student PROFILE
FINDING A HOME in Haviland Hall Begonia Herbert-Ramirez (BA ‘19) beats the odds and makes her mark on Berkeley’s campus
The journey to success is rarely a smooth and linear path. For UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare undergraduate Begonia Herbert-Ramirez, the path to becoming a University Medal nominee with a 4.0 GPA was particularly trying. Through the ups and downs, however, were two things that kept her going. The first was her intellectual curiosity. “I always felt connected to education,” says Herbert-Ramirez. Her passion for learning was so strong that she enrolled at Berkeley Community College — despite being homeless, and ill. Herbert-Ramirez became homeless when she was 18. Although not originally from Berkeley, she eventually found herself here. She lived on the streets for two years. The next steps would be difficult. It took Herbert-Ramirez a couple of years to regain her health and self-esteem, and a few more to complete the coursework at BCC necessary to transfer to UC Berkeley, after dropping out two or three times. “It’s hard to talk about,” she confesses. “I didn’t really have a good life… that’s probably the best way to put it.” What is easy for Herbert-Ramirez to talk about nearly a
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SOCIAL IN RESEARCH SOCIAL WELFARE WELFARE AT AT BERKELEY BERKELEY DEVELOPMENTS STUDENT PROFILE
decade later (and equally thrilling to listen to) is her exciting transition to UCB, and her subsequent academic interests. “I took a health psychology class as part of the Transfer Edge program, and I just remember sitting in the Life Sciences building in one of those old classrooms. It had this amazing historical feel and I thought, ‘what crazy-smart people have sat in this seat before me?’ A lot of transfer students described this ‘not-fitting-in’ feeling, but I felt the opposite. I felt like for the first time, I really fit in somewhere. While Herbert-Ramirez was enjoying the feeling of fitting in, she stood out to others, particularly to Professor Jill Berrick. “Begonia participated in SW 110 last year where she quickly stood out among a group of 50 students as one of the strongest. She was mild-mannered in my class and relatively quiet, but when she engaged in the discussion at hand the other students paid close attention. Her critical analysis of the issues was so very sophisticated, and her understanding of the complexity of social problems (and the path to their amelioration) was nuanced.”
