This past spring, the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) Annual Conference punctuated the doldrums of my graduate life. Conferences are great: there is food, as well as opportunities to meet new people and make new connections. But AAHHE was unlike any conference I had attended before. The pre-conference workshops proved to be the push I needed to apply for grant applications. The collegial atmosphere reinforced my desire to achieve tenure. The mentorship, guidance and critique of my work sharpened my scholarship. Taken together, I am a better scholar and caring person because of AAHHE. 

Before the conference, I was preparing for qualifying exams for the anthropology Ph.D. program at UC-Berkeley. “Everybody has to go through it,” they told me, but they didn’t tell me that it would feel like your head was caught in a vise. But to my good fortune, the communidad at AAHHE came right in the nick of time. I went to AAHHE as a Graduate Fellow but left a part of a broader community. Dr. Olivas and the board welcomed me into the fold and introduced me to a wider network of like-minded people who care for the future of education. The pre-conference workshops provided valuable information. Convincing a sponsor that you’re the best candidate for a grant is difficult, but the strategies and tactics that I learned in the pre-conference workshops virtually assure that I will be successful in applying for grants. 

Graduate school is hard. AAHHE did not change that, but it made it worth doing. I will get my Ph.D. in anthropology and archaeology, but thanks to the conference, I know that’s just the beginning and not the end. In addition to skills and training, I was able to meet some true colleagues and inspiring people. My fellow cohorts, including the Faculty Fellows, made my time at AAHHE very memorable. I learned a lot from them and hope they learned from me. You’ll never know how you impact people at the beginning, but eventually, the fruits of such labor come to bear incredible opportunities. Ultimately, at AAHHE I learned that defending scholarship is much like defending your roots. Plant down. Dig deep. And appeal to broader ideals. For better or for worse, it seems that Latinos are under attack. Now more than ever a sense of place rooted firmly in the ground is needed. AAHHE provided a glimpse of what that may look like, and I strive to further the ideals that AAHHE stands for. •