WATSONVILLE—Sometimes a blunt reality check can completely change the trajectory of a person’s life. A strong support system also helps.
Geraldine Gonzales-Jaramillo can attest to that.
Now one of Watsonville High School’s 438 graduates from the class of 2020, Gonzales-Jaramillo was in danger of slipping through the cracks in between her sophomore and junior years.
Then school counselor Federico Castaneda laid out her situation.
“He told me of all the credits I was missing and he said, ‘you have to really try or else you’re not going to be able to graduate,’” she said. “At first, I honestly didn’t try but [Castaneda] never gave up on me. He was always there for me. I’m always going to remember that.”
A half-dozen make-up classes and several hours of studying in afterschool programs later, Gonzales-Jaramillo is graduating with a grade point average above 3.0—a vast improvement from the sobering sub-2.0 GPA she had after her freshman year—and will attend Sacramento State University in the fall. She does not yet know what she will study when she begins courses at what she called her “dream school,” but she does know that her life could have been drastically different if not for adults such as Castaneda.
“I owe so much to [Castaneda] and my counselor in the Migrant Program,” she said, referring to Sylvia Alba.
Gonzales-Jaramillo started high school at Alisal High School in Salinas but transferred to Watsonville High School after one semester. Her mom, Maria, a farmworker, broke her leg and was unable to earn money to support her family. So Gonzales-Jaramillo, her two younger sisters and her mom moved into one room at her grandmother’s house in Watsonville.
Gonzales-Jaramillo said her first weeks at Watsonville High were stressful. All of her childhood friends were back in Salinas, and her shy, passive personality made it tough to make new ones. She put school on the backburner and admitted she started “hanging around with the wrong crowd.”
“I wanted to focus in school but I was mad at the fact that I had to move and leave all my friends,” she said. “I believe that had to do something with me not wanting to focus in school—just, really, not caring. Then I realized how much it was affecting my mom…She was my rock and I was letting her down.”
Things changed quickly after that. Gonzales-Jaramillo, with the help of the aforementioned counselors, started attending after school tutorials and built a new network of friends that were all making the same arduous climb back to academic success.
Seeing her mom’s financial and health struggles, she also picked up a part-time job at a local Jack in the Box immediately after turning 16. While friends were spending their money on luxuries, she was paying the family phone and car bills. She used the leftover cash to buy clothes for her sisters.
She stopped working at Jack in the Box in January to study for finals and complete her college and financial assistance applications. She said her co-workers were sad to see her go but left her with these words: “Don’t be like us, that we never went to school and we didn’t try. Try your best so you can actually be someone in life.”
“That motivated me as well,” she said. “They looked out for me.”
She said she was disappointed that she would not be able to walk across the stage to receive her diploma because of the Covid-19 restrictions. She also said that the disease would not define her senior class.
“Even though we’re not going to have our graduation ceremony, I’ll remember our class for all the fun we had,” she said. “We’ve all worked hard for this moment and we’re going to make the most of it.”
Watsonville High School graduate Nancy Corona smiles for a photo during Tuesday’s drive-thru graduation. — Tony Nuñez/The Pajaronian
From the track to the roads
When Jaqueline Rodriguez-Rivera heard schools across the county would close because of the novel coronavirus, she was “devastated” that she would not be able to complete her fourth season of track and field.
Then she thought of what her coach Rob Cornett would have said in that moment.
“He always tells us that he doesn’t just train us to be good athletes, but he really hopes that we also become better people,” she said. “[The track coaches] see it as more than just being physically fit. They want us to be mentally and emotionally fit.”
Those life lessons learned on the track carried Rodriguez-Rivera, an ace distance runner, through the final three months of high school and into the top 10% of her class. She was a member of multiple clubs, including the Conflict Resolution Team, Youth Reaching Out to God and College Club. She also spearheaded the Students Against a Violated Earth club, which often spoke to the Watsonville City Council and presented policy changes it felt would help the community become more environmentally friendly.
Before the shutdown, the club was in the process of setting up a recycling, waste disposal and terra-cycling center at the school.
“But due to the current situation we were not able to finish presenting about it,” she said. “We hope that once things get better, a future student in the club could take it on.”
That love for the environment pushed her into the Watsonville Area Teens Conserving Habitat class, an honors program that works directly with the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Elkhorn Slough. She said she is still weighing how she will help the environment in her adulthood and is thinking of majoring in animal science or possibly becoming a lawyer.
“Taking that class, it was a great experience and I know now what goes into that,” she said.
She was accepted to the University of San Francisco but instead decided to attend Cabrillo College in the fall. She said many of her classmates are making the same decision, and that the community college will give her a chance to find her passion.
“It was a safer option considering everything that’s happening at the moment,” she said. “Also, I’m still confused on what I want, so I thought it was a good idea to go there.”
