November 2018

3 Minutes Read

Summer went by pretty quickly too and I was happy heading into my Sophomore year of college. In November 2018, I was approached by Billy who was the First-Year Experience Coordinator for the Educational Opportunity Program at CSU, Chico offering me a spot on the team he was taking with him to the 7th Annual CSU EOP Student Leadership Conference in Northern California. One of their team members couldn’t go so I was offered the spot for this conference. I was lucky to be free at the time and I took up his offer, and man, I’m glad I said yes. There’s something so special and fun about being in a room filled with other passionate students who want to learn and help improve their ability to be more of a service and support to students in the EOP program. If I remember correctly I think the CSUs in attendance were Humboldt, Chico, Cal-Maritime, Sacramento, and Sonoma.

For this conference, each EOP team had to create a presentation about their EOP program and the services that they offered on their campus. Not being an EOP Paraprofessional Advisor at the time, I brought a unique perspective into the team as I was an SI leader at the time. But, since I worked directly with EOP students in my SI sessions, I was able to elaborate and talk about the benefits of the SI program for our EOP students. I think something cool during this was that I got to see the dynamic of how those EOP parapros worked together and the chemistry they had with each other. They were a good bunch to work with so I was grateful for that.

With CSU, Chico’s EOP program being one of the first pilot programs, we had a lot to offer and the success of our program was good. It was really cool learning about some of the resources and support services that the other EOP programs had that we didn’t. For example, EOP Sacramento had a transfer bridge for their transfer students who got accepted into the EOP program. Which, I thought was really freaking cool because I can only imagine how fun and nice it is to transfer to another campus and already be surrounded by people with similar experiences that you have. After learning about the other EOP programs, we were given a tour of CSU, Sacramento, and holy shit, their campus is pretty big. They have many more tall buildings compared to CSU, Chico. I do wish we could’ve gone inside the buildings.

This all took place in one day and after the conference, my team and I decided to go get some Chick-Fil-A (which, I never had before) and then we spent some time at a shopping mall. I rarely go to Sacramento or explore Sacramento by myself so once we got into the mall, I went on a solo adventure. I checked out all the stores but I only ended up buying some fancy clothes (button-ups, two vests, slacks, and a bow tie). I also greatly enjoyed the car ride from Sacramento to Chico as there were a lot of deep conversations (I’m a sap for deep conversations). Overall, it was a great day filled with fun and deep conversations about life, academics, and providing service to students.