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Luis Diaz

Ms. La Torre

Senior Defense Script

09 April 2019

Good Afternoon panel members and teachers. My name is Luis Diaz and I am a child of

two Latino parents with minimal education, I am a first generation college bound student that

lives in the heart of Los Angeles. At an early age, my mom taught me to always give back and

share with others, so I always showed sympathy and empathy. My dad taught me that there is a

solution to everything in life besides death. As I grew older I was always integrated in my brain

that I should always try to learn everyday and not take my learning opportunities for granted. My

parents never got the opportunity that I have. Therefore, I try to learn new things everyday and

try to learn from my mistakes. This school in specific has helped me improve many skills that I

thought I never had in the first place. For example, I was very shy and timid in middle school,

but have grown to know that I like to talk and share ideas with my fellow peers. Thanks to the

COMM 101 class I was able to improve on my communication skills more Also, I learned that I

am a good leader in groups. Throughout my years in Global Studies I have grown from being a

citizen to a leader and now a Global Ambassador. I am ready to become a Global ambassador

because I embody exceptional attributes such as: taking advantage of resources to further my

education, have mastered the ability to comprehend alternative perspectives in a way that

enhances my own perspective and I am able to use varied language that is suited to the specific

task. To start off I will talk about my wild card which is my UCLA Youth Policy Institute (YPI)

peer leader certificate.

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First of all, in order to go to UCLA to become YPI peer leaders we had to fill out an

application which was reviewed by YPI staff and only 8 people were chosen. Afterwards, we

would arrive to UCLA with eight other schools that had chosen eight students each. All of whom

would be trained to become peer leaders like myself. This wasn't a vacation to a university

whatsoever because everyday we would have classes in the mornings and evenings and had to go

through a rigorous process of understanding and gaining new knowledge about Universities.

Everyday, YPI staff would display a presentation about various topics such as financial aid,

loans, and universities. To give a quick example, we would learn that in order to apply to a cal

state one must have a GPA of 2.0 or above, and an SAT score, while a UC required a minimum

of 3.0 in order to be able to apply. Also, for financial aid I learned about various ways to be able

to pay for college such as work study, FAFSA/Dream Act, and scholarships. I was able to

expand my knowledge about college applications, loans and through this experience I was able

to get a feel of what it is like being in a university. Three days passed later, all eight students

came back to Global Studies and as soon as school started we were helping our fellow peers

apply to FAFSA, colleges, and scholarships after school. We taught them how to apply to

schools through the common app and taught them about the dream act and scholarships that

many organizations offer to students of color. Basically, we passed on the knowledge that we

gained to our peers. The skills I gained by being apart of this was being able to actively

participate and take the initiative to start a conversation by asking questions to the YPI staff and

fellow peers. In addition, I was able to improve my collaboration and communication skills by

speaking to other students from different schools and brainstorming ideas about issues that affect

us and how to overcome them. Becoming a peer leader helped me become a Global Ambassador
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because I was able to take advantage of resources to further my education. Not only this, but

through this experience I was able to gain new information about college which helped dictate

which schools I would apply to and in some way determined my future. Now I will talk about

my second artifact which is a CRA on the seminal Invisible Man.

I chose this CRA because it helped me realize that there are multiple ways to solve an

issue. In order to write about this book we first had to gain knowledge about the author who is

Ralph Ellison and his mindset whilst writing this masterpiece. So first, we read the book and had

seminars every friday in which my peers and I discussed about the meaning behind this book.

This helped me hear my peers point of view on this seminal, which helped shape my own

perspective. In addition, I read Madison Elkins point of view who is a feminist in which she

believes that although Ellison might seem misogynistic, he is using it in order to reach his

ultimate goal which is the theme of societal invisibility.. Through this, I was able to look at this

book through a different lense and understood that in order to fully comprehend a situation one

must look at the full picture and not just a piece of it. Invisible Man CRA helped me demonstrate

agency by staying on task, meeting all my bench marks and turning everything on time. In

addition I sought feedback from my peers and teachers and was able to further revise and have a

better comprehensive CRA. The purpose of this artifact is to see how people may be

looking/reading the same thing, but they all have their own perspective. Which reminds me of

what my father taught me as a little kid which was that there are solutions to everything in life

besides death. Meaning that in order to resolve an issue we must look at all the possible solutions

first and then go from there. This artifact has helped me become a Global Ambassador because

through this book Invisible Man I was able to look at this book through different perspectives
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which is what a Global Ambassador should always do in any situation that they are in. Also

writing this CRA has helped me for the future because it was an MLA style essay which will

help me when I am writing a paper in college. Now I will talk about my third artifact which is

my human trafficking infographic.

In this artifact, I was able to present a presentation for elementary students about Human

Trafficking and was able to raise awareness to the younger generation. In this project we were

given the opportunity to raise awareness about Human Trafficking. Which has to do with various

forms of assault, rape, and domestic servitude. All of which contribute to Human Trafficking.

Human trafficking isn't just in other places around the world but it is here, in our neighborhood.

The knowledge I gained from this is that in order for information to be embedded in somebody it

must be told at a young age. I realized that the more we tell the younger kids about issues such as

human trafficking they will have ingrained in their minds that it is bad and should be eradicated.

Not only that, they are the future generations that can potentially help abolish human trafficking

once in for all. I was able to gain this information about human trafficking by being taught

lessons from Ms. La Torre who was able to give us many insights about this ongoing issue.

Thanks to Ms. La Torre as a class we were able to go to Loyola Marymount University and see

slides on human trafficking which were filled with statistics, facts and personal stories from

victims. As a whole this lit a fire in all of us and we knew we had to take action in order to

abolish what is known as modern day slavery. The academic skills that I was able to develop was

oral and collaboration skills. For oral communication, I had to communicate effectively with an

elementary school staff member in order to set up a date in which we could present this issue.

And for collaboration skills I was able to build upon my group mates ideas and further give
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deeper information about human trafficking. The challenges that we faced as a group was toning

down what human trafficking is because we had to present to elementary students. Who are still

developing their ability to comprehend and still experiencing new things in life. This was a

challenge that we overcame by not including all the forms of human trafficking but focusing on

child soldiers and sweatshops instead. In which we believed that this would benefit more because

the students would still be able to comprehend that human trafficking is bad.This artifact

connects to my thesis because through this artifact I was able to create social change. By

presenting to the students we were able to raise awareness about a global and community issue

which is human trafficking. Through this, the kids will understand that this world isn't perfect

and there is a lot of fixing to do.It was evident that we were able to embed this issue to the

children because after we were done with the presentation they started to look at their tags which

were from many places like China, Thailand and Honduras. This helped us know that they

understood our presentation which helped confirm the change we created in this community.

Now that I have talked about my three artifacts I will talk about my future goals.

Now that I am nearly ending my high school career I am now more curious about my

future. Whichever UC I end up choosing should help me create a pathway for myself and future

family generations. If I am able to succeed through this world, I know that everyone can. My

main goal in life is to help my parents and family live a leisurely life because they have

sacrificed so much for me. My job is to not take those sacrifices and opportunities my parents

gave me for granted. But, I also have other goals and that is to give back to the community I

came from and try to leave this world better than when I was born. I have multiple ways to

picture my future, but I will try to create the best path possible In addition, I must have the drive
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to learn because through learning I would be able to make better decisions in my future life and I

will be able to understand this world that I live in. I know that this is a very vague future and that

is because I don't know what lies ahead. I still don't know who I want to be in life. But I do know

that I must achieve my goals so that I can feel the feeling of accomplishment. Overall, being a

global ambassador in life will help me maneuver through life and help me over overcome

obstacles for myself and my community.