Persona #2: Paula

Name: Paula Alvarez
Gender: Female
Age: 19
Race: Black/Hispanic
Hometown: Maysville, NC, a small agricultural community in Eastern NC.

Background: Paula is the oldest of eight kids. Her mother is black, her father is an immigrant from El Salvador. She is the first in her immediate or extended family to go to college. Many of her friends and peers in Maysville have either dropped out of school or taken low-paying manufacturing or textile jobs around the farms or mills around town. However, with many jobs going overseas and the large migrant worker population, jobs are becoming scarce and this adds to the tension between the local residents and the migrant workers. Paula's parents are salt of the earth folks, decent, and hardworking, and both Paula's parents and her community are very proud and supportive of her accomplishments. Paula is both academically and athletically gifted, she has been on honor roll throughout most of her years at school, and was a star athlete in middle and high school, playing basketball, volleyball and running track. She was offered a scholarship at a number of smaller colleges in North Carolina but she chose to come to UNC instead, without a scholarship, thinking that UNC offered her the best education and opportunity. Now that she's here, she's not so sure she made the right decision and being naturally shy, she often feels lost, like a small fish in a very big pond. Coming to UNC also means that she has to work to support herself.

Student Status: Paula is a freshman majoring in biology. She plans on continuing on to med school to become a general practitioner. Having seen firsthand the evils of the lack of proper health-care, she wants to open her own community clinic for the indigent back in Maysville. There are many subjects that interest her, but she avoids many of them, and tries to focus with laser-like precision on the courses that will get her through to med school--she has no time for what she views as frivolities. Besides her required courses, she likes to take African-American history, and also enjoys her Spanish classes. Having grown up in a multilingual community, she is already fairly fluent and strives to master her Spanish in advanced classes.

Residence and Getting Around: Paula lives in a dorm on campus, which she views as noisy and overpriced, and either walks or bikes everywhere she goes, even to Carrboro where she works as a waitress at Elmo's diner in the evenings. Between work and classes, she has little time for sports or exercise, so she figures this is the only way she'll keep in shape and the walking or biking also gives her time alone to reflect. Being shy, Paula prefers to be alone and finds the dorm life to be a nuisance--she can't wait to get a place of her own, maybe with another quiet roommate or two.

Daily Activity: Paula is meticulously organized and makes use of every minute of her day. She is a morning person so she prefers her classes to be in the mornings. This gives her a chance to catch up on homework and study in the afternoons. She works every evening during the week and alternating weekends. On weekends she doesn't work, she volunteers at the Lincoln Center in Carrboro, a sliding fee health clinic where she gets both clinical experience, and a chance to flex her Spanish muscle. Not only does Paula have no boyfriend, she doesn't even have time to think about a boyfriend, even though, on occasion, she wishes she wasn't as shy.

Technical Expertise and Experience: Paula is technically proficient but no expert. Growing up, she has had little access to computers until just a few years ago, so it is not second nature to her. Technology is simply not her "thing." She has neither the desire nor the patience to learn new technologies just for technology's sake or for the "wow" factor, and is puzzled when her peers IM each other or call each other on their cell phones when they are practically standing next to each other. Paula has her own laptop, which is a gift from her community who raised the funds through church bake sales, BBQ dinners, etc. but she only uses it sparingly, not obsessively, thinking that it needs to last for many years and get her through at least the next four years. She does not have all the software she needs, so she often has to go to the labs to perform certain assignments and this annoys her to no end. She is grateful she can email her parents and siblings, who now also have access to a computer, but since Paula is so busy, often days go by before she gets a chance to check her email, and her mail often queues up. During the last registration period, she could not get into the classes she wanted because of her schedule.

Desires: More than anything, Paula wants to be a doctor and make a difference in her community. She is worried about two of her sisters who've dropped out of school and seem to be heading down a dead end path but they don't listen to her and call her uppity.

Likes/Dislikes: Paula is an avid womens' basketball fan, and probably could play as a walk-on if she wanted but she has no time for it, and frankly no energy either. She tries to go to the home games but she often has to work double-shifts later to make up for the time missed from work. Paula has few friends and does not socialize much, if at all. She doesn't understand why some of these kids come to school at all, they seem to want to do everything but the actual school-part, which makes her mad, knowing how hard she's had to work to get where she is. Lately she has been talking more and more with one guy who is her lab partner and who seems to "get her", a white boy with blond dreadlocks, who skateboards everywhere he goes and has tattoos and piercings all over who knows where. His name is "Bodie," short for Boatwright. Bodie doesn't talk to anyone except Paula. Sometimes he rides his skateboard alongside her as she bikes to work and they talk. They make the unlikeliest of pairs she thinks.

Hobbies: If she had time she would like to go to concerts, or at least go dancing at a club, but she never seems to be able to find the time, or often hears about a favorite performer of hers has come and gone without her knowing about it until too late. She knows that there are occasional lectures about African-American issues and topics at the Friday Center or exhibits at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center, but she is yet to make it to a lecture or exhibit. She occasionally likes to hang out by herself at the Coker arboretum, because there, under the huge chestnut swamp oaks, she feels like she's home.