Grace Groves, 2015 GlobalMindED First Gen Class Alum and Inclusive Awards Dinner Keynote Speaker
From the start of my education, I have always found comfort in routine. In my mind, the dedication to get through school was instinctual. Despite adversities along the way or the dollar signs looming over my head, I knew what I wanted.
My name is Grace Groves, and when I met Carol Carter along with her team at GlobalMindED back in 2014, I knew what I wanted but not exactly how to get there. I was preparing to graduate High School and little did I know but the people I met and the conversations I had when I went to GlobalMindED and later, through my internship, pushed me out of my comfort zone. I was part of the 2015 GlobalMindED First Gen Student Leadership class. I met students from around Colorado, the nation and the world. I learned their cultures, I learned their interests and I learned to make my world bigger through being connected to them. The relationships I made working with the diverse people around me gave me the confidence I needed moving forward from high school. I started college at University of Colorado Boulder that fall and now, I'm a college graduate. I don't know how this would have happened without my experiences at GlobalMindED and the support networks that I was given through this community of committed students, faculty, business mentors and adults.
I am an only child born into a low income family. Without a mom, I was raised by my father who was a victim of homicide when I was four years old. While this tragedy motivated me to be the person I am today, it has been a tough path. I was an angry and not so grounded teenager in high school. With the help of GlobalMindED, and the strength of my grandma, I can proudly say that I am a first generation graduate from the CU Boulder with a dual degree both Psychology and Fine Arts, an art history minor and a certificate in public health. Because of the perspective i gained from GlobalMindED between high school and college, i graduated with 3.8 GPA, waited on tables all through college and have debt of only $5,000.
Moving forward, I plan to only expand on these connections from which I've benefited and finish my senior thesis this spring. Looking to the future, I will pursue art entrepreneurship. More specifically, I hope to explore new psychotherapeutic therapies using art as a catalyst for insight into emotional problems and difficulties so that I can help others heal from tragic circumstances as I was able to do myself. I can't thank the GlobalMindED community of my peers and mentors enough for their commitment not only to education as a whole, but to me as a person and to the path that they helped me forge. I look forward to being a lifelong mentor to others as those in this community have so generously mentored me.
|
