Illini Bluffs - Leveraging Local Resources

This week, I’d like to do something a little different than usual. I’d like you to meet two students with rural roots but very different personal stories. Jackeline Garcia is a senior at Effingham High School in Effingham, Illinois, a county with a population of just 34,000. She is the first generation daughter of Mexican immigrants and she has an acceptance letter from The University of Notre Dame. We’ll hear from her and learn more about her Journey. We’ll also speak with a third year student at the University of Chicago and discuss his unusual route for getting there from a rural, coal-mining town in deep southern Illinois through a top, suburban prep-school in Metropolitan St. Louis, Missouri. Both students are on fascinating journeys and both have done much to prepare for them.