Time:  0:00

Kristen Wilson:  This is Kristen Wilson.  It is May 29 [2003] and I’m meeting with Debbie Sámano Hopper – or is it Debra? 

Debbie Sámano Hopper:   Debbie is fine.

KW: --Debbie Sámano Hopper  and this is for the Sámano Family Oral History project for the LCC Archives. Before we discuss your early experiences with LaneCommunity College, can you tell me something about yourself – like where and when you were born?

DSH:  I was born here in Eugene, Oregon, at Sacred Heart Hospital in 1969.  Actually at that time they had a little birthing center that was on Patterson Street.  And I actually work at SacredHeart Hospital now as a nurse so I feel like I’ve gone full circle.  I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.  I’m 34 , married, expecting my first baby.  True Eugenian.

1:10 

KW: Can you tell me something about your early feelings or attitude toward education? 

DSH:  When I was younger like in grade school or junior high school I got straight A’s.  As I got into high school I discovered that playing was kind of fun, too.  I got good grades and enjoyed high school.  I don’t think I have a negative feelings towards school.

1:40

KW: Can you tell me a little bit about your childhood?  What do you remember the most?

DSH:  Having a big brother that picked on me all the time.  When we were younger we moved around a lot and so I went to different schools and so that was probably a little bit difficult.  I made friends easily and I think it was harder on my brother than it was on me.  Once I got to about fourth grade we moved out to Alvadore and I stayed in the same school district from the fourth grade on, so that’s probably the thing that stood out most.  My brother and I were always, always, always, always together.  And so that’s probably the biggest impact on my childhood, school and spending time with him.

KW: And your brother is Michael Sámano.

DSH:  Yes, he is.

KW: How much older is your brother than you?

DSH:  He’s five years older than I am.

2:55

KW: What decision led you to become a student at LCC?

DSH:  Well, that play time that I got into in high school kind of took the focus away from me thinking about college.  And so once my senior year came around, I realized that I wasn’t really UO material, I guess they called it.  Then I knew that I still wanted to go to college and I knew that LCC was an option for me and so after I graduated I decided to start taking classes at LCC.

3:30

KW: What years did you attend LCC?

DSH:   I don’t know if I can remember the exact - as my brother calls it, I was making a career out of being a student here.  I started, it would have been, the fall of 1987 the first time around and I kinda came off and on until I graduated from LCC in 1995.  And then I returned for the nursing program and finished that a year ago [in 2002]; that took me about three years.

4:20

KW: Can you tell me what your plan was when you came to Lane – your meandering journey?

DSH:  Well, initially I didn’t really have a plan.  My friends were all going to college, and I kinda felt weird to not be doing that and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I grew up.  And so I thought, they’re going to LCC and the U of O, and I thought I better do that, too.  So I came out here and started going to class and I think I was still in that whole frame of mind of going to parties and hanging out with my friends. I didn’t really try that hard and I didn’t really have a focus until I became older and met who my husband is now.  He already had graduated from college and was working as an architect and so at that point I thought, boy, I guess I need to make some focus and goals here.  And I got credits for about three degrees out here – but no focus. That was about nine years ago – so I began to get more focused.  I knew I wanted to go to the U of O, so I went for the transfer degree.  And the second time around I had already been working at the hospital and a certified nurses aid and knew I wanted to go to nursing school. So the second time I was much more focused and knew what I wanted to do when I came out here.

6:20

KW: I guess it’s not uncommon for older students to have a different degree of focus that the younger students.  What do you remember about the physical space at LCC?  How was it different from what it is today?

DSH:  I think the first time around it kind of felt like a high school.  The only difference was that I didn’t have to go to class, where at in high school you had to go to class, which I thought was kinda neat. And a lot of times I didn’t go.  A lot of my friends were out here and it still felt like I was kinda a branch from high school.  The instructors were real similar to the ones I had there.    It seemed, though, that as I got into more advanced classes, that things were different.  A little bit more strict and in a lot of the classes attendance was part of the grade. So I had to learn pretty quickly that this wasn’t high school.  That it was different and that I was an adult and that if I wanted to be treated like an adult that I needed to act like one.  And so, but as far as the students in the class – it was fairly small. And when I came back again the second time around in the nursing program, the prerequisites were always completely jammed packed with science classes.  It was a lot different the second time around.  And the nursing program was a lot different from just taking random classes out there.

8:08

KW:  Now it sounds like you’ve had two different experiences at Lane. What brought you back?  Not so much a decision point – what did you do after you left, where did you go?

DSH:  I finished the first time around with a transfer degree and went to the UO and got my bachelor’s degree.  And that was way different at the UO than here.  Actually at LCC I felt that I learned a lot more here that I did at the UO.  It was a lot more impersonal at the UO than it was here.  So after I got my bachelor’s degree in psychology I started volunteering in the hospital in the psychiatric department where a nurse there talked me into getting my certified nurses assistant certificate (CNA) which you can get out there at LCC.  I got that and started working as a CAN for a couple of years and knew that I wanted to go on.  I didn’t want to work as an aide with a bachelor’s degree.  So at that point I made the decision to go back to school in nursing.  I could have taken the prerequisites at the UO but my experience here at LCC was so much better - the smaller classrooms, less students - that I didn’t want to take the science courses over at the UO because I knew I’d be in an auditorium with three-hundred people and that’s not my way of wanting to learn so I decided to go ahead and do the prerequisites here.  And at that point I got accepted to the nursing program here and stayed. 

KW: How did you choose psychology as an undergraduate major?

DSH:  I think initially it was because those were the classes that I seemed to get the best grades in.  So at first it was because I realized I was doing better in those classes than the other ones so I kept taking social sciences.  Initially it was sociology classes that I took out here.  I actually failed the psychology out here, but it was the sociology classes I was getting A’s out of and when I transferred to the UO I decided to try psychology again because I had already done the sociology classes that I needed. And the psych department at the UO – those classes were actually very interesting and so I ended up deciding to become a psych major. And I’ve always been interested – I worked in special ed during that time, with little kids that were severely emotionally disturbed, autistic.  So all in that field, and so that’s what led me into the direction, too.

KW: Was that for the EC Cares program?

DSH:  Yes.

KW: I’ve only heard of it.

DSH:  Yes, Community Options Pace and EC Cares.  I worked for Community Options and they’re a branch of that whole group at the UO.

11:20

KW: And then from there, was it an internship or coop?

DSH:  No, actually I went to the hospital and said I wanted to volunteer.  I was always into volunteering in different areas trying to find my niche in the world, what I wanted to do.  And so I thought it would be fun to volunteer in a hospital so I went there and initially they put me on the medical floor and I was doing the typical changing towels and getting ice water and it was pretty impersonal.  So I went back to them and said if there was anything else where I can a little more hands on and be talking with the patients more. I said I’m getting my degree in psyche, what would you suggest?  And they said they take volunteers in the psychiatric unit and so I thought, hey, that sounds good to me and so they sent me over there and I’m actually a psychiatric nurse now, that’s how much I enjoyed it.

KW: Tell me about your work there. 

12:20

DSH:  My work day can either be real mellow and you hang out with the patients and help them through crisis or can be pretty scary with patients that potentially can attack you and you find your happy medium between that.  And so each day it’s a little different.  I work in the Johnson unit here in town.  We consist of twenty-eight beds and we have three different areas.  We have a geriatric area, a regular, what we call the open unit which is patients that are well enough to be in an open unit with privileges; and we have a secure area for more psychotic patients.  And then as a nurse we rotate between the three areas.  And next month we are going to open ten more beds.  We have a very long waiting list.

13:30

KW: What is it like to do that kind of work?                                                                                                            

DSH:  I find it really rewarding.  It seems like when I tell people I’m a nurse and then they ask what unit I work on and I say the Johnson I don’t get a very warm reception to that.  Either they look at me like I’m totally nuts myself or they know themselves that they can’t do that kind of work because it’s real different from what people think of as nursing.  Because when you think of nursing you think of someone who is physically sick, where I’m dealing with someone who is having emotional or mental issues that are arising.  For me I can’t imagine being anywhere else.  I was actually, going through the nursing program, was going to be working in the emergency department and had done all my rotations there, had done my pre-(?) there and had been offered a position there.  And had already been working in the Johnson unit for four years and at the last minute had decided to stick with psychiatry.  Sometimes people look at it as not real nursing. To me it is.  I had an option of going to any floor that I wanted to go to, but that’s where I felt my calling was.  And I couldn’t imagine doing anything else; I really enjoy it.  And it’s different.

15:00

KW: Can you give me some view of what you like most about it and what you find the hardest?

DSH:  What I like most about it is that every day is something different.  When you’re dealing – when I was dealing with people who were physically ill you’d see some of the same stuff every single day.  But when you’re dealing with mentally ill people, it’s always changing.  And it seems more real to me.  Anybody, you, me, anybody can suffer from depression or anxiety or there’s a whole list of disorder that you can have.  That made it interesting for me, but it wasn’t, like people think, all scary – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest kind of a thing.  It was just people like you and me who are having a really hard time with whatever situation they’re having in their life, whether it’s a chemical imbalance, or something that is out of their control like schizophrenia, or some kind of psychotic break, Alzheimer’s.  Or if it’s something like a reaction to something that’s happened, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, those kind of things.  And so for me, everyday is something new - a new challenge that I can sit and discuss with somebody and maybe help them to get to a better place.  And so that feels very rewarding to me if I can stop one person from harming themself then I feel that I’ve done my job.

The hardest part is letting it go at the end of the day.  It’s really hard when you find someone you might connect with on certain levels, and you see them suffering.  It’s hard when 3:30 rolls around and your shift is done, and OK, bye, and go home and feel “My life is so great.”  And so that was probably the hardest thing for me, it’s probably a little bit easier now because you learn as a survival tactic that you have to do that, you have to let it go when you leave there, otherwise you end up depressed yourself. It took several years to get to that point.  I’ve been there six years now.  It was a struggle the first couple of years being there.  But you never lose that sense of – I think it was just a couple weeks ago, we had this really neat interaction between two patients and I my eyes were watering, and I had to start drawing with my pencil to distract myself so I didn’t start crying in the middle of their interaction because it was so touching to see them helping each other.  It’s pretty rewarding.

The times that I really dislike it would be when we get somebody who is violent, and it can be scary.  So I don’t enjoy that part of it at all.  We’re trying to back each other up and to deal with those kinds of situations.  I mean you can work there - at six months pregnant I feel confident that if I got into a situation that my co-workers would back me up or vice versa.  I feel OK working there and being pregnant.

KW: You’re saying you do feel very safe there.

DSH:  Yes, I do. I mean I have my moments where patients can get pretty scary but we work very well as a team.  And we know how to defuse the situation.  That’s probably what I like least about my job.  Nobody likes to be attacked.  Most of the time people don’t have that control over their behavior and you know that they’re not intentionally trying to hurt you. It’s other factors that are playing into the situation.

KW: When you say attacked, I automatically picture physical attack.  Do you also mean verbally?

DSH:  Yes. Both verbally and physically.

KW: Did you ever dream when you left high school and came to LCC that you’d be doing the kind of work you are doing now?

19:10

DSH:  Absolutely not.  I was the little sally-lally cheerleader in high school and my life has taken a very big turn.  In college I did the whole sorority thing for a little while.  And found that it was a pretty lonely and empty life.  And I wanted a lot more for myself than that. When I run into people from high school they are pretty surprised at what I do.  I would not have pictured myself in this spot.  I always knew that I wanted to help people, even in high school. I’ve always done a lots of volunteering and those kind of things on the side.  No, I didn’t really picture myself being where I’m at right now.

20:20

KW: Going back to your experiences at Lane … What were your different declared majors at Lane?

DSH:  You know I don’t actually recall ever declaring a major.  I seriously think I just came out here and took random classes and I never had a focus.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do.  I just knew that I needed to be in college because my friends were in college.  It didn’t even seem important to me at the time that I get a degree, it was just the fact that I was going to school out here. It’s kind of sad, but it’s the truth. When I saw them starting to graduate and moving on and I was still hanging out back here going, hey, you know this is fun.  I think that was a point where I was at a point where I needed to start focusing. 

I actually started taking business classes.  I grew up in a household where my Dad just thought I would make a good secretary, that’s what women do.  So I kind of got it into my head that I needed to be a secretary.  At the time I was working for the City of Eugene as a secretary; so I took a lot of business classes, and that just did not seem fulfilling to me at all.  That kind of made it difficult for me, too, because I was raised thinking this is what I needed to be, but at the same time it wasn’t fulfilling.  So at this time I was also taking classes that seemed more fulfilling for me, but not knowing where I wanted to go with it.  And it seemed so much easier to go in the area of business and be a secretary. You know, there’s nothing wrong with that, but for me it just wasn’t fulfilling.  And so that was part of it.  The other part was just not being very focused at the time.  But I think I was just business, undeclared.  Until I decided I wanted to be more serious and go to the UO.  And I went for the Associate of Arts / transfer degree.

KW: You mentioned what your father were aspirations for you.  How about your mother?

22:55

DHS:  My mom didn’t have aspirations for me.  She did not go to college and I don’t think that she would have minded either way.  I think that she’s proud of my degrees and that I do what I do, but she never encouraged me or discouraged me either way. She was just rather neutral. Whereas my dad discouraged me from going to college.  And said what do you want to do this for, when you’ve got this good paying job with the City of Eugene. And you’re a secretary, and that’s respectable.  What’s the point in going to school.  And never encouraged me to go to college at all.  And so I didn’t get a whole lot from either one.  I don’t want to blame them, because I take responsibility for my own actions.  But I do believe that parents who are more, kind of encouraging their kids to go to school and encouraging them, I think their child tends to be more focused. 

KW: Do you see the motivation behind your dad as cultural, generational?

DSH:  Both, definitely both.  I mean, he’s really excited that I’m a nurse now, and he’d real proud of it, but he definitely fought me all the way.  It’s kind of interesting.  Even after being married and being an adult and going to nursing school – I don’t think he thought I would make it in nursing school. And now that I’ve got the degree, now, of course, he calls me twice a week for medical advice.

24:58

I would say, looking back, that one of the most supportive people was my brother [Michael].  He definitely pushed me a lot and helped me stay focused.  Because he had done the transfer degree and went to the UO.  And so when I became focused and actually took the time to ask him what steps did you take, he was there with open arms and said hey, this is what you gotta do and let’s go in this direction.  He helped me both LCC and at the UO with connecting me with people at the UO and helping me get hooked up with scholarships at the UO.  And when I came back the second time for the nursing - at that time he was already working here as an instructor.  There were times where I don’t think I would have got through it if he hadn’t been here. Even if it was just a shoulder to gripe, cry - gripe on.  He was always really supportive.  He helped me in a lot of ways.  Sometimes if I don’t feel like my voice was being heard, he was right there to support me and make sure I got what I needed.

26:20

KW: I understand your mother runs a daycare? And that she took some classes here at Lane.  Did you take any classes with your mother?

DSH:  No. She took them with my brother – they were sociology classes.

26:45

KW: Can you tell me what you remember about the campus itself when you were first attending – like the buildings, the parking situation?

DSH:  The parking situation has always sucked.  As the years went buy it just got worse and worse, and the second time around for nursing school it was just awful.  I remember especially during the first week of school was the worst.  You’d have to come to work an hour early just to get a parking spot.

KW: What years did you go to the nursing program?

DSH:  I graduated a year ago this June and so it would have been ’99 to 2002.  So that was never a good experience.  As far as the campus, it seemed at first so much bigger than a high school campus, it was kind of overwhelming, it seemed so big. But as time went on, it felt comfortable and I always enjoyed the campus.  And there were always those times when I was stressed out with studying, the scenery around here was so beautiful that you could always find a place where you could calmly sit and get yourself refocused, where I didn’t feel that at the UO.  I always felt it was more hustle-bustle. My classes were always at one end of the campus or the other and you almost needed a bicycle to get to class on time.  I always felt that even though the campus is a little bit spread out here, if I had a class at one end or the other, I knew I’d make it.  So that was actually kind of nice.  I never had any complaints about the campus at all.  I thought it was beautiful.  It was a good experience for me – the class size and everything. Maybe not so nice with the ventilation system in some of the buildings, but other than that it was fine.

29:00

KW: Can you tell me a little bit about differences in the campus culture, for lack of a better term, between the late 1980s and then the late 1990s?

DSH:  The first time around I was here with my high school friends and I knew a lot of people from the other high schools, too so that to me it just felt like an extension of high school.  It just seemed natural – everybody that I knew, it was like a social event. Whereas the second time around coming in and being an older adult, I didn’t feel that. I’d see those groups of older people - it would have been me ten years earlier.  I didn’t have that connection with them because now I was coming as an older adult, rather than being 18 or 19, now I was in my 30s, so I didn’t feel as comfortable hanging out in the cafeteria or anything like that – I mean I pretty much would stick to the  health department and the people I was in the program with.  We’d maybe go grab a bite to eat and take it back to our little world.  So in some ways I felt more isolated as an adult, because you’re not a really part of that younger generation but in some it was good because I kept more focused on what my goal was and what I needed to do.  But I don’t think that anyone intentionally made me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t have anything in common to go hang out in the cafeteria with 18-19 year olds. 

30:55

KW: Are there any particular faculty or staff members that stand out in your memory at Lane?                                                                                                                      

DSH:  Let’s see. It’s so long ago I can’t remember now. For the most part it was the sociology staff was pretty nice.  I always liked the science department, and thought the instructors there were great. I took a lot of biology classes the first time around, and the instructors there were wonderful.  The second time around when I had to take other science classes – anatomy, physiology, the different science classes, it was the same thing, probably the best thing experience was the instructors in that department. The nursing instructors were great, I don’t know that I’d want to point a single one out because they all were supportive and good to me.  Those are the one’s that stood out.  It just seemed that as someone who wasn’t very focused, that the instructors in the Science department found a way to make learning more likeable.  It made me want to learn more.  I might have been that I finally found something that I really enjoyed.

33:15

KW: Can you talk a little about your cultural background?

DSH:  Well, I am Mexican-American.  My father is from Mexico and my mother is American.  Growing up, my dad was struggling to be American.  Speaking or not speaking the language and so we were raised in a pretty typical American home.  He wanted us to speak English because he was trying to learn English and so we unfortunately that upbringing of learning two languages or even two cultures until we got a little bit older.  My parents divorced when I was five and he remarried a woman who also had a Latino background, and so she brought more into our home and so then at that point between the two of them we started to have more of our Mexican culture. And even growing up in grade school, junior, and high school I think there was one other Mexican-American when I went there.  And he was in the same grade as me and his family, he had a couple of siblings.  I think there were maybe four African-Americans, so it was predominantly white. 

So for me, I was pretty much was raised in a white culture and was not treated any differently at all.  And even when I got to LCC I didn’t have any Mexican-American friends.  All my friends were American.  And it wasn’t until I got to the UO where my brother hooked me up with the multicultural office there – MEChA [Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan].  And I started kinda meeting with similar backgrounds.  It was a whole new world for me.  In some ways I still kind of struggle with that just because I was raised so not around people with the same cultural – the Mexican-American heritage. I definitely don’t have that background and awareness that my brother and stepsister have because they’re so immersed in that daily in dealing with that.  It’s really difficult to put into words for me. 

I think I probably learned more about my cultural background as an adult than I ever did growing up.  And I still am learning stuff, constantly.  I learn it from my brother, or society.  And definitely society has changed a lot and the area – just being in Eugene has become more culturally diverse than when I was growing up.  When I was growing up I don’t even remember there being – like you have the Blair area which is predominantly Latino.  And now there is this Latino Mercado market that you can go to on Sundays.  There are constantly things that are coming up that were not there when I was growing up. I don’t know if that answers your questions – it’s hard for me to put into words.  I defiantly was pretty much raised in a white culture until just recently probably within the past ten years – realizing that there are two sides to me.

37:20

KW: What is the name of your sister?

DSH:  Consuela.

KW: I’ve met here.  Is she your step-sister or your half-sister?

DSH:  Step-sister. She’s seven years younger than I am.

KW: Did she go to Lane?

DSH:  I don’t think so.  I think she went straight from high school to the UO. 

KW: Is there anything else that you’d like to make sure that you tell me?

DSH:  I don’t think so.  Overall, I would always recommend this school to anybody who would ask me.  And when I talk to high school students or junior high students who have felt that going to college was not an option for them, I’ve always mentioned that this is a good place to start, and that if I can do it, they can do it.  I think that for the most part I have fond memories of going to school out hereof LCC and would recommend it to other people.

KW: Thank you

38:30