One Student's Story
On Sunday, May 27, Vanessa Lizarraga, a seventeen-year-old Latina student
from South Central Los Angeles graduated from Cate School, sitting with her 75
classmates on a wooden stage against a stunning backdrop of blue sky and
mountains. She'll head next to the University of Pennsylvania, where she hopes to
launch her path to medical school, and eventually become a surgeon. The daughter
of a Mexican immigrants—a seamstress and a machine operator at a meatpacking company
who speak little English—Vanessa and her family had no knowledge of boarding
schools when she was a seventh-grader at John Adams Elementary School.
A Better Chance, an organization that annually recruits, refers, and supports about
500 scholars at more than 300 of the nation’s independent schools, approached
Vanessa and directed her toward Cate, the most diverse boarding school of its size
in the country.
Vanessa arrived on Cate's pastoral campus 90 miles north of Los Angeles in the fall
of 2008 without even seeing it previously—neither of her parents could get time off
from work to bring her for a visit. Both she and her family struggled with the idea of
letting go of one another when she was so young, but both also recognized the
incredible opportunity that lay ahead.
As a freshman, Vanessa overcame early bouts of homesickness to pursue every
avenue, both academic and extracurricular, open to her. She quietly stunned the
faculty members at Cate—many of whom have taught on the Mesa for twenty years
or more and are accustomed to exceptional kids—with her intelligence, drive, focus
and maturity.
As a freshman, she represented Cate a national student diversity leadership
conference and led meetings on diversity with the Cate's trustees and faculty as a
sophomore. At the end of her junior year, the students and faculty elected her to
serve as one of two head prefects of school. She participated in myriad school
activities, including serving on the public service committee, as one of the school's
newspaper editors, and as captain of the softball team, to name a few.
She has been equally impressive in the classroom. A survey of her teachers reveals
the high esteem in which Vanessa has been held. David Wood, her Japanese teacher calls
her an "absolute star," and her AP Calculus teacher wrote at the end of her junior
year "Vanessa is an everyday reminder of how lucky I am to be a teacher." Anna
Fortner, her English teacher wrote that Vanessa matured into a reader capable
of gleaning much from a text "but also working exceedingly hard to turn herself into
a writer capable conveying her ideas not just clearly and concisely, but beautifully as
well."
In what amounted to a near-perfect ending to her superlative Cate career, Vanessa
was awarded the William Shepard Biddle Cup at graduation, presented since 1914 to the senior best who exemplifies and demonstrates the qualities of humanism, idealism
and the desire to achieve what Cate seeks to teach its students. It is the School's
highest award and named for one of its most distinguished alumni.
Here, Vanessa describes some of her journey:
"Before coming to Cate, I didn't know anything besides Latinas working and
struggling day and night to support themselves and their families. I didn't know that
there was more to life than just that. I came here because I wanted more. Now, with
everything I have learned has come the lesson that there is more to know and
experience. Cate is the start of a life I dream to have for my family."
In the personal reflection Headmaster Ben Williams shared about Vanessa before handing her a
blue diploma, he noted, "some faculty have argued, in fact, that even as a freshman,
Vanessa was a senior." Now, Vanessa is a graduate.
This story appeared in the Cate Bulletin in the summer of 2013.
