While Jose was away in Mexico, his High School Counselor submitted an application to enter a program to transfer from his community college, after one year, to go to a State University. Surprised by the sudden call by acceptance into the program, he was given one week to decide what University to attend. In order to stay near his family, he decided to go to University of Missouri, Kansas City. As he was no studying to receive a Bachelor’s Degree, he once again had to approach his father to explain to him the necessity of him to continue spending time to get an education. Jose explains that “having the conversation with him that last time, he just gave up kind of. He was just like ‘whatever. Obviously you are not going to work’.” As Jose was capable of maintaining the ability to be financially independent from his father, he believes that his father was more accepting of his decision to continue gaining an education.

Arriving on campus, he decided to continue studying Photojournalism and Computer Science Classes. However, in the process he began to realize that he strongly disliked the Computer part, while enjoying the math aspect of the Computer Science major, forcing him to question his major. Throughout his undergraduate career, he quickly changed paths began to become involved in the community to begin trying new things. As his mother had passed away from cancer when he was younger, he became involved with “Hispanic Women Against Cancer”, sparking his interest in the field of sciences. He therefore changed majors to continue his “passion for serving others”, and he believed that by “becoming a doctor [he] could do that”, and pursued pre-med studies throughout college.

By not knowing from his college adviser that he was missing 3 classes, he realized he could no longer major in sciences. Due to it being his senior year, he had no time to take the 3 classes to major in Biology, and ultimately got his Bachelor’s in Spanish, and a minor in Chemistry.