Balcazar, Anna

Hello, my name is Anna Patricia Balcazar and I am twenty years old. I just transferred from Southwestern College (literally the most southwestern college in the US) in San Diego so that makes me a junior here at UCLA. Wow, I just can’t believe I wrote that..”UCLA.” I’m still at the part where I cannot believe it. I am majoring in sociology and I plan to focus in education either as a teacher or counselor. My ideal goal is to work at the community college level to inspire students to get an education due to realizing that if it was not for the people who motivated me I could not have made it to where I am today. I have never been so nervous my entire life to do something but I know it will pay off in the long-run. The reason I enrolled in this class has to do with the fact that I tend to consider myself a Chicana. Despite its different definitions, the reason I consider myself be a Chicana is because I have never felt completely Mexican nor completely American. What makes me realize this is crossing down to Tijuana and feeling out of place a little bit and then going to the northern counties in San Diego and still feeling like I don’t belong. Although I was born in the U.S., I come from Mexican parents. My mom is from Sonora and my paternal grandparents come from Sinaloa.

I have grown up Catholic but I feel that my faith has slowly faded. If I go to church it is mainly because people invite me and usually they’re Christian churches. The presence of la Virgen de Guadalupe has always been around since I was a kid but it has been mostly God that my family and I have preached for. I have always been puzzled by which of the two is more important. I am excited to learn the story about la virgensita and try to understand why millions of people follow her.