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Senior Spotlight: The Magnolia Scholar of Southwest Guilford
Run, Monica, run.
She did.
Monica Hernandez served as the captain of the girls’ cross-country team at Southwest Guilford High this year, and she found what she was looking for -- a sense of community where everyone supported one another and made memories together.
Monica made a lot of memory moments this year. One happened June 8.
She graduated from Southwest Guilford, ranked 20th in a class of 366 seniors. This fall, she’ll start at her dream school – Wake Forest University – and to defray the costs, she earned a scholarship for gifted seniors who are first-generation college students.
Monica is that. She’s also a service-learning ambassador, a volleyball player, a track runner and the editor-in-chief of the Southwest Guilford yearbook, Horizons. And now, she’s a Magnolia Scholar at Wake Forest.
“To this day,” she says, “it hasn’t hit me yet. But there are moments where I’ll go, ‘Wow, I’ll actually be at Wake Forest for the next four years.’”
Monica has had many Wow moments over the past year.
It began last summer with her trip to Mexico, her parents’ homeland.
Finding Her Identity
To understand the impact of that trip, you have to start in Thomasville. That’s where Monica was born. Growing up, she didn’t want to stand out, speak Spanish or draw attention to how different she was than everyone else.
Even when she moved to High Point as a third-grader, she just wanted to fit in. For years, that never changed.
“Growing up, I remember not feeling completely comfortable with my identity,” she wrote in her college essay. “Mainly I felt torn between two worlds, never quite sure of which one I could truly call mine.”
Then came last summer.
She spent nine days in Mexico, met her extended family for the first time and began to realize the pride her parents felt for their homeland. She felt that pride, too. She no longer wanted to hide her Mexican roots. She wanted to embrace it and not be invisible any more.
“I have an American identity and a Mexican identity, and I know the worth of both,” she says. “I realized what my parents went through, and I now value my Mexican identity. It makes me who I am. It’s something I can be proud of, and that’s a beautiful thing.
“When I was in Mexico, I got to appreciate the language, the food, the architecture, the beautiful churches, just everything.”
And what has that done?
“It makes me feel like I can take on whatever that comes at me,” she says. “Something I deal with a lot is anxiety. But after coming back, I felt so relieved being there in Mexico. Part of who I was was missing. I found it.”
She wrote about her personal discovery in her college essay. She ended it this way:
“This whole experience led to personal growth that taught me the importance of where people come from,” she wrote. “I have become eager to share with others my beloved Mexican culture as well as learn from others about theirs and being more culturally aware.
“There is much to be taught and being that we are in the melting pot that is the United States, it only seems fitting.”
Running’s Life-long Lessons
German Hernandez, Monica’s dad, came to the United States 24 years ago. He brought along his wife, Margarita Baez, and their one-year-old son, Abraham.
Both German and Margarita never finished high school. German paints houses, Margarita cleans houses and Abraham is a biology major at USC-Upstate, and this summer, he is working this summer as a medical scribe in Spartanburg, S.C.
Monica’s parents were always a big influence on her. So was her brother. That’s how she got into running.
Abraham ran cross-country at High Point’s Westchester Country Day School. He became the state runner-up in his high school division and earned an athletic scholarship to attend USC-Upstate.
Monica always looked up to her brother, and she saw what running did for him. So, she thought running could do the same thing for her.
She wasn’t wrong.
“That started shaping me,” she says. “I saw my brother had to be more responsible, and I became pretty dedicated to it, too. It taught me the value of hard work and responsibility and made me mentally tougher.
“I thought, ‘OK, if I can run a mile in 6:50, and do four of them back to back, then I can do a project or write a paper.’ I knew I could take that idea throughout life.”
A Demon Deacon Moment
Monica saw the Wake Forest campus for the first time when she was 13. Right then, she knew. Wake Forest was her school. That feeling never waned.
Last fall, Monica participated in Pathways to Wake Forest, a program for high school juniors and seniors from historically underrepresented populations at the university. That program convinced her even more that Wake was her place.
“It felt like home, a place where I was meant to be,” she says. “But knowing how good a school it was, I thought, ‘I hope so.’”
Her hope grew stronger in late March when she received her acceptance later.
Two weeks later, her dream came true while sitting in a meeting at Wake’s Reynolda Hall sitting with her dad and talking to a counselor about her financial aid package.
Then, the financial aid counselor informed her of something she’ll always remember. She doesn’t remember the words he said. But she remembers how she felt.
She heard she had been selected as a Magnolia Scholar. She sat dumbfounded, unable to speak. She listened as the counselor and her dad went back and forth on the total cost of college. With the Magnolia Scholarship, she and her dad knew Wake Forest could be her collegiate home.
The meeting lasted 10 minutes. As they walked out of Reynolda Hall, her dad turned to her and asked, “Are you happy?”
“Yeah,” Monica responded, still in shock over what she just heard.
Since she was 13, Monica had hoped to attend Wake Forest. All those years came down to a 10-minute meeting.
“We’ll have to call mom,” her dad said.
He phoned.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“It was good,” he told her. “We’ll have to buy a lot more gold and black and cheer for the Demon Deacons.”
A Dream Realized
Monica doesn’t know what she’ll major in at Wake Forest. But she knows what she takes with her – her parents’ support, her love for running and the advice she always heard from her mom, “You can do anything you want to do.”
Ask Monica about that, and she tears up.
“She’s very caring and always encouraging,” she says. “She always wanted to make sure that I knew what I was capable of.”
And Monica knows she’s capable of going to Wake.
“My acceptance to Wake Forest was the best thing I could ask for,” she says. “Not only is it my dream school, but after being in that meeting, I no longer felt like a number. I’m going to a place that valued me and saw my potential. That was something I’ll always be grateful for.”