Dr. Jernell Escobar DDS awarded her first student scholarship of $1,000 to Angelica Lara of Gilroy.
Lara was given the scholarship in a ceremony at Escobar’s Gilroy office. Her scholarship was awarded to her based on her short essay, “Sundays: from Dread to Diligence.”
The essay describes Lara’s experiences on Sundays riding with her sister as her handyman father drove to a job site at 5 in the morning, followed later by watching her mother working in a hot kitchen in a restaurant. Both of her parents would encourage her to study hard and get a good job.
“Estuda, mija, pa’ que no tengas que tener un trabajo de estos,” her father would tell her, “Study, my love, so you don’t have a job like mine.”
So Lara did just that, studied hard and pursued a post-secondary education, although she sometimes questioned her choices.
“However, those bittersweet memories of driving in my Dad’s old truck only made me try harder for my dreams,” she wrote. “‘My parents worked hard to get where they are in life, so I’m going to do the same,’ I always told myself, and I’d like to think I’ve done the best I could. I maintained a good GPA all through high school, I took AP (Advanced Placement) classes, I participated in extracurricular activities, I was a tutor, I received awards for my academic achievement, and I tried my best to leave my teachers with a good impression of who I am as a student. Yet, all these things would not matter if I hadn’t have had those Sunday trips.”
Those days of driving in her father’s truck and to her mother’s work on Sundays only to watch her parents struggle for the sake of her future, “only made me work more diligently for my education. I owe my present accomplishments to my parent’s past triumphs.”
