{"id":63440,"date":"2021-09-01T09:37:54","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T16:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=63440"},"modified":"2021-09-01T09:37:54","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T16:37:54","slug":"humans-of-flagstaff-maylee-acosta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/humans-of-flagstaff-maylee-acosta\/","title":{"rendered":"Humans of Flagstaff: Maylee Acosta"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NAU Communications sat down with the ASNAU president, Maylee Acosta, to get to know her on a more personal level. Read our questions and her answers below.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Q: Tell me about a significant childhood memory and how it has impacted your life today.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A:<\/strong> For context, I would like to share that I am a first-generation Mexican woman whose parents migrated from Mexico when they were in their teens.<\/p>\n<p>When my family would gather for birthday celebrations, sports games, achievements or anything of that sort, my cousins and I would go to the front yard and play a different version of hide and seek. We&#8217;d lounge around and wait for cars to pass by, the cars would be our signal to &#8220;hide.&#8221; Now, since we were all working<a href=\"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wordpresst\/uploads\/sites\/153\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/9957A22F-764B-4324-B262-4F6532605AF3_1_201_a.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-63441 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wordpresst\/uploads\/sites\/153\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/9957A22F-764B-4324-B262-4F6532605AF3_1_201_a.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"343\" height=\"236\" srcset=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2021\/08\/9957A22F-764B-4324-B262-4F6532605AF3_1_201_a.jpeg 730w, https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2021\/08\/9957A22F-764B-4324-B262-4F6532605AF3_1_201_a-300x207.jpeg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 343px) 100vw, 343px\" \/><\/a> together to hide from the cars, whoever saw the car first would alert everyone by yelling &#8220;La Migra!,&#8221; which essentially translates to the U.S. Border Patrol. As a kid, I didn&#8217;t really understand what that meant, I just knew that &#8220;La Migra&#8221; was someone or something we should run away and hide from. I always knew that when I &#8220;grew up&#8221; I would dedicate my life to help others. At first, it was a way of making my family proud. But as I became more aware of the trauma and injustice people face and as I reflected on memories like this when I was a child, I knew I wanted to make my life one of advocacy\u2014especially for people who cannot speak for themselves.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q: What have you been most proud of this week?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A: <\/strong>I will be honest, at times it&#8217;s a little difficult juggling school, ASNAU presidency and RA duties. I have been working on setting boundaries and I actually stuck with one all the way through. And it was my proudest moment this week. I woke up and did not answer emails until I was done with my class assignments. I get so many emails, and my habit is to view or respond as soon as I get the notification. It was a little difficult, but I think that&#8217;ll be my new approach. <a href=\"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wordpresst\/uploads\/sites\/153\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Athletics-Headshot.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-63443 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wordpresst\/uploads\/sites\/153\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Athletics-Headshot.jpg\" alt=\"Maylee Acosta\" width=\"188\" height=\"257\" srcset=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2021\/08\/Athletics-Headshot.jpg 1476w, https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2021\/08\/Athletics-Headshot-220x300.jpg 220w, https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2021\/08\/Athletics-Headshot-750x1024.jpg 750w, https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2021\/08\/Athletics-Headshot-768x1049.jpg 768w, https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2021\/08\/Athletics-Headshot-1125x1536.jpg 1125w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 188px) 100vw, 188px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\nQ: What is your favorite way to spend a day off?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A: <\/strong>I love to listen to random YouTube videos while I craft, clean or take a walk. It&#8217;s my favorite way to reset and I end up learning random cool facts, like: Yuma is the world&#8217;s producer of lettuce in the Winter time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q: What are three things on your bucket list and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A: <\/strong>Travel for a month to somewhere that has water (beach, lake, waterfall) without responsibilities. I really like playing in water and listening to waves crash. But I also wonder how life would be like if I just relaxed for a month. Go to the Grand Canyon. At this point it&#8217;s embarrassing to say I haven&#8217;t visited but I&#8217;ve lived in Arizona my entire life. Learn how to ski. I&#8217;ve snowboarded before and absolutely fell in love with it. I would like to try skiing next!<a href=\"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wordpresst\/uploads\/sites\/153\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Me-with-Gma.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-63444\" src=\"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wordpresst\/uploads\/sites\/153\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Me-with-Gma.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"280\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Q: What is your philosophy in life?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A: <\/strong>I remind myself everyday of the privilege it is to be living in the United States. To remind myself (because sometimes I get lost in my own little world), I carry a picture of my grandma (who had shared her dream about becoming a nurse but had to drop out in the fourth grade to help her mom at home) and a picture of a trip I took to Mexico to visit family (many of whom tried to pay for my dinner even though they were struggling to feed themselves). It&#8217;s truly insane to think about how many people in the world are struggling, so I make sure to be grateful that I am not.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q: Why did you decide to get involved with ASNAU?<a href=\"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wordpresst\/uploads\/sites\/153\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ASNAU-Senate.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-63442 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wordpresst\/uploads\/sites\/153\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ASNAU-Senate.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"411\" height=\"308\" srcset=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2021\/08\/ASNAU-Senate.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2021\/08\/ASNAU-Senate-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/402\/2021\/08\/ASNAU-Senate-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 411px) 100vw, 411px\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A: <\/strong>I first got involved as a freshman in the New Student Government (NSG). This was the natural thing for me to do since I had been involved with student and city government my entire life. However, as I learned more about the organization, it&#8217;s impact and the diversity of the people in the office, I fell in love with the team dynamic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"search-results-excerpt-link\" href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/humans-of-flagstaff-maylee-acosta\/\">NAU Communications sat down with the ASNAU president, Maylee Acosta, to get to know her on a more personal level. Read our questions and her answers below. Q: Tell me about a significant childhood memory and how it has impacted your life today. A: For context, I would like to share that I am a&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":63445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1817],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humans-of-nau"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}