From: Jalisco, Mexico
Year: May 2017
Fun Facts:
- I’m a middle child (2 older siblings, 2 younger siblings)
- I love food
- Pozole and chicken are things I can eat every day
- I like to eat sopes
- I don’t like raw onions or any salad dressings
- I’m getting married
- I met my fiancé at a wedding
- Any type of soda gives me the hiccups
Her Campus Cal Lutheran: What’s your favorite part about CLU?
Ceci Solano: My favorite part about CLU is the small community. I can see people that I know if I walk around, and I always recognize familiar faces.
HCCLU: Prior to working in reslife, what did you do?
CS: I was living in Portland, Oregon working for Big Brothers/ Big Sisters as an enrollment match support services. I checked in with volunteers and kids and their families. This brought me back to wanting to become a counselor. I provided support to them and their mentee and mentor relationship.
HCCLU: What’s your favorite thing about working in reslife?
CS: Being able to build that community around the halls as well. I get to see the same people and have conversations with them. I enjoy working with student staff, being able to see how my student staff and students are growing, being able to see students come in and how they act the first days to the very end when they’re moving out, it’s such a difference, such a growth. It’s amazing.
HCCLU: What are you going to miss the most about CLU?
CS: I’m going to miss the people; the people I work with, the students, and Student Support Services.
HCCLU: Are you excited to graduate? Why or why not?
CS: I am definitely excited after these three years. I’m excited to be able to work and do full time work. On the other hand, I am also nervous and anxious because of the unknown. I still don’t know what I am doing, I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few years, although I do love change. Although after three years of not having change, it’s scary again.
HCCLU: What inspired you to become a counselor?
CS: I think my own experience of being a student and being in college and being there for the first time and feeling so alone and lost, wanting to go home. I still look back and I realize how students still feel like that now. I want to let them know that they belong here, I feel that I didn’t have that but I had it within myself. I know some students don’t have that, so me being able to give that to the students is something that I want.
HCCLU: What are your future plans?
CS: I obviously want to be working in a university or college, in either reslife or a support service type of job.
HCCLU: Who do you look up to?
CS: I look up to my parents because they have worked really hard all their lives and still continue working for them to have something better. When it comes to school and people who have encouraged me they have done that too. People in school, even students because getting to talk to students you get to talk to them about their life, looking at their lives and what they’ve been through. As well as the counselors in Student Support Services for what they do for their students such as Elena who gives so much of herself to students. I feel that a lot of people would just stay in their office but she interacts with students and she focuses on building relationships with them.
HCCLU: What’s your favorite quote?
CS: “Whoever is free of sin casts the first stone” – Jesus. Jesus said this to the people who were going throw stones at the woman who was accused of adultery. Don’t judge others because you’ve probably done something just as bad is what it means. It has taught me to not be as judgmental towards other people.