Emma Rodriguez ’29 is from Bloomingdale, Illinois. While Calvin wasn’t initially on her college wish list, she said “through word of mouth” she was convinced she needed to give it a look. While she didn’t think she’d end up at Calvin, she paid a visit and said she had a gut feeling that “this is it, this is home.”��
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Craving finding community early on, she enrolled in the Entrada Scholars Program and calls the monthlong college immersion experience a win-win. “I made friends, and I get a renewable scholarship.”

How has your view of college changed since attending Entrada?

I feel like everyone’s first inkling about college is from movies—it all looks so exciting and that’s what I was hoping it would be. My parents said it would be nothing like the movies, that it was going to be super hard, and I’d need to work a lot. Then, when I came here, I discovered that my parents were right, but the movies were also accurate. It can be both. You just have to manage your time well.��
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I can go to events, make new friends, while still studying and doing well in class. I learned when to say no to things and when it was worth it to say yes. It’s a balance.

What is your greatest takeaway from this experience?

I’m not as alone as I thought I was in my faith. I found it hard to find teens my age who believe the same thing and have the same core values and views in the world. At the end of my senior year of high school I was kind of losing hope. I wondered are there really other people who believe the same things I do? ��
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I found that there are people here that are so full of this fire for God and have such wisdom and are really mature and there are people out there like me who I can relate to and talk to. I couldn’t see it because I was stuck in my own community, but now I’m here and there are people like me all over the place. I’ve heard so many different stories of students from different countries and states, so while it felt like we were alone, when you put us all in this place it becomes much easier to see the bigger picture. We didn’t know who each other was last month, but now we are such a tight-knit group. I now feel hope again for my generation.

Because of Entrada, I feel more confident in …

Myself, and my ability to do hard things. And this covers a broad range of things, from asking for help from my peers to not being afraid to dive into something new.

How would you have felt had you not had this experience before college?

I don’t even want to think about it. I would have been so confused.��
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The program plus the RAs (resident assistants), who have a lot in common as they were in our position just a year or two prior, do a really good job of holding our hands, showing us how to prepare for the fall. The academic coaching is also a good refresher on how to take notes, how to do well in classes. This experience has been an easy win into college and now I’ll come back in a few weeks, with all of this fresh on my mind. It’s nice to have someone help you take that first step into college when you know nothing about it.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I think that they should make expand Entrada and open up more spots for people. I wish that every college student coming to Calvin had this kind of experience. Entrada is more than a class, it’s building a mindset, learning new skills, making all these friends—friendships that are only a few weeks old, but I feel will last a lifetime.��