Decisions and Opportunitiesby Alicia Contreras, Oakland, CA |
In this video, Alicia narrates her own success story. You can watch it by clicking on the embedded video shown below. This video has closed captions that you can enable or disable by pressing the CC logo at the lower righthand corner of the video, and the transcript is also provided below. Also provided below are a text description of the visuals in the video and the credits.
I was born in Mexico City and now I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I got polio when I was 18 months old. Today I am 100% independent thanks to using assistive technologies. Without them, my independence and mobility would be significantly reduced. When I was a girl, I had the good fortune to study at a private bilingual school, where I learned English and Spanish at the same time, and thanks to English, I’ve had important personal and professional opportunities in my life. I grew up with the idea that in order to be successful and live independently, I had to get a college degree. Unfortunately, when I finished high school, I didn’t get good career counseling. I rejected the idea of law school, because everyone said that it was hard and that I’d have to read a lot. Instead, I chose to major in advertising, because a friend said that it’d be easy and that I wouldn’t have to read much. 1993 was a year that changed my life. I was very close to finishing college, but I was not at all satisfied with the major I had chosen. When I told my father that I was going to quit college during the last semester, he said the following: “I have always supported your decisions, but I want you to finish. This is probably your only chance to get a degree. Get it, and if you want to study something else, do so after getting your degree.” I followed his advice and decided that it was time for me to prove to myself that I could find a job in my field of study. Since I was 15 years old I had been in charge of my father’s lumber business. On average, I supervised 15 employees, handled the accounting, paid our bills, etc. It was not easy for me to tell my father that I would be leaving the business, but I did it when I got my bachelor’s degree at the age of 26. It took me many months to get a job, and I think that I didn’t get some jobs because of my physical disability, but it’s hard to prove that. The truth is that I didn’t have a lot of applicable experience for many of the jobs I applied for. In 1993, I also participated in a leadership course for people with disabilities in the United States, which opened the doors for me to enter the world of disability advocacy. To attain financial independence, I took jobs that didn’t make me happy, though they definitely gave me the chance to learn a lot. I did telemarketing, coordinated delivery services, was the assistant director of a disability organization, and taught marketing. I also volunteered for 15 months at two non-profits in the United States. When I was 31, I finally got my dream job, in which I could effect change in my community as the disability coordinator for the city of San Luis Potosí. I think that in the end, my education in advertising was a big help in getting this job, knowing how to handle the media, and being successful. And thanks to this job, I was invited to California in 2000 to work with disabled women from around the world, a job that I enjoy tremendously and a mission that I am passionate about. This digital story uses a series of still photographs to illustrate the narrative. The first few photographs are recent and show Alicia in a kayak, on the bus, and on BART (the San Francisco Bay Area metro system). When Alicia begins to talk about her childhood education, the viewer is presented with a photograph of her high school graduating class, and the camera slowly zooms in on Alicia. After zooming in on Alicia, three animated bubbles appear to the right of her head as she talks about her thought process after graduation. The following words are written in the first bubble: “College Degree”. An arrow then points to a second bubble that says, “Success and independence.” Finally, a third bubble appears that is filled with question marks and the word, “How?” When Alicia talks about her decision to major in advertising, a picture of her with her brothers celebrating her high school graduation appears and the bubbles and words disappear. When she talks about 1993, her college graduation photo comes on screen, a photo in which she appears very serious. It then fades out and a photo of her father appears, also seeming serious. When she talks about graduating college, her college degree is shown on screen, following by several images of a lumber business (a truck carrying logs, felled trees, lumber piled up). Then, a photo of job search results on a website is shown on screen. The jobs are for high level positions in advertising and sales. These search results are replaced by the image of a certificate from Mobility International USA for a leadership course that she participated in, which is followed by a group photo including all of the participants in that course. The cameras zooms in on Alicia and once again, to her right appear 3 thought bubbles as she talks about jobs she held. They say the following: “Hi, would you like to buy some raffle tickets?”, “Or maybe you want to rent an apartment in Puerto Vallarta?”, and “This job is sooo boring, but at least I’m learning something!” These words and images are then replaced by the logos of the two organizations she volunteered at: Mobility International USA and the Valley Association for Independent Living. In the final section, when she talks about her work first as a disability advocate in San Luis Potosí and later working in California, several photos appear of Alicia working with adults and children with disabilities, including one in which she is being interviewed by the media, another at a conference of women with disabilities, and finally the concluding photo, which shows her playing a game during a disability training session. The credits appear as the video ends.
Written and narrated by Alicia Contreras. Photos provided by Alicia Contreras and from the Public Domain. Music by Kevin MacLeod. |
