Sera Casas Proves the Point: Life Always Gives You Another Chance
Sera Casas is in my Stats 21A class at Long Beach City College. This is her second semester. It doesn’t take long after you meet Sera that you realize she is not just another student. At thirty-one years old, Sera Casas has already lived a life that might challenge anyone. She’s the mother of four children with the oldest being 16, her parents divorced when she was two years old, her mother
We sit together as a team at a table with three other students, working on class assignments and daily readings from the textbook, Statway Pathway (very clever). I’ve never been particularly good at Math. Hell, the last time I took any Math was Algebra in my junior year in High School. In 1965. This is supposed to be an easier version of Statistics. Let’s just say, I didn’t do great on my last quiz. Casas, on the other hand, seems to be juggling it quite well. She is outgoing and self-assured, projecting curiosity and confidence. That’s pretty good for someone who arrived at college with a GED in her hand and having lived as a housewife for most of her teen and young adult life.
“…For half of my life, I’ve played the role of being a housewife and a mom. And since the age of fifteen, I’ve basically been either married or in a long relationship and I’ve never been given the trust to work.”
There was that time that she worked in a family cleaning business when she was 15 and at MacDonald’s for three months.
“I’m meant to be around people so that’s why I’m trying to live my dream.”
Casas has great ambitions to help people while living her dream.
Sera Casas makes her around the city and school on a longboard skateboard displaying the same confidence she does in the classroom. It’s a confidence born of a full life lived in her 31 years. Sera sat down with me in the courtyard next to the Math building on campus and shared a life story with PalacioMagazine.com that proves the point: life always gives you as many chances as you want to accept in order to start all over again or to just take another path.
Sera Casas Biography
Sera Casas wrote her story for two of her classes and they are raw and honest. Here is an excerpt:
“My parents divorced each other when I was two years old and while my mom was pregnant with my half-sister. Her dad was my main father figure growing up. I lived with my mom during the week and went with my dad on the weekend up until I was 13 which was when my dad got custody of me. Thirteen was the year when everything changed: grades, school, who I lived with, the environmental and societal changes that went along with moving from Los Angeles to Banning, CA. The biggest change out of all of them was that now I was the only child during the week as opposed to be being the oldest sister of four girls. Well, with the new-found freedom, leads me to the next big turning point in my life when I turned 14-years old. I got pregnant and this that wasn’t bad enough, the father of my child that I was carrying was 10 years older than me and knew his real age but me.”
