Campus news

Dwayne Anderson: 'I aspire to pave the road for future generations'

By Public Affairs

Dwayne Anderson, of Oakland, made the Honor Roll every year of high school.

I have had to face and overcome many obstacles in order to reach my ultimate goal: going to college. The main hardship that I have had to overcome in my life is not having biological parents to love and support me. My father has hardly ever been in my life since splitting up with mother when I was an infant.

Dwayne Anderson
My father, coming in and out of my life, has sent me inconsistent and contradicting messages on how to be a man. At the same time, my mother began to fade away from my life. My older brother and I had to look out for each other and learn how to be successful young adults alone. I grew up living in my grandmother’s house with my grandma, uncle, mother and brother. My mother was unemployed and decided to move out of my grandma’s house to have her own personal space to use drugs.

Cal Prep has really been a bright spot — and one of many reasons that I am going to college. The staff and faculty at Cal Prep planted the seed early on that I would attend college, and they helped me take classes that made me UC eligible. They took extra time to develop presentations that taught us what was required to get into UC and CSU. My counselor took time to set up meetings with every student to tell them if they were college ready and if not how to become eligible. Teachers and counselors have been really supportive in the application process.

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to be a BEAR! I know that I will succeed at Berkeley because of the preparation of my high school. I aspire to pave the road for future African American generations. Coming from the circumstances I come from has made me want to change the community and pursue a degree in psychology. I want to become an adviser, to make sure that families don’t go through the same kind of situations that I went through. I want to see what is causing so much detriment to these communities.

I want to attend college for many purposes, but I really want my family to be able to have peace of mind. I will always be indebted to my aunt and the Cal Prep community, and I want to repay them — not with money, but with all of the successes that are soon to come.