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Angel David Nishimura

Major: Health Science

Hometown: Santa Ana, CA

Career: Physician’s Assistant

Why go to college: Coming from a low-income family if you are not working then the next best thing as a child is to be good in school. I do admit that I was a bit of a troubled kid at a young age. I am the fourth child from an immigrant family and the only child born in the U.S. The age gap between me and everyone else was at least 13 years, so I always had more than two sets of eyes on me. My life can be summarized by always being corrected and always being told what benefits a U.S. citizen holds. One being the many possibilities that education can grant you. The amount of doors education brings are only limited to one's imagination. To be able to not live on a check by check basis, to be able to know what a savings account is, and to be able to provide for your family all that is wished for. That was what my family preached to me.

Why CI: I remember visiting the campus one time in high school during a campus tour provided by Upward Bound, and one of the many campuses visited was CSU Channel Islands. I remember thinking how quiet and calming the sounds of just the wind and nature were. Growing up in Santa Ana, CA you don’t experience much quiet, so whenever I wanted to focus on my academics I would retreat to quiet places like a library, a classroom, an office, anywhere that allowed me to hear the voice in my head. I also wanted to feel independent. I was raised mainly by my mother and sister and sort depended on them for some items. I’ve tried to make myself independent as much as I could at a very young age, but when you are a minor sort of a problem. Just as I turned 18 I was almost at the completion of high school and the acceptance letter of CSUCI made me even more excited to spread my wings. The location was only 1 ½ hours away from home which was perfect in giving me that feel of complete independence while allowing me to visit home as much as I needed.

Major: In high school, I wanted to be a Physician’s Assistant. I didn’t know how to do it, but I just knew I wanted to do it. I went into the health science pathway for ROP (now known as CTE) in high school and got a glimpse of various positions the health field has to offer besides becoming a registered nurse, doctor, or surgeon. I liked what I saw, but my passion for the health field started to dwindle. I came to CI declared as a health science major, but I shortly realized that I was unhappy with my major. I needed to change it, so I began to brainstorm on what am I good at? I’m good at math and I do enjoy it. I was also influenced by the fond memories I had in Calculus due to my high school Calculus teacher, Mr. Bermudez. His persistence to do better and not giving up on his students regardless of how many failures they encountered made me look at math problems not as pesty math problems, but as puzzles I just haven’t cracked the code to.

Fun Fact: What I like to do is watch documentaries on various subjects. You get a chance to learn, watch some cool film, and it takes a certain amount of time to ingest all the information.