Success Stories

Meies Matz

Child Welfare Trainer, Portland State University
Educational ExperienceEducation
AA in Early Childhood Education
CSU: Hayward, BS in Anthropology with minors in Biology and Women’s Studies

Meies Matz spent most of her childhood in San Francisco, California, where her family owned a small house. “It was a big deal for them to own a house,” Matz says. “And it is. But the house is in Hunter’s Point, similar to Compton in L.A. Crime, prostitution, drugs—It’s a very, very, very bad neighborhood.”

In foster care twice before the age of nine due to substance abuse in her family, Matz attended a public school. At the age of nine, her mother married. “He wasn’t impoverished …My dad sent me to private school.” Matz remembers how difficult it was for her to adjust to a new environment. “There were a lot of things I had to learn…the learning curve was immense.”

When Matz was a teenager, her mother and the man she had grown to know as her father got divorced. Her family could no longer afford private school, but she was allowed to continue attending. “I couldn’t pay. I didn’t know that at the time. I only found out because they were apologizing for not being able to give me my diploma.” The counselors and teachers took Matz under their wing and helped her apply for college and scholarships. One paid for her to take the SAT’s. Another drove her to her interview at the University of the Pacific. Soon after, she was accepted at the university (all the colleges she applied to, in fact) and went there.

Matz always thought she would attend college. “It was very much talked about that [going to college] was expected of me as I was growing up. It was something that I was supposed to do.” Yet there was never a plan or a savings to help her get to college. “Often times in African American and Native American families there is one child that all the resources are given to succeed,” Matz says. “I was that one child, but no one understood how hard that was to navigate. We just didn’t understand all the parts.”

Despite receiving scholarships and work-study, “there were fees that I couldn’t cover…I had to leave the University of the Pacific.” Matz says she was very disillusioned when she quit school after one term. “I knew I wanted to go back, but I couldn’t afford it,” she says. “In all honesty, I just thought ‘I’ve missed my boat.’”

Meies Matz with her children

Matz married and had children. “It wasn’t until my son was one my dad said ‘maybe you could just take a class,’” she says. “I went to Portland Community College (PCC) Sylvania and signed up for a class.” Matz says her experience at the community college was “just awesome.” She got a work-study job in the computer lab and was able to take her children to the childcare center run by students. She received her AA degree in early child education.

She went to another community college in San Francisco to finish some more requirements and then returned to a university to receive her BS. “Once I got to the 4-year system, financial aid isn’t as helpful. It was harder,” she says. “Both times, being at 4-year schools is almost what made me say . . . this is too hard.”

Throughout her time at college, she had sick children, lupis, and a stroke at the age of 27. “There were a lot of times that I thought ‘I just can’t do this,’” she says. “Even though mentally I could do the work, I thought ‘I just can’t.’”

She did, though, in part because of accommodating teachers. “I was going to drop out of chemistry, and my teacher said why don’t you just bring your baby. So I brought my baby.” Matz remembers many similar instances—teachers inviting her to bring her children, mentoring her, and an Asian woman who was head of the anthropology department. This woman “just got it,” Matz says. She understood the dynamics of what it was like to be in a classroom where no one else looks like you.

Matz credits these people with helping her finish college. “I cannot tell you [the] sheer force [or the] number it takes to graduate one person,” she says. “I’m a success story but I couldn’t get here all by myself.”

Meies Matz with her husband and kids
at the legislative office in Salem

Although Matz is still the first in her family to go to college, others are beginning to hop on the bandwagon. “My brother returned to college two years ago, and he said it was because of me,” she says. “My youngest sister, she’s twenty now, is at the community college in the bay area. Slowly and surely, everyone is making it.”

Matz can list the ways that a college degree has changed her life: “I don’t have to worry about housing. I don’t have to move all the time or get kicked out as I did as a youth. . .I don’t worry at night. There are a lot of things that my [extended] family still worries about. I have three wonderful children who have no idea how lucky they are, who take it for granted that they’ll go to college. It’s a gift. All my children will go to college. It’s huge. It’s huge for me. My children are safe. They go to good schools. We were able to move because we wanted them to go to better schools. We’re very privileged—all because of a piece of paper.”