Francisco"I felt like I was alone in the world and that if I was to prevail in school the next six years, I would need to work harder than ever before and become responsible for my education and myself.”


Francisco is a tall, lithe, popular 18-year-old with a quick wit and devilish grin. But under his flirtatious, casual air, he is fiercely independent, which he believes is due to his parents’ relationship: a nasty break-up, followed by an awkward and unstable reconciliation until, finally, a divorce when he was in the sixth grade. His mother now lives in New Jersey and stays out of the picture (“I don’t know what my mother does,” he says about her occupation). Now Francisco lives with his father and step-mother in a mostly unstructured environment that he is still learning to negotiate—he will go to his girlfriend’s house but will not take her to his because that would be “too personal,” he says. All of it has forced Francisco to grow up fast and find ways to put his life in manageable order. “The divorce is when I realized I’d be on my own, and I found independence. That’s how I’ve been since then,” he says.

With no curfew and no expectations on furthering his academic career, Francisco took it upon himself to set goals for his future. At 16 he got his first job stocking merchandise at a local grocery store which, he says, taught him responsibility, and he is very proud of the fact he has his driver’s license. “It gives me a sense of accomplishment. It means I’m legal, that I’m driving securely. I am the first one in my family to get one.”

When he joined EIF his freshman year he knew nothing of college. “I didn’t know anything about universities at all; none. I didn’t even know SMU was in the city, and then I got in the habit of visiting colleges and I was like, wow, this is fun.”  But as cavalier as Francisco is about going to school, he knows college’s soft exterior is the way out of a life of hard labor; his dad and brothers all work construction. “My dad goes to work real early and never has time to do stuff because of work, like spend time with the family and stuff,” he says. “So I give myself self-encouragement so I can go out and get a good life and the way I see it, a good life, is a nice car, a nice house, nice stuff, being happy, and having time to do things.”

The question for Francisco will be whether his high school education has served him well. He’s got the independence, reliability, and goals to go further, but he is wary the academic world might outpace his previous schooling and leave him behind. “It’s good here [North Dallas High], it’s a good experience. I could’ve learned more, but oh well… I just think, like, that’s going to affect me when I get to college, that I’ll have trouble—or not trouble, but I’ll have to catch up. Like maybe I’ve missed out on something I should’ve learned.”