Students enjoy their spring break touring colleges around Southern California

Viridiana Castellanos

Times Staff

Spring break is when college students are expected to party all night and sleep all day.

However, for 42 San Jose City College students, their spring break was quite the opposite.

With the help of Lezra Chenportillo; the head coordinator of this trip, San Jose City College took 42 students on a tour around Southern California to visit seven college campuses in four days.

The trip was open to everyone and the students were selected based on their applications that they’d submitted.

The application was pretty simple, just some basic personal information and a one-page essay that talked about why the student wanted to attend the trip.

More than 42 students applied to attend, but since there was only a limited space they had to choose based on the student’s applications.

The trip was completely free; it included transportation which was a charter bus for everyone who attended lodging and meals.

Early in the morning at 6 a.m on Monday March 21, the students went on their journey and their first stop was USC.

The students got there around noon and got a tour of the schools Cinema Arts, where students got a private tour of a formers student’s studio who is majoring in stop motion animation.

After a long day touring the school and the community around it, the students finally got to their hotel around 9 p.m.

After USC they drove down to UC San Diego, San Diego State, CSU Long Beach, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and finally CSU SLO.

The trip took 4 days in total, they had workshops in between and a lot of time to get to know their fellow group mates.

“It was a nice experience because I got to know more about the different colleges and I could see the different diversity between them” said Margot Uchicua who is majoring in Graphic Design.

Students were allowed to explore around on their own, not only just inside campus but outside as well.

“I enjoyed the free time, the experience I enjoyed the most was the Farmers Market in Cal Poly because the event brought the community together right by campus” said Nghi Ung who is majoring in Psychology.

“Part of the trip is we wanted them to go to visit a campus, but we also wanted them to know the community around them because part of visiting a campus is getting to know the community that you’re going to be in” said Olga Morales, who is a current EOPS counselor here at SJCC.

This is Olga Morales first year working as a counselor here at SJCC, and she was dazzled by what SJCC offers students.

“I’m really impressed with the commitment that SJCC has for our students, for them to invest in our students so they have this opportunity really shows their level of commitment”

The trip was brought back after a couple of years, and Morales said that they definitely hope to have it next year as well.

“ I am grateful to SJCC because this was my first time that I got to travel” said Nghi Ung,” the trip made me be brave and do what I want for my goal, which is to go away from home”.