 This is Perla Shaheen for CalTV News and I'm here today with senior Diana Castro who was recently honored by the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students as one of their four student ambassadors. So tell me a little bit about this honor and what it means to you. Well first of all I was one of the first four students who was chosen to be a national ambassador but the only student from the West Coast which is good you know Go Bears. I went to the conference in Atlanta and it was actually the 16th conference so that was definitely a nice experience but my main focus was being a student advocate being an actual student voice while all of these professionals were tossing ideas and sharing what they're doing at their institution. This honor means a lot it means that underrepresented communities and populations are being recognized especially for this conference to be nationally held. That was a great experience because I was able to be with not only other professionals who focus on serving transfer populations but the other three national ambassadors and it was just a great experience in order to collaborate and share ideas with what we're doing at our institutions that's working but not only that but also share the things that we're struggling with and try to see if there's any way that we can fix them. A lot of the professionals I felt were very overwhelmed and stressed by their institution and their capability of what they're able to do that they didn't sit to think like wait we could actually have more help if we reach out to the transfer students at our own institution to help us so that was one thing that I made a focus is saying use your resources and one of your resources is the actual people you've ever sent. In your experience when applying to colleges did you feel that you were at a disadvantage at all being a first-generation student? I definitely think so just because I wasn't familiar with the process so it was really me just trying to figure it out by myself and trying to use whatever resources I did have so I was happy I went to community college at first because I just didn't know what school I would have gone to or if I did apply to a bunch of schools I would have probably probably chosen the wrong school for me whereas going through community college I have more time to figure out okay what schools am I interested in and not only that but I was able to apply to different schools since I made myself a more competitive applicant. Tell me about your work with Berkeley Students Transfer Center. At first I kind of just thought it would be a cool internship but after being at the center for a while I figured out or I was able to see the impact it has on students it's definitely nice to have a group of people who are saying like no you worked hard to be here now let's work on your next steps and make sure you excel you succeed and you do the best you can because most students and I feel most transfer students they all want to do something they all want to leave an impact and even though we're here for half the time than our freshman counterparts it's not it's not a limit to what we can do here.