South SFV Today

Christian Sanchez’s life is notably busy. A typical day for the father of five involves getting his children ready for school, managing their schedules, including doctor’s appointments and extracurricular activities, planning dinner, and helping run a bustling household. Amid all of this, he works on his Stanford degree.

“A lot of people ask how I do it,” he said. “And I'm like, ‘I don't know, man. It's a day-by-day kind of thing.’”

For the past three years, Sanchez and his wife, Anna, have been raising their family on campus while they complete their bachelor’s degrees – he at Stanford and she at the University of California, Berkeley. Between school, careers, commuting (for her), and family obligations, it can be hectic, but Sanchez is proving that he’s built for the challenge.

In June, he will graduate from Stanford with no intention of slowing down; he was recently accepted to graduate school and has big plans for his career. Getting to this point has been a long journey for Sanchez, who was once a high school dropout facing personal and financial struggles.

“My experience at Stanford has been a blessing,” he said. “It's been a complete ‘180’ from life as I experienced it before.”

Sanchez grew up in San Diego where frequent moves and financial challenges marked an unstable home life. He attended three high schools before dropping out due to a lack of direction.

“High school is where everything kind of fell apart and I dropped out,” said Sanchez.

He spent several years wandering aimlessly through life working random jobs and struggling with substance abuse until 2014 when two drug overdoses and a traumatic car accident nearly ended his life.

Figuring out a career plan wasn’t easy. Sanchez briefly attended culinary school and considered becoming a paralegal but neither path worked out. He and Anna later opened a Mexican restaurant that was popular but struggled to run the business effectively.

“We didn't know what we were doing,” Sanchez conceded. They were forced to close the business which was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

With little money, no formal training or education, few job prospects, children to support including one with autism, and living in public housing, Sanchez reached a breaking point.

“I remember thinking, ‘I'm tired of living like this. This is terrible,’” he recalled.

Sanchez returned to school and completed his high school degree. He enrolled at community college where he joined Puente (“bridge” in Spanish), which supports underrepresented students pursuing college. He excelled academically became student body president ended his drug use and in December 2020 earned an English degree.

“That was the first time I can recall my mom ever saying she was proud of me,” Sanchez said.

Since joining Stanford in 2021 life has been intense for him. He was elected vice president of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) in his first year majoring in English while pursuing an undergraduate honors program and a minor in education at the Graduate School of Education where he helped conduct research on student experiences with college transfer credit evaluation processes. He also found support at FLISCC working as a transfer coordinator and as program coordinator for THRIVE pre-orientation program for first-gen/low-income students.

Outside the classroom Sanchez lives with his wife in a large campus apartment raising four of their five kids ages 14 12 10 and 8; their oldest daughter has left home. Managing everyone’s daily needs is like “putting pieces of a puzzle together” but he’s learned to navigate it effectively.

Growing up at Stanford has influenced his children who now talk about school colleges they want to attend and future career paths regularly.“The little one wants to be a doctor,” Sanchez said beaming.“Had we not come here I don’t know if they would be who they are now because before this we never had conversations about school or college,” he said.

This marks a significant shift from Sanchez's own upbringing which was not happy but his hard work towards education has translated into better parenting instilling purpose in his children that he lacked growing up.“There's no handbook to parenting but I do my best to make them happy individuals,” he said.Acknowledging the role education played in transforming his life Sanchez aims for a career in higher education having deferred enrollment into two graduate programs until next year while Anna finishes her degree aspiring eventually to become president of a community college system expressing gratitude towards supportive staff particularly former Provost Persis Drell former Vice Provost Susie Brubaker-Cole Samuel Santos associate vice provost inclusion community integrative learning.“They’ve been very supportive academically professionally” stated “I don’t think I would’ve had same experience elsewhere”.