With an Accent on the “A”
University of Arizona junior Andrea Hernández grew up in Nogales, Sonora, where she attended a nursing-intensive high school before transferring to school in Rio Rico, Arizona. Here, she reflects on her passion for science, her dual citizenship and how it felt to split her education across the border.
This essay was originally produced during Andrea’s freshman year in Associate Professor of Practice Melani Martinez’s Borderlands Writing course, which encouraged students of all backgrounds growing up in the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands to write about the geographic and familial circumstances that shaped their lives. Hernández later updated it to reflect her personal and academic journey at the U of A. We have included the assignment prompts that inspired Hernández’s writing.
Fig. 1. Papelito #3: Write about where you come from — the specific places that help shape your identity. You might name regions, cities, neighborhoods, or even map coordinates.
I lived most of my life in Nogales, Sonora — the city of el mono bichi. Nogales saw me grow and helped me become who I am today. My happiest memories and places are treasured there.
One of the most remarkable experiences I had in Nogales was at the first high school I attended, Escuela de Enfermería Pablo de Anda, one of the strictest and most challenging nursing schools in Sonora. Anatomy, physiology, fundamentals of nursing, public health and microbiology were some of my classes. For someone driven by a love for science, this was exciting.
At 15, I learned how to inject medication, apply intravenous lines, take vital signs, get blood samples and navigate the hierarchies and organizational structure of a hospital. The more I learned, the more I loved the field, especially biomedical research. Consequently, I started considering research as a possible career path. When sharing this new passion with my parents, they showed genuine support, but concern at the same time. They saw something I did not.
Doing research in Mexico is not an impossible path but definitely a tough one due to the lack of support, technological development and opportunities for medical researchers.
I am a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States. My family decided that the best way for my sisters and me to realize our goals was to exercise that citizenship. I was happy at Pablo de Anda, so excited and curious, but my parents insisted.
I knew that by changing to an American school, I would have more opportunities to develop my career, but my heart yelled at me to stay. I remember asking myself if it was worth sacrificing my current happiness and peace to fulfill a dream. My answer was no, but still, I transferred to Rio Rico High School. And wow, it was a sacrifice. I missed hearing my classmates’ jokes and wearing that white nursing uniform.
My parents and those close to me could not understand why it was so hard for me to leave Pablo de Anda if I did not want to be a nurse but a researcher. They did not see that I fell in love with the skills and knowledge I was obtaining, and that those skills would help me nourish my love for science regardless of whether I became a nurse. Also, I was a semester away from being able to exercise my skills in a hospital, a real setting, with real patients — what in Mexico we call “practices” and in the States we might call “rotations.” By leaving Pablo de Anda, I was leaving this excitement and opportunity behind. All to move to a place whose syllabus was not of my interest?
Fig. 3. Papelito #15: Considering Lydia Otero’s chapter from “La Calle,” describe a time when you felt displaced, when you might have felt kicked out, bulldozed, or removed from a place you love. Why was it unjust, and what do you think needs to be remembered about that place?
The memories of my first months at Rio Rico High School are scarce. I remember silently crying at my desk, all day, every single day. At that time, that uncontrolled weeping made no sense to me. Shouldn’t I be grateful to be here?
The weeping turned into shivers, then into insomnia, then into zero motivation, then into self-harm thoughts and then into actions. My school transition was the gota que derramó el vaso — the drop that made the glass overflow — that revealed that I was carrying more than anger for changing schools. I was carrying trauma and repressed emotions from my past that needed a small push to purge them out and begin to heal. I felt as if I did not belong to the system I was in, that I was taking the place of someone else. On top of that, I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome, making everything vastly more challenging. I decided to look for professional help. And just like that, I initiated a two-year therapeutic process that changed my perception completely.
‘I, being a naive second-grade girl, used to tell my mom, “Mami, someday they’ll mention my name in the efemérides saying I discovered the cure for cancer.”
Something I learned during this process is that healing has many faces. Some days it looks like a one-hour session with a therapist, other days it looks like being on track with your medications, while other times it looks like a cold night full of desperate and uncontrolled weeping trying to be comforted by the warmth of an old gas heater and your father’s arms, a father who tearfully whispers in your ear, “Forgive me for not knowing how to help you.” In my case, healing was a process that involved making the entire household vulnerable. It was an invitation to metacognition, at a family and individual level, to collaboratively get out of this tunnel that I had been lost in for years.
Fig. 2. Papelito #19: Think of the last time you heard or watched someone’s testimony or testimonio. What did you think or feel after you heard it?
So I stand strong and upright, saying my name with pride. My name is Andrea Hernández, with an accent on the “a.” I am a junior at the University of Arizona, double majoring in biochemistry and molecular and cellular biology. My curiosity for understanding how our bodies fight diseases has guided me through a research journey in protein biochemistry, drug discovery and immunobiology, shaping my goal of developing next-generation vaccines. This summer, I will continue my research training in immunology as an Amgen Scholar at Yale University and prepare to apply for Ph.D. programs.
Andrea Hernández, "Flowery Flutter" (2023), acrylic on canvas
Statistically and historically, someone like me — a first-generation Latina student, a Mexican immigrant in the United States — would not be in college doing research at this level, but little by little, we have shown the world that there is room for everyone and that we are all capable and should be given the opportunity to pursue an education. Education is not only a privilege but also a responsibility, a responsibility to lead the way for those who come after us and honor the sacrifice of those who could not or were not allowed to pursue their passion.
I did not listen to the voices in my head that told me I was not capable of accomplishing my dream, nor to the comments of people who said that being an immigrant — my cara de nopal, my “nopal face,” a way of marking me as visibly and unmistakably Mexican — was synonymous with delinquency. I learned to be proud of my accent and my last name. I adapted to a culture that once felt foreign, redefining my identity and healing from a past I did not yet understand. I recovered the spark I lost the day I left Pablo de Anda, proving that nopales grow donde se les da la gana — anywhere, against anything, even where they are not expected to survive.
Every Monday throughout grades K-12 in Mexico, a civic ceremony known as los honores (“the honors”) is performed. In this ceremony, the entire school gathers in the courtyard to celebrate and commemorate the national flag, share historical facts from that particular week (known as efemérides), and go over important announcements from the school. I, being a naive second-grade girl, used to tell my mom, “Mami, someday they’ll mention my name in the efemérides saying I discovered the cure for cancer.”
Almost 12 years later, I was a student of the Diversity in Cancer Research Internship at the University of Arizona, a program funded by the American Cancer Society. I was preparing doses of a promising leukemia drug my lab invented to test their effectiveness when I paused, set the pipette down and looked around. I was standing in a professional research laboratory, working on a project that could offer hope to patients with blood cancers. This is when I remembered what I used to tell my mom, and inevitably, my eyes started to fill up with tears. My body was invaded by immense joy.
The younger Andrea would have been astonished to see that we were living her dream and pursuing the opportunity to contribute to the scientific community, using that creativity that always characterized us to create appealing scientific posters to display at national conferences where experts in the field recognize and admire the work we do. It is in these moments I realize that the hardship we went through and the hard work we have put in are paying off. This is for my family, nuestra gente and humanity.
