DVC Alumni: Where Every Story Inspires the Next!

From Homeschool to DVC: Embracing New Horizons with Aaron Shey

September 10, 2024 • Charley • Season 1 • Episode 3

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What does it mean to balance East Coast conservative values with Bay Area liberalism? Our latest episode features Aaron Shey, a dynamic student from Diablo Valley College (DVC), who navigates this complex landscape through his unique educational journey. From being homeschooled in Walnut Creek to overcoming college rejections, Aaron's story is an inspiring tapestry of resilience and adaptability. He compares his initial experiences at DVC to driving a manual car—challenging but ultimately empowering.

Aaron's passion for community-building shines through as we discuss the creation of the Crochet Club at DVC, where he has served as president. This club became a sanctuary for students post-pandemic, offering meaningful connections over task-oriented interactions. Aaron shares his motivations for starting the club and his ambitious plans to transfer to UC Berkeley, aiming to recreate this supportive environment in a new academic setting.

As we celebrate DVC's 75th anniversary, Aaron reflects on the often-overlooked potential of community college alumni networks. We delve into the importance of authentic connections through student clubs and Aaron’s vision for fostering genuine community spirit. Tune in for a motivational message that underscores the significance of building lasting relationships in higher education and beyond.

Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Your feedback helps us bring you more inspiring stories from the DVC community.

Stay connected with us on social media for updates, behind-the-scenes content, and upcoming episodes. Have a story to share or a topic you’d like us to cover? Reach out—we’d love to hear from you!

Until next time, keep pushing boundaries, embracing connections, and navigating your own path to success.

DVC Alumni: Where every story inspires the next.

Charley:

All right and we are live. So introduce yourself, tell us who you are and what are you doing here at DVC.

Aaron:

So hi everybody. My name is Aaron She and I've been at this school for five semesters now. In my time here I've been president of the Crochet Club. I've been a part of at least a dozen clubs. In my final semester, I am hoping for a position as commissioner of parliamentary procedure in our club council.

Charley:

Okay, so where do you originally hail from?

Aaron:

So both of my parents come from Taiwan, but I was born right here, actually in Walnut Creek. I believe my birth certificate does say Concord, so I'm not quite sure how that happened. But I was born and bred right here in the East Bay. So where did you go to high school at? But I was born and bred right here in the East Bay, so where did you go to high school at? I was homeschooling. That always surprises people because I am pretty outgoing and I do think I put a lot of work into really putting myself out there and meeting a lot of new people, because in my high school where I was really just at home, learning virtually.

Charley:

It was difficult to get to know people, okay, and so you were raised in Walnut Creek and then you've basically been homeschooled the entire time. Did you have like a lot of activities or other kids you played with or other things that you were doing at home, or were you just kind of like in your own cocoon?

Aaron:

Yeah, cocoon would be an interesting way to put it, because I was at home a lot and I took my online classes from a provider on the east coast. Oh so I was part of a very interesting east coast culture, cocoon of all these kids with really big families like 14, 15 kids. They're all very conservative, they're all very christian in their values and that was such an interesting bubble to be part of, to be. You know, hearing about creationism and biology class and then reading the san francisco chronicle right after, so it was really, really interesting actually.

Aaron:

So I wouldn't say cocoon. I guess it could be a cocoon, but with very, very interesting conflicting views okay, um.

Charley:

So how did you, during that time period, how did you kind of reconcile that and uh, because obviously there's going to be. You know, if you're looking at a very conservative culture of one sort and then you're reading the San Francisco Chronicle, you know to say that's not is probably an understatement. And how did you kind of navigate that?

Aaron:

That's a great question. I really think that brings into my heritage, because when when my mom moved here, she moved to boston so she was smack in the middle of that old of like the whole um sorry, first 13 colonies like the whole east coast.

Aaron:

My dad lived in texas, oh my goodness, and as he told me, in texas you see oil rigs and dead armadillos in texas.

Aaron:

So he was surprisingly very I would say knowledgeable about kind of that what you would call flyover country, I guess, where it's really just ranches and oil and everything while my mom was very cosmopolitan. So I think that seeing my parents relationship helped me reconcile the fact that I live in the bay and I see what happens in San Francisco. I see it as the beautiful city it is that I just love visiting and it's like 20 minutes away. But at the same time I did understand that, like I've never been to Texas, I thought Texas was not a great place to live because it's so hot and all that. But my dad lives there and he told me he loved it there too.

Aaron:

So what really helped me reconcile these two things was that I early on realized that there's a big difference between living there, living somewhere, knowing the nuances that come out of it, as opposed to living 300 miles away and seeing it through the lens of the television and making up your views that way. So that really helped me reconcile those two things. Like creationism or eschatological right, boston is the best, san Francisco is the best. I was exposed to those a lot and it was very interesting.

Charley:

Yeah, I actually spent a lot of time in Austin and San Antonio for work and I have relatives out there and love Austin, love San Antonio. It's just this. They're such awesome places but they're not California, you know. So it's. They're wonderful places to be In Boston I have yet to visit, but I would love to have you been out to those places.

Aaron:

No, I've actually only been out to the Midwest, which is where my grandparents ended up staying. So I will say about the Midwest is they love their roads? Their roads are really, really wide. I've never seen that before.

Charley:

Where in the Midwest are they? Wisconsin? Oh, okay, cheese country.

Aaron:

Oh yeah, you know Okay.

Charley:

And so you went from being homeschooled to coming here to DVC. I mean, was there an intermediary step or you just went from being homeschooled to DVC?

Aaron:

Yeah, I went from being homeschooled to applying to colleges, but I was rejected by every single college. I applied to, even UC Riverside, so I was more than a little bit sad and melancholic about this, so that's kind of what led me to DVC sad and melancholic about this, so that's kind of what led me to DVC.

Charley:

Okay, so this was like your kind of your and and how do you feel about this being like your? I don't know you'd call it your fallback school, because for some people, this is this, is that for them, this is like I don't know where else to go yeah, I don't know if you ever have you ever been to like a racetrack and driven a manual car?

Aaron:

like you know, when you launch the car you feel the car like shaking, the whole thing's rattling. You feel very dangerous in that instant, but you know you just have to keep pushing down the gas because you got to keep that momentum going. That was very much like that for me coming to DVC. When I got here. It was like I was in the middle of all this action and remember I knew like the Christian conservative schools, I knew being able to wake up whenever I wanted and always submitting things online and talking to people through zoom.

Aaron:

I landed here and they were just all these, just so much diversity here, diversity of opinions, diversity of people. I've never seen so many different people in one place. So it was a huge, huge culture shock for me, especially because I came out of here taking really difficult classes and went straight into taking even harder ones, like five unit classes. So it was a really, really rocky start. All through that I was telling myself I have to keep my foot on the gas. I got to keep it going. I can't just be here for eight years and just be living off my parents for the rest of my life. It's very possible to not succeed, as I just saw from all those rejection letters coming in the mailbox. One day.

Charley:

So, yeah, I can see where it would have been and going from basically having living online to and there's. I think the last I heard there was a DVC had enrolled. I think this is a figure from last year and someone's going to correct me on it, I'm sure, when this posts. But there was like 18,000 students enrolled and not all of them come to campus but a lot do I mean. You look at how full the parking lot is. There's a lot of students and we range between 18,000 and 22,000 students a semester. So this is a big school. 18 and 22,000 students a semester, so it's, it's, this is a big school.

Charley:

So going from zero to a million miles an hour was probably quite a bit. Oh yeah. So how did you deal with that transition? Did you just like bury your head in the books, or did you get involved with other activities? Or how did you make that transition from like just pedal to the metal to now you're involved in 148 clubs or whatever the heck it is right yeah, honestly, I would love to say there was some magic trick that just got me like boom, like I got it together.

Aaron:

It was just a lot of elbow grease, like it was a lot of hard work. I really put it upon myself to be. I learned about clubs. I was like, okay, I don't know anybody here. I have no connections. All people here seem to know each other from high school. So I knew I would start a club and I would work really hard to promote and in the beginning it really was just me. So it was all that course load and then running a club all on my own and we were fresh out of COVID.

Aaron:

So the whole you know the rules, everything about the clubs, any guidance there were for clubs, was really, really scattered. So I would I guess I'll kind of say, yeah, the magic trick was starting a club. But it's not just you just press the button to fill out the club form and you're good. I really had to like go out there and just talk to people, just be talking going to them, be like, hey, check out my shirt, isn't it cool? You want to win the crochet club. It was a lot of work and it was really scary because I had almost never talked to like a peer face to face before. I just had to go to them and just say, hey, what's up, join the club. That was really difficult, but I think it worked out really well for me in the long run so you think that that it sounds like you.

Charley:

You you're grateful for that hard work that came with starting a club, I mean Crochet Club. That's what. When I was told that you were the president and I was, we have a crochet club, you know, I mean we have a lot of clubs here on campus, so it's like I'm not surprised that I wasn't aware of it, but I was just. I had never heard of such a thing, but I think it's interesting and so you started it, as this is something you were interested in, or this is like a hobby, or how did you get involved with crochet?

Aaron:

So of course, over the pandemic. I was just at home, so we did have a little bit of crochet supplies left for my sister when she left for school. So I did kind of do that a little bit. But I decided to start the crochet club mostly because that was the club I didn't see a lot of like. What I've seen throughout student life is that we start clubs for, like you said, trailblazers. Right, we want to, we want to be the best in the brands. We're out here to change the world. We're going to be the business club, you know the economics club. We're going to be all these clubs for charity, for goodness, amazing clubs overall.

Aaron:

But there wasn't a club where you can just go somewhere and just like let's, let's just kick back and let's just take a breath kind of rest for a little bit. And I saw I wanted that because my schedule was so busy. I did not want to be going to another one hour club and just be trying to change the world again after trying to change my gpa. So partly it was, yeah, it was a hobby, but also I did want to bring more people together because I get also like my classmates. They had a similar complaint. They were like, yeah, the pandemic just ended and we're struggling to find our footing too. What if we just have a club just for people to hang around and learning crochet would be a cool benefit. But we really just wanted to bring like-minded people who are a little bit more laid back, a little bit a little bit less type a. They just kind of hang around and, you know, goof off yeah, it actually it.

Charley:

It, um, I'm thinking it's almost like it was a uh, I I mean first, first of all, I watched my grandson go through covid with being online and all the I. I mean that was just. You know, my daughter's a teacher and she was trying to do her classes online and it was just, you know, it was a tough haul, that's for sure. And it sounds like it was almost like you picked this because it was something that, you know, you kind of liked, but it was more because it was almost like a knee-jerk reaction to not being able to be with people for so long. Is that kind of like the feel that you got? And it sounds like other people were excited about that too.

Aaron:

Yes, definitely. I think that hits the nail on the head, that statement. It was absolutely because I did want to meet more people and I didn't want to just have those kind of like shallow connections, Like let's get together and work together and change the world.

Charley:

And once we're done with that, like sound on us. See you later. So how?

Aaron:

long has that, the crochet club, been going? We've been going for the past four semesters. I'm pretty sure okay, okay.

Charley:

And how many members do you have? Gosh it really changes.

Aaron:

So right now our core officer group is like five people. Okay, I love my five officers. They are life-changing for me, but for general members we kind of go between, like we had like 30 40 at some point, and then the spring will maybe have like five or six, so it really changes yeah, it's springtime, when the weather gets good.

Charley:

Nobody wants to. You know they all want to be outside, so, um, so so you've started this club, which, which I think is amazing in that you, you picked an area where you got a chance to kind of like really, um, uh, solve a need that you had and that other people had coming out of COVID, which I think was brilliant. Um, you know cause? Cause again it was. It was that we don't get to talk to anybody face to face, and especially if you were doing school that way, that had to have been tough. So now you're at this point, you're looking at, at some point you're going to matriculate out of DVC, I imagine. What's the next step for you? What does this year look like, this semester look like, and then what looks like beyond that? What do you think is going to the future holds for you?

Aaron:

Yeah, great question. I am accepted into UC Berkeley for the spring semester.

Charley:

Nice okay.

Aaron:

Really looking forward to that, except for the fact that almost every day I do get a crime alert on my UC Berkeley email. So it's a little bit interesting. The campus is beautiful though for this semester.

Aaron:

I really just want to really focus on my club for just that last semester. I want to see can I find a another leader, because we do have a new president now. I am the council representative now. I demoted myself like sitting right out of starship troopers, but I want to find new leadership. I I've been a little laid back recently, just kind of coasting all my successes from previous semesters. I do want to see can I find a new leader? And I want to make sure this club's in good hands. Maybe I'll come back a year from now and see they're doing great. I would love to see that. And at berkeley you already know what I'm going to say I'm going to start the crochet club there too, because they don't have one. So that one I know I'm doing that for sure.

Charley:

Well, and I think that would be brilliant Because, again, it's not something that they have there currently. I imagine I could be wrong, but it sounds like you've already looked at that, but it's certainly something that Berkeley would be up for.

Aaron:

So what are you looking at? As far as a major goes, at least at this point, it's probably going to change twice before you graduate from cal. But let's imagine that today. What's what's your major going in? Yeah, so I was admitted as a bachelor of arts in cognitive science. So I'm really looking forward to that, because when I was growing up my parents really pushed me to study like biology or the natural sciences, so I had a really strong background in that. But as I got older I found myself going more and more towards computer science.

Aaron:

So, cognitive science kind of marries those two subjects together. I think it's a super interesting topic too, and I'll probably get a minor in chemistry because why not I'm pretty good at it. I like to think it won't hurt my GPA too bad. And more awards after my name that would be awesome.

Charley:

So down the road, I mean, it sounds like you have at least a vision for what the next little bit looks like, and you also, it sounds like you're wise enough to know that. You know like the path we often choose is not the path we end up on further down the road. So you've let's say you've graduated from cal. What looks like? What does it look like beyond that? I mean, do you have a vision beyond that or you're just gonna wait and see what that looks like?

Aaron:

honestly, I'll just have to say I'm going to wait and see. Okay, I mean, if you follow the news, you'll see computer science grads are being laid off in droves. So I try not to think about how I'm going to be unemployed in the future. So I'll I'll try to wait till things look a little rosier and I'll start thinking about what my next step would be. But right now I want to get it. I want to get a diploma. I think that'll be.

Charley:

That'll be the goal yeah, and, and especially if you get something in a hard science like that, it'll probably work out well for you. So let's imagine for a moment you're talking to a younger version of you. What piece of wisdom or guidance would you offer a younger version?

Aaron:

Have you watched Finding Nemo?

Charley:

Yes.

Aaron:

I would tell myself to just keep swimming that. I think that really sums up what I've done here, because it is easy to be discouraged, especially seeing like things I work on fall apart or things not go the way I want to. But I think with the privilege of having spent a lot of time here, I've been able to see clubs kind of rocket to predominance and then just kind of fade away next semester and I feel like I used to view that as a failure. How come they couldn't keep their club going. But I see that's just kind of how projects go. They can grow really, really fast. They can make these huge events like we had the social justice club. They put on this huge event absolutely massive. They spent like five thousand dollars. They got a dj out here in the in the student comments. It was just this huge event absolutely for the books. And today we don't even have a social justice club.

Charley:

They're dormant now really yeah I'm surprised right, okay.

Aaron:

So I really tell myself, even if you watch something you built kind of crumble away that's okay you're gonna take your skills and work on something even better, so don't let yourself get held back by whatever it is you're thinking about. Just keep keep swimming. Just keep swimming, okay.

Charley:

I think it's good advice. So now let's imagine for a moment it's not a younger you, but it's an older version of you. What would you tell the older version of yourself? That's something that might to look forward to down the road, or something like that. I know it's a weird question, but it's just. I always think about that. It's like what would you if you could talk to yourself in 20 years? What would you tell yourself, or what would you expect that person to tell you?

Aaron:

that's a great question. I've actually never thought about the. I mean, like right now I would be like can you drive a manual? Because I want to learn to drive a manual, okay Gosh. But like I would probably ask like 40-year-old Aaron, are you still excited to wake up every day?

Aaron:

Because I've heard I've read like self-help books and they do say that as you get older you do kind of level out, you're not so excited by anything that excites you and you're not so frustrated frustrated by what it is that angers you. But I do want to know, like, am I going to keep having that drive? Like I know that I got into computer science or cognitive science because I, I love, I love the field. I even to this day I can't explain why I just I love writing code. It's simple as that. And I do want to know, like 40 years from now, I spent the past 20 years doing that as my bread and butter, to keep myself, you know, sheltered. And then am I still going to love it? I would really want to know the answer to that question.

Charley:

That is a. That's a good answer. Um, I can tell you from my perspective that, because I'm more like the mid-60s version of you, is that I do this job that I have now. I love this job and I love getting up and I get excited. And I've had a couple of jobs in my life not always, but a couple of jobs in my life where I can't sleep Monday morning because I'm so excited to get in. And I've even had jobs where I get up. I would be up at three in the morning. I would go to the office, which was, you know, down the street from me, and I'd be down there setting my week up, just just thrilled to have the week, and that's a rare thing and this, this job, has become. That for me, is that, is that very love, what you do, you know. So, yeah, I think that's a. That's a good vision to have. It's just like am I still getting up in the morning? Am I still just absolutely passionate about what I do?

Charley:

Um, is there anything else you want to talk about? Or, or, uh, a thought or cause? It sounds like you you had a very specific uh, um, tack for developing a club and you know what let's talk about that, cause I'm very interested in that. You had a very specific tack for developing a club, and you know what let's talk about that because I'm very interested in that. Excuse me, so a lot of people don't have the nerve to. You know, see it basically pull a Kaiser, which is find a need and fill, fill it. So there's, uh, henry j kaiser used to have a cement company around here, a concrete company, and on the side of the trucks it said find a need and fill it. And, um you, you basically built a club so that you could find people and connect with them. And and and how did you? I mean, what were the nuts and bolts of, like how you went about that?

Aaron:

That's a great question. So sorry, give me a moment, I'm trying to think so is it really? Again, that was a great question because in the club council I would guess, speaking as somebody who represented my club to them, we do we are searching for kind of a balance because it's well known around this school, like word of mouth, that starting a club is amazing for your resume. I mean, just look at me, I was rejected by every UC and here I am one club later inside of Berkeley. So it's very well known that that's a really attractive leadership like line item to have on your resume.

Aaron:

But at the same time we struggle with making sure that people who start their clubs aren't doing it just for their resume. I mean everybody says I mean we always go to the council, we watch people slide where they're. Like, we want to build community, Everybody wants to build community. 77 clubs out here want to build community and yeah, there's like 17 000 students here too. So that works great. But it's hard to ask people what community do you want to build? Like, we have three computer science clubs, we have five business clubs, we have so many, just so many clubs for multiple clubs in fact, for every discipline you can imagine except crochet.

Charley:

Well, we have a lot of, I'll take it.

Aaron:

I'll take it, thank you, thank you. Yeah, I guess I would say that I went to it. I went into it trying to be genuine, like, okay, I did attend a lot of clubs where it was really just everybody shows up, you watch a slideshow and then we say bye-bye, grab some free snacks and go home, which isn't bad, that is pretty fun to watch what other students come up with. But I feel like sometimes the clubs weren't so much for community as they claim, but more so for the officers to kind of get their own leadership roles, while kind of ignoring what can we do to encourage other people to make friendships? So sort of nuts and bolts, I guess would just be. It was mostly my mindset. I know it sounds, you know, contrived, but I wanted, I really wanted to build a community. I couldn't care how big it was or anything.

Charley:

Well, it sounded like you're. I mean, and that's one of the things that we're trying to do here with the Alumni Association is not just I'm not always in favor of the term community I like connection, and the reason is, for me it's a little more visceral, you know, because people say community all the time. What does that mean? You know, kind of like, your thing is like. What does that mean? I like connection, and I think of it like building a tribe. You know, a tribe is, for me, is the thing that, cause that goes back to quite some time and with the alumni association we're trying to create an atmosphere of connection to where, you know, 10 years from now, somebody calls you up and says, hey, I'm here, I'm new at DVC, I want to start a club. What do I do? And you can walk them through the nuts and bolts hey, this is, you know, give them your guidance for it.

Charley:

Cause it took, you know, I I gotta say I'm I'm impressed. You had a lot of nerve to go out there and create a club, and I mean that in a good way, cause it does take a lot of courage. It's easier to just kind of fall in with the rest of the herd herd, you found a club. You built one. It, yeah, it looks good on your resume, but you build it with authenticity, which I think is a I think is a a rare gift. So thank you, yeah, so so is there anything else you'd like to share or any other thoughts that you have about um being here dvc and what it's going to look like?

Aaron:

Yeah, you know, something just occurred to me and I forgot at the moment I opened my mouth. So I'm sure it'll come back to me, but I guess one thing I really want to stress is that being at DVC taught me the most about teamwork. It was that. I mean, I'm here today. I've been the face of the crochet club, I've always been promoting it, but it is impossible to run a club on my own. I mean, it was my, my simply amazing officer board. Can I give a shout out?

Aaron:

absolutely, absolutely please do my the now the sitting President of the crochet club, Haley. She has been amazing, like if I was the eyes and ears of the club, making sure we weren't getting we're not going to get our charter revoked. Like the next minute she was in the trenches like making flyers, making Instagram posts, helping everybody together. There was.

Charley:

There is no crochet club without hayley and I'm so thankful for that awesome um, uh, I had a thought and it went away, but I do that all the time, so anything else you want to share about it Keeping in mind? So one of the things to keep in mind is this year is the 75th anniversary of Diablo Valley College, which is very exciting. That's like why we're kind of wrapping up, that's why we're building an alumni association. We have fun alumni stuff going on. The college has got fun stuff going on and so you have any thoughts on that. I mean, obviously you are stepping into a legacy.

Aaron:

That is probably something you didn't realize at the time yeah, I guess I'm just really excited to hear this is happening because I know for a lot of people dvc is where it is. Most people don't transfer. I guess they study dvc, they take their education to enter the workforce and I think this is really valuable because I always thought of alumni as something for like those big expensive private schools you see out in the south and stuff like it never occurred to me that DVC really could mine the huge population of alumni for connection and I think that's really exciting and I really hope to be part of this even more well great, any final parting words or anything.

Aaron:

I guess if anybody's listening to this, keep swimming. That's going to keep you afloat well, thank you very much.

Charley:

I appreciate your time. Uh and uh, we'll get this edited up a little bit, not much, and then what we'll do is we will um, well, I'll send it off to you first so you can look at it and approve it, everything um, and we'll go from there. Oh, thank you so much. All right, thanks a lot.