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Staying connected to your roots: An interview with student David Martinez

Q&A with David Martinez

Discover what it’s really like to be an undergraduate student at ASU’s W. P. Carey School of Business, Where Business is Personal.® This conversation with David Martinez has been edited and condensed.

Question: What brought you to ASU and W. P. Carey?

Answer: I knew I wanted to study business when I was in high school. I wasn't interested in the more STEM-like subjects. I really wanted to work with people, and my family runs a business. I decided to come to ASU because in high school, I was in an AVID program, which helped me decide. They also helped me apply early. My sister helped me a lot as well, she's 10 years older than me and she also went to ASU. She was a criminology major, but she was telling me how much she liked the business school, and how much I could be myself there. I also heard how well W. P. Carey is ranked. I wanted to stay at home, so I picked the best school here in Arizona.

Q: How did you choose your major, and what do you like most about your major?

A: My grandpa was a business guy. He had a tortilla factory back in Mexico. I wanted to be like him. My whole family was doing things like that, working in business, so even when I was little, I would help with sales. But I didn't want to do sales, I wanted to manage a business and help other people do sales.

The business administration major gives me such a broad view of a lot of categories. I can do accounting, I can do management, there are paths for HR, even. It's really helpful. There are so many careers you can go into even with just studying business administration.

Q: What does it mean to you to be a first-generation college student?

A: Being a first-generation student, it gives me a way to show other people, especially other first-generation students, that they can do it too. I think a lot of my friends in high school thought they couldn't, so they didn't even apply. But I know they were so capable. So to show them that I could do it and be a leader here at ASU is really great.

Q: How have your connections with classmates and faculty enhanced your learning?

A: Connections with classmates and faculty have enhanced my learning by showing me different ways to do things, not relying on the same tactics, and being able to understand when you're wrong or when you're right. It helps me to be more confident, especially because I was really shy in school and in class. I wouldn't raise my hand. But teachers would help bring it out of me by asking, "Do you need something? Do you have something to say?" It gave me a lot more confidence. Having classmates that supported me in being more of myself was also really awesome.

Q: What was it like when you first set foot on the Polytechnic campus, and what's your favorite spot?

A: Honestly, I was expecting a lot of people, but it gives such a small town vibe. There's a lot going on and most of the activities are open to anybody who wants to join. I feel like that's very helpful and there are lots of ways to make friends. It's different from Tempe. There's a lot of beautiful nature here, it's a beautiful place. The professors are really good here too.

The Student Union is probably my favorite place. It's somewhere you can go where you can meet new people instead of just being in your dorm room. I was in my dorm room a lot. Every time I would go to the Student Union, I would feel so welcome. Everybody there seems like they want to be your friend. It's really nice.

Q: What has been your favorite class so far?

A: My favorite has been this class called Emerging Leaders. It taught me a lot about debating, how to create your resume, and presenting. It was one of my first classes where I actually had to present. There's so many different avenues you can pursue at the end, such as being employed with ASU after you finish the class. It was super fun.

Q: How have you been able to apply your classes to the real world?

A: Right now, I have an internship with Leslie's Pool Supplies, and I've been applying my management-type classes to it, and I know a lot of what they're talking about. There's so much that I know how to do now because of the management classes I've taken here, and even all of the other business classes. At W. P. Carey, there's one or two required classes for Excel. They're honestly super useful, and a lot of the tactics they use in those classes are actually used in the workforce, like at Leslie's.

Q: What resources at W. P. Carey have you found especially helpful?

A: One resource I've found really helpful is the career coaching they have here. My career coach honestly helped me a lot. They told me when to start looking for internships. They let me know when businesses were looking for applicants. They told me that if a class I was in was really stressful, I can always ask for help, go to tutoring, and try to find someone in the class that could help me out.

Q: What's life like as a W. P. Carey student, both living on campus and commuting to class?

A: Living in the dorm rooms and having roommates who take the same classes as you is awesome. Waking up and seeing them doing their homework kind of motivates you. I think, "What am I doing?" A lot of times we had the same classes and would go to the classrooms together. It's very chill compared to high school. You have a lot more say than if someone else picked out your schedule for you.

Now, as a commuter, I do a lot on my own. It's honestly a little bit harder, so staying on task and being able to do my homework on my own is really important because there's not as much accountability as living on campus. When I lived in the dorms, I had lots of friends to help me out and were taking the same classes as me, and it helped keep me accountable.

Having connections with faculty and staff at ASU has also been really important and helpful, because I can always go to them for help whenever there's an issue or something I can't solve.