Striving for greatness: First-generation CSUSB student on the path to become first doctor in her family
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She can still hear it more than 15 years later: “Mexican girls like Ally are made for house cleaning – not college.”
Ally Bledsoe’s second-grade tutor had uttered that sentence to her after she had trouble pronouncing a word. “I know I was very young,” Bledsoe says, “but I will never forget when I was sitting there and told myself, ‘No matter what happens in my life, I will prove her wrong.’”
She did.
In 2018, the same year she graduated high school, Bledsoe enrolled at Cal State San Bernardino as a first-generation biology major. She graduated with her bachelor's degree in spring 2023 and is on the path to become a pediatric oncologist.
“It’s very intimidating and it’s very scary,” she admits. “I will be the first doctor in my whole family. I have nobody to look to, so it’s all on me. But it’s also very exciting.”
In her freshman and sophomore years at CSUSB, Bledsoe worked four jobs to pay for school and help her mother with household bills, while also taking care of her grandmother, who has dementia. “It was very hard,” she recalls. “But I managed.”
Luckily, she was the recipient of the Inland Empire Community Foundation’s S.L. Gimbel Foundation Scholarship, created for low-income students enrolled in certain CSUs, including CSUSB, not once, but twice, at $10,000 each. “It helped me out a lot,” she says, noting that she was able to put some into her savings for medical school.
While a lot of the financial burden was lifted, Bledsoe was still hard at work, waking up at 3:30 a.m. to catch the 5:20 a.m. shuttle from Coachella to the San Bernardino campus every Monday and Wednesday.
“Even though I am very tired, I know that it’s going to be worth it in the end because it will pay off,” says Bledsoe, who chose to become a pediatric oncologist because of her love of children.
“I want to help children from all walks of life,” she explains. “I want to show them that there is life during and after cancer because I know cancer is very ugly. I want to find a cure for cancer so no child will have to lose their childhood.”
Bledsoe says part of her motivation comes from those who have doubted her, including her second-grade tutor. A tough childhood also influenced her commitment to succeed. Bledsoe was born and raised in an area plagued with gang violence, was raised by a single mother in a low-income household, and had a troubled father who was in and out of her life.
Despite her barriers, Bledsoe has always been determined to achieve her goals, not only for herself, but for her mother, as well as for her future children and patients.
She is now one step closer to her dreams since she walked across the stage during spring Commencement as a proud, first-generation CSUSB graduate, where more than 80% of its students identify as first generation.
“CSUSB, I think, is the home of first-gens,” she said before Commencement. “When I graduate, I will be graduating with a lot of first-generations, so it will be a milestone for all of us and we will all experience it together. Even if I don’t know them, we are still connected by being first-generations.”