Sorry for the delay on the blogs, this year has been a challenging one. I’m just going to start of with a college experience that happened before college that really helped me out in the long run. I was fortunate enough to get excepted into this bridge program called The Learning Community (TLC) which is a program that brings African American students on campus early in order for them to establish a community as well as get prepared for school. For the program I had to come to school 3 weeks earlier along with 29 other students who didn’t know each other, and over the 3 weeks we were able to become very close. Throughout the program we did a number of things. First we took two classes throughout the week, to kind of show and prepare us for actual classes throughout the school year. We also went on many trips around Los Angeles that showed us many of the great local and diverse spots that are around. We did several things such as go to a James Brown dedication event, several museums, had many bonding events and more. We also stayed in the dorms which got us familiar to campus life. The TLC program allowed me and the other students to have a community to go to when school started so I didn’t necessarily have to actively seek out friends and could immediately focus on my academics. Now, since I’m apart of the TLC community, I receive a lot of benefits such as internship opportunities, invitations to events and even food for when I’m hungry. TLC has been a great experience that I am glad that I was able to participate in. I now help out the TLC program whenever I can and encourage all that can to apply.
