Faculty of Health student Lucas Quevedo sat down for a videotaped interview with the York University marketing team after finding out he had been randomly selected out of 5,400 entrants to win free first-year tuition.
Quevedo, a first-year psychology student minoring in kinesiology, thought he was being filmed for the York University Ambassador Program. But in the middle of a lecture, while being filmed, a surprise awaited him. “I saw … a giant cheque saying, ‘free tuition,’ and my mind was just blown for a good 10 seconds,” Quevedo says. “I was speechless.”
The idea to study psychology came from Quevedo’s father, who had observed his son’s natural ability to talk to people, an innate curiosity to learn more about them. When the two were looking for potential areas of study, his father told Quevedo he’d be an incredible psychologist. “I agreed with him, because I loved the idea of studying what goes on in our minds,” he says.
Quevedo chose York University because of the high national ranking of its psychology program, as well as its proximity to his home and two jobs. At York, Quevedo has already honed in on an academic focus: developmental psychology. “I really love learning about kids and how, when they grow up, their brain develops,” he says.
Learning about trauma in his classes, and how even the smallest amount of trauma can impact a young person or student, has already instilled in him a desire to create immediate positive change in his life and career. “I work as a swim instructor, so I work to create a positive experience in the water. We have a couple of instructors who couldn’t do that and who kind of created traumatic experiences with children. And it’s very important to me that these kids grow up learning in an inclusive and productive environment, as opposed to working in a negative and destructive environment,” he says.
As Quevedo sets his sights this year on pushing his grade point average to the fullest, he says the free tuition is a big help. “It’s just going to encourage me to work harder [and] it completely alleviates the financial stress on my parents and on me,” he says. “It means everything to me.”