Photos by Ralph Freso / Slideshow
Quyen Phan was part of the first small group of students to be granted a Students Inspiring Students Scholarship at Grand Canyon University in 2016.
Nine years later, he stood before incoming students of what is today called the Canyon Rising Scholarship, which includes 1,300 new recipients this academic year from across the country. Phan is now an alumnus and co-founder and design engineer for ONYX Design and Manufacturing in Phoenix.
Phan knows he was like many of them, bright young people of families with financial need, often first-generation college students or immigrants who just want a shot.
He told them he didn’t cry like many others when he got the scholarship. “I was just shocked,” he said at the Canyon Rising Scholarship Reception Tuesday in Global Credit Union Arena.
Then, Phan said, he went to work. “I really pushed myself; today I still push myself.”
He’s two generations from unspeakable hardship. His Vietnamese grandfather, De Phan, fought alongside U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War and was held in a prisoner-of-war camp for years, he said afterward, until Americans later got him out and the family moved to Phoenix.
“We came from nothing,” he said.
His parents do not speak English or own a high school diploma. His mom is a nail tech, he said, yet believed so much in the promise in America that she thought her son could be a doctor.
Phan didn’t pass through English Language Learner courses until he was a sophomore in high school.
“I was a scrawny, skinny kid, my hair all messy, and I had no clue what I wanted to do,” he said of that first day of classes that the Canyon Rising Scholars also faced on Tuesday. “I joined pre-medicine because it was pushed by my parents, but six months in, I asked myself, ‘Am I really doing medicine because it is a passion of mine or is engineering my passion?’”
And that’s where the 2021 GCU graduate, sitting on a panel with fellow alumni Brianna Castro and Luis Peña Espinoza, both 2022 graduates, launched into his advice to new students.
Phan told them he took a job on campus with Career Services, connected with alumni, took every opportunity he could and launched into projects that he posted on LinkedIn.
“Smart people lose out because they lack confidence. Find your confidence,” he said, offering that the scrawny kid he was began working out to help him feel strong inside and out.
By the time he neared graduation, Phan said he had four job offers. He faced five rounds of interviews with SpaceX, which GCU professors with experience in the industry helped him prepare for, and he got the job he wanted.
He later helped launch the product design company now housed in Canyon Ventures.
“I took every opportunity I was given. I connected to all my professors and made sure people knew I was doing more than just going to school,” Phan said.
That was the challenge laid out to new students at the reception, which this year didn’t include parents in attendance, though many watched from a livestream.
“It’s the start that stops most people,” said Honors College Dean Breanna Naegeli.
She urged them to not get wrapped up in thoughts that you might not check off every box of skills needed now. But if you stay eager, humble and willing to grow, you will excel and catch the attention of future employers.
“My challenge to you is to say yes more than you say no,” she said.
Peña Espinoza expanded on that advice. He’s a computer science graduate who launched a start-up and is today a product owner at PrePass, a Phoenix transportation technology company that enhances highway safety.
“You are never going to be ready, so get ready to be uncomfortable,” he said.
Do what is scary, he continued. He said he didn’t know everything about starting a business, nor working in a company that sold sneakers, which he did for a time, but he dove in. That even goes for making friends. If you turn to the person next to you and ask to be friends, he said, they won’t say no. Who would do that?
“Absorb the awkward. There are going to be awkward moments,” he said.
Castro, today a university admissions counselor at GCU who helps others through the process she once endured, urged students not to get wrapped up in “imposture syndrome,” thinking you don’t deserve it.
“Don’t believe them. I tell my students it is going to be hard, there is going to be hardship, but that’s where that resilience comes in,” she said. “Now that I reflect back, it was crazy. I was doing my homework as my dad was sitting next to me in a hospital bed, or my parents lost their jobs, and I was working while still going to school. But now I can reflect on that and what a difference I made in my family because of that resilience.”
The alums' advice didn’t fall on deaf ears for the new scholars.
Antonio Ibarra Tabullo was one of only three who raised their hands when Peña Espinoza asked who knew exactly what they wanted to be and where they wanted to work. He already works as a medical assistant at HonorHealth and wants to be an emergency physician there.
“I like Luis’ advice – face the uncomfortableness,” he said. “That’s something that will stick with me: It’s OK to be scared. I’m a first-generation student, too.”
Walking out of the arena, Victor Garcia, just five years since moving from Mexico to the Valley, said he will bring with him “the thing about the start,” as he begins his studies in engineering. “It’s the start that stops most people.”
This night was a good start.
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected]
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