Isabella Alfaro, nursing major
“I think it saved me a lot of money because a lot of my professors are also professors at colleges like Long Beach. So it’s the same education but for a lower price. It has allowed me to take the money that I would be spending on my general eds and tape put it towards my actual major.”
Khamahi Kenny, computer science major
“I feel like it helped me not be so simple-minded in terms of a goal, because I used to only just use what I knew before my high school experience. After a couple of semesters, I am realizing there are more ways to pursue your goal, and it’s okay to take longer than most people.”
Rudolfo Pina, mathematics major
“I feel the purpose of community college is to transmit knowledge and to find truth. Its what I need and what I want. I am very happy and pleased. I have siblings who graduated from a four year university, I’ve been told that they’re bigger and larger. When I transfer I will be at the right place and be fully prepared because of community.”
Pamela Sztyblewsky • Aug 17, 2025 at 10:29 am
Well, for me this isn’t the “beginning” of anything it’s more like an “end of life necessity.” I started out great, went to first Wittmann Elementary in the G.A.T.E. program, then to Whitney High school, graduated highest honours in the class of 1990, then went “straight” to San Francisco State and then to Yale for my Master’s, then to UCHastings College of Law for my law degree. All of this is not enough to even land me an entry-level job nowadays, all of this was “a quarter of a century ago,” so after being back “home” in the house I grew up in, in Artesia, which my father bought in 1971 and my mother paid off by the 1990s sometime, so by now it’s mortgage-free and “just property taxes and the utility bills” which my brother barely scrapes by out of his SSI, I have no choice but to go back to school for something, anything that makes me employable “nowadays.” I can’t get a job with my existing degrees because they were all “too long ago” making me “too old.” So I’ve finally deduced that some kind of certificate in “Computer Aided Drafting and Design” might supplement my Secondary Mathematics teaching licence or at the very least that my master’s was in Environmental Engineering “way back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth,” as people put it when they see the last century on the date. I keep my dates of education on everything because I’m proud that i’ve managed to live over half a century on this Earth the way things have been going the last 20 or 30 years, for God’s sake. It’s a miracle I’m still alive after all the times I’ve wound up on the streets or living in Squats or womens’ shelters, depending on where I was, after being unable to get the job I went there for or losing it for something I didn’t even do, or whatever. When you’re over-50 you have a ton of stories like that.
So anyway I’m finally enrolled as “Computer Aided Drafting and Design” and find out that all the classes I need for it, are offered at exactly the same time of night, every other semester or so. I can’t be in two places at the same time (between the “Archictecure” department and the “Engineering Technology” department schedling the things needed for the majors, all at 7pm-10pm on the exact same days of the week.) And furthermore, and this may be more of a comment on Cerritos College per se than the scheduling, because classes get out at 10pm that’s after the last bus passes by campus going anywhere near my house (that would be the 8:19 Metro #128) I am going to have to walk home through some pretty dodgy areas after 10pm at night, and I’m petite little old frail elderly and FEMALE. I’m thinking that out Alondra through the “one-ways” is slightly better than out 166th through the “War Zone”. I’m a target, and I don’t know why, so I guess I’ll stay off of 166th after dark even though when I manage to ride my bike to campus (I’ve had one Stroke already, so riding my bike again is like “stroke therapy” in a way) I do come out 166th because at least in the daytime there’s the bright green bike lane there. Of course it’s there for a reason. It was like “death row” without it. Same goes for that stretch of Norwalk Bl. between basically 195th St. and Artesia Bl. That stretch is still dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists and that’s the sidewalk, let alone the bright green painted bike lane.
My complaint here is that on the Cerritos College “app” under “transportation” all they have is the bus schedules, period. On a REAL university’s app, Cal State Long Beach’s Beach Go app, they have a carpool database option. You can put in your details and the details of when you need to be on campus and it tries to match you up with people who live near you. And it lists everyone’s time they need to be on-campus so you can contact people you could feasibly carpool with. I asked on Cerritos College’s “app” about carpooling and the only responses were people telling me to get a bloody Uber or Lyft. As if that’s not way too much each way or even one-way for someone with no job, no income except the AB540 fee waiver and Grocery Vouchers from Falcon’s Nest. If I could afford Uber or Lyft, people, I’m a Math teacher, I can do the MATHS of the matter. There’s no student discount (or senior discount, for that matter) for me on Uber or Lyft, it’s just getting more and more expensive just to go across Norwalk to Artesia, a whole whopping 3 miles. I don’t have $15 or more to be driven home safely the mere 3 miles. So I guess I have to prepare to walk this semester, and hope I survive. Oh, one time back in the 90’s I did take Medical Biling at Norwalk-La Mirada Adult School there on Pioneer and Alondra, and that was in the evening, and I walked home back then, at least for a little while, and I survived that. This is among the reasons why I’m proud of my age – I’m proud of the things I’ve SURVIVED that I shouldn’t have to have gone through at all, given my upbringing and education. Every time over the past 30 years that I’ve had to come back “home” to this area, this job-desert, it’s gotten worse and worse in terms of job opportunities. In fact I’m on “the list” for Senior housing in every place in San Francisco that will let me apply for it with $0 income (so far there have been exactly THREE) so here I wait. At least up there I stand a chance of going back to my job at UCSF. I’ve never been able to get a job in this part of this state, in my over-50 years of living on Earth; I’ve always had to leave this area. They say “it takes 10 years to become an overnight success” around here, and that’s not just in the entertainment industry. It’s this whole state.
Frankly I’m only even dealing with Cerritos College because it’s the only one I can walk to at all at this point. Cerritos Dial-a-Ride has some sort of thing going with Cypress College but until I figure out what it is, I don’t know if their schedule would accommodate me over there either. Cerritos Dial-a-Ride tends to be only available during daytime business hours. Late-night classes – you’re stuck walking 5 miles. Although…from my house over to Cypress isn’t going through any dodgy neighbourhoods that I’m aware of.