Andrea Gallegos

Unexpected Mary Wash

Andrea Gallegos

Unexpected Mary Wash Episode Two – Andrea Gallegos

WANTING TO FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE A COMMUNITY IS NOT A BAD THING.

One of the questions I asked everyone for Unexpected Mary Wash, and then cut out of the video was “Why do you think I asked you to be part of this project?” Andrea Gallegos and I are sitting in a study room in the newly renovated Seacobeck hall, home to UMW’s College of Education. Andrea smiles a little when I ask her this and answers timidly, “I think maybe… well I know I look up to you with a lot of the things you do. So I think maybe you look up to me for what I’ve done… with Girl Gains, with Campus Rec…?” She trails off and looks at me with a shy smile, as if I’ve asked her a question she’s afraid she’ll get wrong. She couldn’t be more right.

Andrea and I met during the beginning of our second semester freshman year, the spring of 2020. Before COVID, we sat next to each other in Monroe 116 for Intro Psychology at 9am, while our professor shouted, stood on a table, and asked us to “picture a square of color.” Through those first few weeks of class, Andrea and I kept sitting next to each other; she joined the Club Swim team I was a part of, and we carpooled to a swim meet at JMU together. It was on an early morning in March of 2020 when we sat together in Panera, whispering about this thing called “corona,” and wondering if it was serious. It feels like a thousand years ago now, but Andrea and I have maintained the same close friendship of laughing in class, occasional trash-talking, and working out together.

“I first applied to Mary Wash because they came to my school.. at the time they were promoting the College of Education,” Andrea is a Sociology major who will graduate next spring with her masters in Elementary Education, as a part of UMW’s now-discontinued 5-year Education program. During our conversation, Andrea reflects on her time in the freshman dorm Marshall (“Deep down the hill”), and how it led her to meet her best friend and current roommate, Hana Bussell. That semester-and-a-half of freshman year before the pandemic, Andrea remembers making the effort of getting up Marshall hill to have dinner with her friends and initially finding a sense of community, “Maybe I didn’t feel as connected to UMW yet, but I was having people that made me feel connected.”

“I grew up in a school that was predominantly white. I remember being throw in ESOL classes just because of how I looked, or my last name.” Growing up in Virginia, Andrea remembers having to wake up early with her mom to go into school and sit with the teacher to figure out homework from the night before. She credits this experience as well as wanting to be a teacher who looked like her students and didn’t need a translator to speak with them, as a main reason for wanting to be a teacher early on.

“And I thank my mom, so much, for that,” Andrea tells me, and you can hear it in her voice how much she means that. Andrea’s parents are both Salvadorian immigrants, who came to the United States before Andrea was born, to make a life for themselves and their family. I was lucky enough to be able to attend Andrea’s younger sister’s quinceñera this past October, and I’m not sure I can even put into words how much love fills the the Gallegos households. From the photos on the wall, to the home cooked Salvadorian food, to the light in their parents’ eyes when speaking about their children, it’s clear to see just how proud Andrea has made her family.

“As first gen… yes, I have a lot of pressure on me. But at the same time, I feel like college is what you make it,” Andrea holds her head high with this statement, and I can feel how much she means this by her tone of voice. As the first of her family to go to college, Andrea carries not only the pride, but also the expectations of her family. “I want to make it an experience that I know my parents will be proud of me, because they never got to experience it.” Last month, Andrea’s abuelo came to UMW with her mom, and Andrea showed them around campus. I ran into Andrea at work the next day and grinning, she told me “He was so amazed, he’d never been on a college campus before, he kept saying how big it was!”

This Spring, Andrea will get her undergraduate degree in Sociology, before continuing for her master’s in Education the following year. “I was like, now that I have this background in sociology, I can really apply it to Education,” Andrea tells me, recapping the ways Sociology first drew her in with its mission to evaluate situations without bias. “I think everyone should take a Sociology class, just to be socially aware.”

In our conversation before I pressed the record button, Andrea told me, laughing, “I always wanted to be in charge. I was always the second duck in the line behind my mom.” It’s clear to see how her passion for caring, teaching, and leading has made her into the person she is today. Last fall, Andrea sent me a text that read Crazy idea but… what if I started this club at UMW? Would you be down to do social media stuff for it?

Linked was a TikTok by Elisabetb Bradley, the founder of a club called Girl Gains, at San Diego State University. In the TikTok, Elisabeth explains how to start your own chapter of Girl Gains, a club with the mission to empower women in weightlifting, self-love, and community at your university. Seeking a community in something she loved, Andrea gathered her friends as her Exec Board, and by the next semester, UMW Girl Gains was up and running.

As one of the first 10 chapters of Girl Gains nationwide, we had the opportunity to truly be on the front of a movement. The club meets biweekly in Monroe 116, the same room Andrea and I first met in. “That’s Hana, that’s my bestie, that’s the Secretary!” While showing me around the room, Andrea points to Hana, her original roommate from Marshall Hall, and now an Exec Board officer for UMW Girl Gains.

“The coolest thing I get to see every single day is more and more women at the gym. That was the ultimate goal, and now I just want it to continue.”

Last March, UMW Girl Gains held a Ladies Lift Night at the campus Fitness Center, shutting down the weight room for an evening and holding women (and nonbinary, female-identifying) only lift night. The evening included stations for each lift, a yoga workshop, and instruction from certified trainers. During the event, Andrea was approached by the Director of UMW Campus Recreation (CRec), who recommended she applied to be the Program Manager for CRec the coming fall. “This is my office at Campus Rec!” Andrea spins around in the chair behind her desk, explaining her job to oversee all the programs at CRec.

Andrea and I talked for over an hour while we filmed her interview, but I swear the time passed in ten minutes. I don’t know about all of you, but I’m a big fan of the butterfly effect, defined by Meriam Webster as “a property of chaotic systems by which small changes in initial conditions can lead to large-scale and unpredictable variation in the future state of the system.” I’m not here to make this into a poem, or to tell you that simply meeting Andrea changed my college experience and my life. But I’m not not saying that.

If Andrea hadn’t been late to Psychology freshman year, hadn’t sat next to me, hadn’t brought me to the gym that first day in February 2020 when I squatted 5 pounds and was sore for a week, hadn’t joined Club Swim when I became Social Media Manager for the team, hadn’t given me pico de gallo that afternoon in the fall of 2020 when we talked on the back porch of her apartment, hadn’t had to idea to create UMW Girl Gains and hadn’t texted me… I’m not sure what would have happened. I like to think we still would have found our way here, to this room in Seaco, talking about her accomplishments anyways.

The last question I asked everyone for Unexpected Mary Wash, was what they wanted to take away from Mary Wash when we graduate. Andrea’s answer almost made me cry. “I feel like a lot of people thing that they’re just going to walk in, and be involved right then and there…” Andrea continues to emphasize the importance of saying yes, of making college an experience, and ends with the kicker:

“Wanting to feel like you have a community is not a bad thing.”

Andrea, thank you for creating a community for women in the weight room and across UMW. Thank you for allowing me to tell your story, for introducing me to your loving family, for asking me to be part of Girl Gains, and for sitting next to me in freshman year psychology. You said life and college are what you make it, and I know mine wouldn’t have been the same without you.

For questions, please contact tesswilhelm@yahoo.com