the closet with a book and read a book, and my mom will get really mad because she's like why are you reading in this dark room and stuff like that? You know you're going to ruin your eyes and things of that nature. So I used to get yelled at even for reading a book, but that's another episode. You see what I'm saying. But so I learned to steal time to be able to have a joy, to escape.

Speaker 1: 17:31

So when I found myself on my own with all this time, I didn't want to give any of it up. I didn't. I was like I don't know when this will happen again, right. So all I did was have fun. I barely got up for morning classes, I barely put in time for my schoolwork, for studying for the exams. And then what hurted me a lot too was that it's not like in high school or middle school or in elementary, where you have a teacher that reminds you when things are due or that gives you second chances on a quiz and things of that nature. I needed a lot of reminding growing up so that way I can stay on top of my things.

Speaker 1: 18:23

And when all of that went away and I was left on my own, then I just kind of flopped way. And I was left on my own then I just kind of flopped Because also the environment that I came in like my mom didn't teach me those things and in school it's like you're prodded, just prodded through every class, through everything. So then when you don't have that person or that system prodding you any longer, you find yourself with no prod. You just like, wah, that gets, like you know you. Just you flop, you stay there because you don't know what else to do. So that was my first college experience. So looking back at it now I know that I was very not prepared. I was unprepared, I was not mature enough, I didn't have the life skills that I needed.

Speaker 1: 19:11

I look back at that time, especially when I saw my son getting ready to embark on college as well, and I remember having this conversation with him about how he needs to learn, how to keep his time, and I gave him some tips on how I do it. So that way, if he wants to adopt those things for his own life and then way of being, he could. I remember making like the conscious effort to step out, while giving him the safety net of our home, to try it out, to try to create his own day, his own schedule, his own calendar, and I'm glad I did that, like he's not the best at it to this day, and I don't know, I guess there's something maybe about me, about us, where it just takes us a while to rev up, to get that maturity going to where we're like, okay, you know, we are adjusted, we have schedules, we have timing, we have things to where we can produce certain stuff. I don't know, maybe it's genetic and he gets it from me, but thankfully now at his age he's in his early twenties he is able to do it way better than how I did it when I was his age, way, way better. So that to me is a win. Little by little he's progressing. He has some things he needs to work on. You know we have our chats about it, but when I look back at me and when I look at my son right now, I'm like, okay, good, he's not where I was at that point, which makes me feel a whole lot better. But yeah, that is what I learned that I was not ready, I was not prepared. Even though I wanted to be outside of my home, I was not ready. My home, I was not ready. And how I pivot and change that trajectory was through my son, by giving him the things that were not given to me, by inculcating in him a sense of scheduling and timing, giving him autonomy, just giving him the safety net to try and fail. So that way, when he found himself in college, I mean that freshman year was rough for him you know we're not going to sugarcoat that one, but it wasn't as rough as my failed freshman year, failed freshman year. So it was a good progression. I learned my lesson. My son, he had trampoline from my mistakes.

Speaker 1: 21:58

But if you're listening to me and if you're listening to this and then you find yourself either in the mom aspect of this or in the young adult aspect of this, just know that there are ways to overcome this. Take a breath, first of all, just take a deep breath and then figure out, one, your constraints, and two, why they are there, because there's always a reason behind our stress, behind our pressure that we're feeling. There's always a reason there. So figure out why that is there. It may be that you're putting some things off. It may be that you have this family member or this friend on your neck trying to make you do things that you're not ready to do. Whatever it is, figure out why that is there and then do something about it. Do something about it so that way you can go ahead and step, because that's all that you need to do, because I feel like when you have these things in life that are pressuring you, constricting you, they're not allowing you to move forward. So first you have to identify what it is and then you have to figure out how you can overcome those things within your own set of resources, your own set of circumstances. There's always a way. That's what I found. Even in my darkest moments, in my most constricted or resource-less moments, there was always something that I can do. That's something that I found out by looking back. That's something that I found out by looking back, and at times it was as simple as just taking a breath, going to the closet with a fun book, so that way I can just like take it all off of my shoulders, sometimes it was just a walk.

Speaker 1: 24:05

I remember I lived in the dorms that were up a hill. That's where they put all the freshmen. You know they are in Worcester State College. You know, sometimes it was just that, just like, ah, usa. Sometimes it was going to a party with my friends or talking to my friends, and sometimes it was that Sometimes it was writing. That writing class really always like lifted my spirits up, or sometimes it's just quitting. I hate to say it that way, but sometimes that's what it is.

Speaker 1: 24:43

Sometimes there are things that you're doing that just don't serve you anymore, or don't serve you for that time being. And for me that's what happened when I realized I was wasting my money, I was wasting my time in a place where I was not growing. I was just stagnant. I was just like partying for the sake of partying, but I wasn't moving forward. And I'm glad I was mature enough to realize that, even as a teenager, because I was still 17. And I was like you know what? I need to pivot, I need to do something else. I saw a recruiter. I took advantage of the opportunity that he gave me and I joined the army and that was like my pivot. That was the other door that opened for me. And then I just like boom, just like bolted through that door. So next episode we're going to talk a little bit more about that door and how I found myself back again in the higher education, although in a very different scenario and with a very different version of me.

Speaker 1: 25:59

Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions of me, don't feel shy, hit me up. My email is joa J-O-A at haveacupofjoanicom. I will put that on the show notes and I will put my social media ads on the show notes as well. So if you want to leave a comment or chat with me through my social media handles, you can. But I welcome your comments and your feedback. As long as they're not troll-y, I will answer them. All right, see you on the next episode. Bye. If today's episode spoke to you, share with somebody who's finding their way back too, and if you haven't yet, visit haveacupofjoanniecom for more stories, blog posts and the books that started it all. Thank you for being here. Until next time, be soft, be bold and always have a cup of joannie.