Irving Goes to College: Featuring Bessy Segovia
Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of staying in touch with many former students who have reconnected with me on social media as adults and interact with me on a regular basis.
I had the chance to catch up with my former middle school student Bessy Segovia who talked to me about her college journey.
Pulido: How has Irving ISD contributed to your college journey?
Bessy: I was very fortunate to go to Irving ISD for Pre-K through senior year. Many of the teachers I met along the way have been a huge inspiration and a source of mentorship for my career path. Irving ISD helped fund my collegiate education by granting me a scholarship through the Irving Schools Foundation.
As a student taking AP and extracurricular programs, I was able to save myself the cost of taking some of the basic college courses and advance through college a little more quickly than some of my peers. In a nutshell, Irving ISD was the incubator to the type of student I was at a collegiate level.
Pulido: What motivated you to pursue higher education?
Bessy: As a first generation college student, I wanted to pursue higher education to make my parents proud. They sacrificed everything they knew to come to the unknown so I could have a better education, and it paid off.
My father had very little education (only attended elementary school), and my mother earned her high school diploma.
They would always say to me, “Echale ganas la vida te recompesara,” which translates to “Give it your all and life will compensate you.”
I knew that I wanted to go as far as I could to continue seeing them happy, and that’s still my goal.
Pulido: Any specific college challenges that you wish could have been addressed in middle school or high school?
Bessy: A challenge I came across early was picking a major. I originally started on a nursing path and went to Texas Tech for it, but I knew deep down something wasn’t right.
I was making good grades, but I wasn’t excited to absorb what I was learning and the fear of doing that everyday was creeping in. Instead, I would forward to going to work. I was an off-campus coordinator for an organization at Tech, and we planned events and created marketing materials for those events.
When COVID-19 hit, I moved back to Irving and said to myself, “This is a sign.” I transferred to UTA and did a double major in advertising and public relations and excelled so much through it. In short, follow your passions when deciding your major — not the money!
If you love sports and love to write, you can pursue a journalism or comms major. Your career option could be being a copywriter for a local sports team or a sports journalist for a news outlet, or perhaps a PR agency who works with major teams.
Pia Pulido crafts a compelling story with a singular voice and manages the narrative development life cycle from concept to final deliverable. An award-winning educator for Gifted and Talented (GT) students, Pia writes, publishes, and sells books for emerging readers. She is also the founder of Texapinay, a multiculturally inclusive space for the historically underrepresented.
