Where Legacies A conversation with Alyssa Vega By Jackson Boren
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T FELT LIKE GOD WAS SAYING, ‘You’re finally here. This is what you worked for.’ All those years of struggling; everything I’d been through. It all came together when I stepped on that stage.” Alyssa Vega recalls the moment on June 10, 2018 when she found out she was Loma Linda University School of Nursing’s 10,000th graduate. Graduation is an emotionally monumental experience on its own. Discovering that she played a role in such a significant milestone for Loma Linda University’s oldest school only intensified the weight of the moment for Vega; the first in her immediate family to
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graduate from college. As one of the 95 first generation graduates in a class of 173 students, Alyssa’s story represents a growing population within LLUSN’s student body and gives unique insight into the shifting narrative of the student nurse at Loma Linda University. A short drive from Loma Linda, Alyssa was born and raised in Rialto, California. “My grandma raised my brother, my sister and myself. My parents had been in and out of jail around the time I was born and were both struggling with drug addiction.” Vega, now 24, credits her grandparents in being