National Vet Girls RISE Day is coming up on Feb. 19! With nearly 2 million women veterans in the U.S., the day celebrates the accomplishments & contributions of women post military service. If you are planning any stories highlighting local female veterans or Women’s History Month in March, I thought you might be interested in learning about Diana Cano, an Army veteran and Houston Community College student. More information about Diana below.
- A Katy, Texas resident, Diana served in the Army for 14 years. She joined just four days after graduating high school and worked her way up from an Army cook to a surgical tech at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
- She is currently earning her associate’s degree from Houston Community College, having recently taken time off from her 15-year career as a surgical tech. She’s excited about focusing on school and learning this year and plans to apply to a Clinical Lab Science program this fall.
- As an “older millennial,” Diana said that being a nontraditional student hasn’t always been easy, but she enjoys learning from her peers and their unique perspectives. “No one has it easy in school — even straight-A students struggle, and there are some strengths that I have that other students might not.”
- A first generation student, she credits Warrior-Scholar Project (WSP) with her successful introduction to college life, saying it helped her address imposter syndrome and “took the fear of failure out of my system.”
- An official partner with the Dept. of VA, WSP is a nonprofit that hosts immersive academic boot camps in partnership with some of the nation’s top colleges and universities. Diana attended WSP’s 2022 STEM academic boot camp at MIT. The program helped her effectively learn how to engage in a classroom, where she lacked confidence, by teaching her specific learning strategies utilized in a college setting to help her be successful.