Chapter 9: “I Learned How to Divide at 25”: A Counter-Narrative of How one Latina’s Agency and Resilience Lead Her Towards an Engineering Pathway
Author: Dina Verdín
Abstract:
This chapter tells the experience of a Mexican American, first-generation college student studying mechanical engineering as she recounts her academic experience as an adolescent, trajectory in and out of community college, and, after six-years, her entry into a bachelor granting institution. Kitatoi’s narrative is also the story of experiences at the margins of society, thus her experience is a counter-narrative challenging the discourse on the types of people that get to participate in engineering. Her narrative is understood through three environmental structures, that which is imposed (racialized, gendered, and classed), selected (mathematics and science courses), and constructed (from tutored to tutor). Navigating through each environmental structures required the exercise of Kitatoi’s agentic capabilities. The enactment of her agency subsequently supported her belief of seeing herself as a type of person that can do engineering.
