Cohort Stories: Meet Albert
vol. 3, no. 11 — guest post by Albert Rivera
My name is Albert Rivera. You can call me Albert though. To understand why I truly enjoy and find technology interesting, I need to start at the beginning of where I’m from. I come from a small city called Lawrence. It’s a little bubble in Massachusetts filled with culture. Currently, the population is mainly made up of Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, but the demographic is consistently changing. My family was poor but we never were in need of anything. I was raised in a household that believed in God. My mother made sure that we had just values and that we did our best. I thank God for all the experiences I have had in my life and that he allowed that from a young age I got to play video games. Some of my earliest memories have video games in them.
I love the ability that technology had, kind of like books. It could take me to other worlds and adventures that I could play out and be a part of and I thought that was incredible.
As I got older and as technology advanced I saw everything that we could do with it, and I wanted to understand how it worked. So I now attend Framingham State University studying computer science for my bachelor’s.
If you ask me, I don’t really know what challenges I had to overcome to get here. I grew up without a father. I struggled with depression, but I didn’t really consider those challenges. Maybe some of you reading this would consider those challenges, but to me it was just the hand I was dealt in this life. I played my hand and I am here now: about to graduate college, making history for my family, creating a legacy that my family can be proud of. My family is my largest motivator. And I don’t just mean my immediate family, but I also mean the people who have entered my life and impacted me in some way or form. Those people I also consider my family and they have pushed me throughout my entire life and helped me to be the person that I am today.
The future is unsure but I do know one thing… That one thing is that I will keep moving forward and paving a path for the rest of my family and showing them that we did it.
Hack.Diversity is something I came to find out in my previous semester fall of 2018. I went to a career fair looking for possible internships and there I met Angela Liu who explained to me what Hack.Diversity was and the possibilities that come with this opportunity. At first I was mainly looking for an internship, but then I decided to apply for this program because it sounded awesome. Being able to meet multiple different people from different upbringings that all love technology just as much as I do just sounds like a fantastic experience. I hope to make this experience the best that I can for myself and those that I meet. This is my story, thank you for reading.
