Andy Arguello Arauz is a graduate of Richmond High School who currently attends Contra Costa College. Andy plans to major in Engineering Mechanics.

Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself. Is there anything in particular that motivates you as you go through college and prepare yourself for a career?

A: I am Andy Lester Arguello Arauz. My motivation, first of all, I guess is money. (laughs) My family, they don’t make much and they work very hard. To me, achieving something greater would be just getting paid as much as they do but working less, but I guess the numbers-wise I think it’s reasonable to get paid twice what they do. Making like $80,000 a year, that’s a lot but in engineering it seems like a doable thing. My mom and my father came here and did what they could with the education that they had access to, which wasn’t much. Now I not only get free tuition, I get paid to go to school so I want to see if I can make it work.

Q: When did you first realize that you were college-bound?

A: For me it was definitely a progressive thing, with my mom she wouldn’t mind if I didn’t want to go to college; she never said I had to do it. I kind of fumbled around with what to do with my life. I would always much rather spend time with family than doing random tasks. I like work and I like being busy but don’t like busywork, which can sometimes frustrate me about school–the slow and steady bureaucracy. My mom said “I don’t care what you are doing as long as you do something.”

Q: How has Richmond Promise played a role in your education?

A: Richmond Promise has helped a lot. Firstly, the RP Leads thing is going to help a bit. I’m looking at getting some part time work. And then obviously, the money helps. I’ve been saving up for a car. A year ago my father left and that’s an emergency so the money helped a lot with providing a cushion.

Q: Why did you choose to apply for RP Leads, and what are you hoping to take from the experience?

A: I chose to do RP Leads because I used to go to CSU East Bay in Hayward, which was really far away. Every day it was 3 hours on BART, and I felt like I didn’t have any time to do anything other than classwork, which I did quite well which is interesting, but I don’t think I can make a lot of progress like that. I see people who don’t get internships not get the jobs that they want. Now I go to Contra Costa College and only have a 20 minute commute, so I can go home at the end of the day and do extra for my career prospects.

Q: What do you want to contribute to Richmond and/or the world?

A: Firstly, I like Richmond so I would like to stay here and perhaps buy a house. Taxes? (laughs) I’ve also been looking at engineering based on energies such as renewables, there’s a lot of chemistry and a bit of physics and math.I guess my contribution would be to live, work, and maybe have kids. A wife.

Q: How has your current college experience gone, and what has been the best part?

A: Since changing to the Contra Costa campus, things have been much better. I joined STEM Core and that was honestly really helpful to prepare for engineering math. The one bad thing is that I feel I’m doing a little worse academically. When I was at CSU East Bay I was taking 5 classes but with the changes I have struggled a little. The frustrations of one thing become the frustrations of a different thing but overall better.

Q: What challenges have you overcome to get to where you are today?

A: Damn. (laughs) Overall, I’d say big picture life is rather smooth. I’m alive, so that’s good but challenging, a lot of it is not being up to the task for certain things. I wanted to go to Berkeley and I understood it was a long shot, but then relations with my father got a little more difficult and then he left which made it even more difficult. But when you look at the circumstances, he should have left a long time ago and now things are better. Now the biggest challenge for me is figuring out what to do job-wise. I was always interested in engineering but not the long slog of studying. I love learning things, but school just pisses me off sometimes. The idea of if I should throw myself into a trade school or stay in college is something I wake up every day thinking about. That’s the main issue for me now.

Q: What advice would you give to a first-year Richmond Promise Scholar who is just heading off to a new college or CTE program?

A: My girlfriend started her first classes at UC Berkeley and I felt I had to give her advice on expectations. Part of it is that you can’t do everything that you want, you’ll crash and burn if you try to do it all. College isn’t that much different from high school but the biggest difference is now you can do whatever you want to do with your studies. If you have a dream job in mind, just go for that. I have a friend who wants to be a music teacher, and he’s just going for it. I’m so proud of him, I see that fire in his eyes. They just have to be a little patient and take it slow.

Q: What are you looking forward to doing after finishing school?

A: Work! (laughs) And support my family, help out my girlfriend, and then maybe hopefully figure out work/life balance.