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I had made it seventeen years without slamming a door. Being the only child of reasonable parents had not taught me to fight like a proper teenager. But in late April of my senior year, trying to choose a college, I found myself scowling with my back defiantly pressed into my bedroom door. The time to return my decision to either Cornell or my state university was swiftly running out.
Cornell, with its unique School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), offered quite possibly my ideal undergraduate program at a hefty price tag. My very respectable state flagship, with its warm, familiar environs, had awarded me a full scholarship. I was locked in a heated battle with my family and my conscience. They disagreed with each other, and I vacillated.
My parents had sacrificed for me my entire life, and I finally had the chance to give them a break or use the money for graduate school. How could any immigrant's child sneeze at a full ride, much less one to a great school I knew well? Was I about to give up a free education for a pretentious Ivy League degree?
Patricia Moscoso will graduate from Cornell with a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations and a minor in Law & Society in May 2011.
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