Chaparral 2024-2025: Living in Your Golden Years: An Interview with Psychology Student Jahkara Smith

Jahkara Smith’s journey to GCC, like many students, was one of both challenge and discovery. 

Originally from the St. Louis area, Jahkara always loved school and saw it as a safe space for endless learning. From a young age, Jahkara had a culturally and racially diverse family and background and wondered about the “science of people”. After her family moved from East St. Louis to the St. Louis suburbs, she found a renewed energy for exploration without the pressure of inner city life. East St. Louis, once a booming Midwestern industrial city, would slip into poverty and employment after 1970. This environment did not have the space, greenery, and resources Jahkara needed to fully grow.

But what comes next? After high school, the military seemed the only viable way to fund Jahkara’s academic pursuits. Upon discharge, Jahkara secured a job in Los Angeles but the pandemic would pause much of her future planning. Fast forward to 2023, when she began looking at schools for transfer to finally start her educational future.

Jahkara was aware of Glendale Community College in terms of location (it was so close!) but knew almost nothing about its values, mission, or history. After comparing GCC to other local colleges, GCC’s suburban community appealed to her as a refuge from the density of Los Angeles, a reminder of the safety of St. Louis past.

Informed by watching adults with differing personalities in her life respond to crises, Jahkara chose to major in Psychology at GCC. As she grew as an adult, making hard decisions for herself prompted her exploration of human behavior and its relationship with our individual, familial, and community values. 

But, her first term at GCC, armed with little knowledge of what to expect, presented a major challenge: Math class. As a society, research tells us that women and girls are often signaled to underperform in STEM or are completely discouraged from pursuing scientific interests based on problematic gender stereotypes. For Jahkara, having struggled in Math previously and not receiving the positive or encouraging support from teachers continued her doubt of achievement.

Thankfully, Professor Sora Oh, “who is incredible”, provided a learning space that would completely transform Jahkara’s experience with Math. Prof. Oh reciprocated the energy and effort of her all students. Her ability to teach to the spectrum of students in Jahkara’s Math class buoyed Jahkara to an A and only increased her confidence for later classes.

With her new outlook as a GCC student, Jahkara searched for other opportunities to engage. For her, prioritizing peer community as a tool for learning emerged immediately. She continually engaged deeply with professors to show her peers that the classroom can be a place of collaboration and safety when many students have no other such spaces. She recognized early that many students feel apprehensive about speaking to professors because of our role in their grades and overall academic success. For Jahkara, there is beauty in a classroom where students can thrive as facilitated by caring educators. She likens her GCC class experiences to a garden bed; seeds of knowledge are planted, no one gets left behind, and students grow as interlocking vines and plants blooming together in real time. 

That time and space, she shares, has been essential to her learning and to the success of her peers. As a student, she mentions the struggle of the 8-week course and how instructors must grapple with classroom dynamics, personalities, and trying to teach content effectively. Generally, she would like to see much more experimentation around facilitating spaces for students, specifically giving more time in a semester to foster peer community.

Even with so many positive experiences at the college, Jahkara has also encountered spaces on campus that were not welcoming and threatened her growth. In Spring 2024, she considered leaving GCC, feeling unsafe and needing security in her mental health struggles. 

However, just as before, a GCC Professor, this time Dr. Michelle Calderwood, would inspire her to stay and revive her motivation as a student. It was with Dr. Calderwood’s encouragement that she would also become a leader in the System-Impact Individuals Student Organization, supporting formerly incarcerated students in their own journeys at GCC.

Aside from finding her place in the classrooms and student spaces of GCC, Jahkara’s personal journey is as varied as her academic interests. In 2017 or 2018, as she can’t exactly recall, Jahkara posted a contouring video that would then go viral under the moniker “Salior J”. After being “adopted as a nepo baby” by the internet, she was offered a chance to audition for an acting job. While the industry is a fun and engaging experience, she finds difficulty making sense of the focus on fortune and fame. She particularly finds the hierarchical nature of the business and its documented abuses of power off putting and in direct opposition of her need for safety and space to grow.

This reflection allows Jahkara to explore other ways of expressing herself, specifically through writing her first published book! Her book of essays, currently untitled, will be a response to her favorite feminist literature including bell hooks, Love of The Wolf by Helene Cixous, and the Declaration of Sentiments. As a content creator, Jahkara sees the influential rise of #tradwife and other extreme ideologies on young women online. She, as an author, seeks to infuse whimsy back into the conversations with her peers and people in general. Using essay, novel and verse, Jahkara plans to explore topics of anger, sexual appetite, creative expression, and isolation as a cultivation tool to find yourself.

As she continues her journey at GCC and her growth as women in the world, Jahkara would like to remind her fellow students and peers that “You are the value here” and that value is not determined by your institution or your accomplishments. You should find your space to be appreciated and safe.” In these trying times, we could all use and remember Jahkara’s wise words.