Youth Quote Search

• Perceptions of the term 'work'
• Understanding Job/Work/Career

“Tiring.”

• Challenges and Barriers
• Discrimination and Bias

“If I put my ethnicity down on anything like getting a job, it is the worst. People don’t want a kid that is from some tribe in Ohio and Minnesota. They want local people. They don’t want to see a Hispanic, Native American on your resume…I feel like a lot of people don’t. A lot of places I go, I feel like I don’t get hired because of my ethnicity…I personally have been trying to domesticate myself and not go outside so I get a lighter complexion. I am supposed to be pretty dark, but I just do my own thing and not even do that. It is pretty obvious. Sometimes if they don’t say it when they ask, it will be either written. They will bring it up like hey what is this? Can you elaborate on that? I am just like hey. Yes I am actively trying to let people know that I am white. It gets you – I am serious, white privilege. If you play it cool, then it will be all right, but if you start going off and I start speaking to you, you are not going to like that. You are like what did this kid just say to me? It is just like whoa.”

• Impact of family
• Pathways

“My mom would help me stay on task, to make sure I don’t give up.”

• Aspirations and Goals
• Inspiration and motivations

“I didn’t always take what my parents said, I guess. I thought they were against me like oh whatever, but as I’ve gotten older, I realize that everything that your parents tell you is for a reason, and they are just helping you. My mom is my best friend now. I don’t go a day without seeing her or talking to her. Most of the time when it comes down to things, I am calling her and not my friend. Your family is always—like any hardship, anything I have ever been through even if I thought I was be judged, in trouble like oh my God I can’t go and tell my parents that. I can tell them and they are there for me. They help me figure out a solution or come up with—your family is always going to be there for you more than anybody, and I have learned that through experience and life situations. It is always good to listen to the people who birthed you and raised you than random…”

• Attributes and characteristics
• Describing Identity

“I put ambitious. I’m feisty, outspoken, intelligent. I’m humorous. I’m very sensitive, optimistic. I’m sensual, and I’m a bit of a procrastinator, and I’m a risk-taker.”

• Reflections on Focus Group Experience
• Takeaways

“It was reassuring.”

• Aspirations and Goals
• Imagining their future selves

“But, I mean, yeah, generating revenues, a change of the way our education systems is. Like our education system sucks right now. Bringing jobs back into our community. Trying to reduce the violence levels that we have by giving youth an outlet, you know what I’m saying? Not just the basketball court so people can go hoop, but a recreational center. Do you know what I’m saying? And just things that gives us a different outlet. I didn’t even think of the timeline. So I’m going to just say within the next 10 years, or within the next 10 to 15 years.”

• Describing Identity
• Race, ethnicity, gender, culture

“I would describe myself as a first generation Mexican-American student from immigrant parents. I am currently not affiliated with any religion but grew up Catholic.”

• Impact of peers
• Pathways

“Like [friends] help you like push you and like motivate you to want to better yourself…When I was back in school, my friend would help me like motivate myself to like help me with my classes.”

• Challenges and Barriers
• Naysayers and bullying

“I feel like when they like knock you down from like striving so high, like there was, like an instance, I remember in high school where I was like applying to all of these colleges. And like I really wanted to get into like UCLA and Berkeley, and I was like talking to my counselor, and he was like, oh, well, those are cool schools, but like you should reach for like a school that’s more like fit for you. So he was like you should look into Occidental or you should look into like other schools. I was like, um, I feel like just words like that kind of like really make you feel like you can’t do something—like you’re not worthy of like attending a school like that. So I don’t know, like especially from like a counselor, like someone you think that is there to support you and hearing like words like that, actually like can really like knock you down.”