“And it’s hard to ignore that it feels like summer all the time.”
A guardian angel sent her to earth on the day she was born.
On April 29, exactly three days after Fabiana Corcina was born, her grandmother on her mother’s side passed away. In fact, Fabiana’s delivery date was supposed to be on the 29th, but as it turns out, she had other divine plans.
“My family on my Peruvian side, they thought I was a little angel sent from my grandmother to protect my mom,” she says.
Born to a Peruvian mother and a Puerto Rican father, she grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico –– but that is not the only home Fabiana knows. For someone who has moved around a lot in her life, she had to find her own definition of home. Sometimes home is not the place you rest, but the place where love lives –– where people are.
“Puerto Rico will always be home in the sense that it is a very big part of who ‘Fabiana’ is,” she says, her eyes sparkling. “But now, as I grow up, I’ve noticed that home is really where my family is and wherever they are, it’ll feel like home.”
For the first 14 years of her life Fabiana was an only child, the only thing she had ever known – then, on one fateful day, she found out she was getting a little brother.
“My brother being born completely changed my life,” she says. “I went from being an only daughter my whole life to having this new being that was there.”
It was a time period characterized by confusion and an influx of emotions, she says. It also changed her life for the better, having a new family member to love fiercely. And love fiercely, she has. Fabiana’s younger brother Lucas was born in Japan, where she temporarily resided with her father and step-mother following Hurricane Maria. Forced to leave everything she knew behind, she welcomed a new family member.
“When he was born, I noticed that I wanted to be better because I wanted him to see someone he could look up to,” she says. “Not necessarily following the same steps that I do, but I wanted him to see me happy and doing something that I love and him to aspire to the same thing.”
When she found out her step-mom was pregnant, she did what any typical teenager would do: cry. Both excitement and fear came at this revelation, feeling disbelief that an actual human will be born and it will share the same blood as her. Lucas was born in the early hours of May 11. The day her life changed –– for the better she says. Just like Fabiana, Lucas came at a chaotic time –– but their births signify something great, something significant, in their families.
“He’s a huge part of who I am,” she says. “Lucas is only six years old, but I’ve learned so much from him that even some classes haven’t been able to teach me as much as he has.”
Fabiana speaks to Lucas on the phone every week. She says she cannot go more than a week without talking to him. In spite of the age gap between them, she says he is her best friend in the world.
Island of Enchantment
“Puerto Rico will always be my crib. It is memories. It’s where I grew up. It’s where I had all the big things happen. My first acceptance letter was back home. I graduated back home. I had my prom back home. I took my first steps back home,” she says, placing the way she views her upbringing now.
Puerto Rico is famously known as Isla del Encanto –– the island of enchantment. Composed of six islands, Puerto Rico is an archipelago with mountains, peaks, valleys and beaches, bursting with culture and people who Fabiana describes as very “service oriented.”
“You feel loved, even if it’s people that you just met once or twice, they stop and hug. So, there is definitely a very affectionate culture here,” she says.
If people were seasons, then Fabiana would be summer –– she radiates a certain type of warmth and radiance that is rare to come by. She greets people exclusively with hugs, making sure to give a compliment while she’s at it. She makes people feel seen, feel loved, and you can’t help but not smile at her smile. She says people in Puerto Rico have “constantly happy syndrome” – which may or may not be because it is summer all year round in Puerto Rico. Regardless, Fabiana is a true product of her environment, and it is a place she is so proud to be from.
“I get to live somewhere so full of joy and love and bright minds and leaders and musicians and people with so much more to give,” she says.
Moving to the U.S. by herself was not necessarily an easy transition, however. Even though Fabiana had moved many times throughout her life, this was the first time she was moving by herself. Mental health is a lot more stigmatized in Puerto Rico than in the U.S., which is something that she had to unlearn herself. There is such a large difference between the way people treat mental health in both countries, she points out. While she knows the U.S. is not perfect in that regard either, many people in Puerto Rico struggle to reach out for help.
“[Puerto Ricans] don’t like when people say, ‘Oh, I have anxiety or I have depression, because yeah, girl, you just haven’t gone out, or you just need to read a book or you need to sleep’ –– It’s not taken as seriously,” she says.
By her second year, she had reached out to her parents and expressed feelings of unhappiness. Luckily, her parents encouraged her to get therapy, something which she is grateful for. Without their support, she says she doesn’t know if she would’ve been able to face getting help. The topic of mental health can be a taboo topic in Puerto Rico and Peru when it comes to discussing the subject so many don’t admit the help they need. People who struggle with mental health tend to feel oppressed and shunned by society because it isn’t looked as health but a privilege at times.
“I think that moving to the US, although it was hard, it definitely shifted my mentality on many things –– it just helped me grow into who I want to be,” she says, citing moving to the U.S. as the place where she was able to treat mental health like health.
When the Winds Pick Up
Before Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico in 2017, Hurricane Irma hit the island just two weeks prior, flooding many towns and homes, including Fabiana’s.
“When it was announced that hurricane Maria was coming in – it was going to come at level five –– and everyone was terrified. They didn’t think that island would survive it,” she recalls.
In the anticipation and impending doom of Hurricane Maria, the two decided to leave since they could no longer risk staying. Those two weeks drastically changed the island and left the island reeling at the ache of the devastation.
“Schools didn’t have running water –– they didn’t have light, they didn’t even have roofs, they didn’t have room sometimes –– because Maria took everything in its path in Puerto Rico, and the management of resources was really, really poor,” she says.
Thousands of Puerto Ricans died. It was a dark time for everyone on the island, for her family, for her friends, for Fabiana. Puerto Rico is still feeling the effects of the hurricane, still recovering, seven years later.
“The beauty of Puerto Rico is that people do see the light in the darkness,” she says, recounting the time her best friend said that despite how difficult that time was, it also built the strongest sense of community, and there is something to miss about that.
“She would say, ‘I don’t miss having necessities that weren’t met, but I do miss not having technology and just going over to my neighbor and riding bikes to get water or playing card games with candles,’” she says. “They went back to such a primitive kind of mentality of just being able to talk to your neighbor and knock on the door and do something because you don’t have anything else to do.”
Puerto Rico had to build itself up from the brunt of the hurricanes. It is one strong island, and it is because of the resilience of the people, Fabiana says. A strong will that she carries herself. Even when the government failed the people at certain points, it was people helping each other that salvaged the island ultimately.
“After we recovered a bit more from Maria, it came to light that there were wagons full of food and water that had perished and were never distributed,” she recalls. “That started a lot of protests against the government because people saw their fault –– many more died than needed to die because they didn’t properly share those resources.”
This also inspired her to one day work in law, as she says she does not want to be complacent in a system that allows people to suffer unnecessarily ––she has seen too many people suffer because of greed, because of money, because of selfishness.
Looking Towards the Future
“I am a ‘huge ambition and list’ kind of girl,” she says. “I have a list of things I want to do, and once I get them done, I start fresh and get new goals to achieve.”
The only time Fabiana attended the same school for four years in a row was high school. Before starting high school, she had attended roughly 11 schools. In her freshman year of high school, she began dual enrollment at the University of Puerto Rico. Academics is highly emphasized in Puerto Rico and in her family, Fabiana says, which is something that she has definitely taken with her. When it came to choosing a college, she had the whole world to choose from –– figuratively and literally. Following in her mother’s footsteps – who also left her home country of Peru to study in Puerto Rico – she took the leap and decided to only apply to schools in the U.S.
“My mom was primarily my biggest advocate for studying in the U.S., and I was like ‘you know what, I’m gonna do it, it’s going to work out,” Fabiana says.
Suffice to say, it worked out. After getting waitlisted by her dream school University of Texas Austin, she and her mom took a tour of Penn State and fell in love instantly. She began her Penn State journey as a dual major in marketing and computational data, but decided to switch to just marketing and complete her masters in something STEM related instead, as she still wants to explore both business and STEM and equally dedicate her time to both.
“I definitely am more focused on the giving back portion, hopefully making a difference here, and kind of leaving my mark. Having that forward thinking, of what’s to come and setting precedent for what could occur,” she says.
As a student, she shines: she has been an at-large representative in UPUA, Smeal student mentor, DEI director of the business fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi, director of public relations and speaker consultant for TED Talks at PSU, among others.
“I got into so many organizations, all kinds to foster that diversity, equity and inclusion,” she says, “Coming from Puerto Rico and going into a very different culture – very different world –– definitely impacted me a lot, and I wanted it to be easier for the next generations to come.”
When she says this, she is thinking not only of herself, but also of Lucas. In a way, this is all for him, as someone who is a part of the future generation.
“Maybe Lucas in 10 to 15 years would want to come to Penn State, and I’d want him to be more aware of Latinos and diversity and for the place to be more inclusive of people that are like me who are not from this area,” she says, acknowledging the struggle of what it is like going to a predominately white institution and wanting to commit positive change. For Fabiana, she wants to utilize her education and leave an impact –– an impact that will be felt.
She will graduate this spring, completing her degree in three years. Fabiana plans on going to graduate school in the U.S. and getting her masters in a STEM field. Sometime after that, she wants to attend law school and get her J.D. to one day work in immigration law. And then? Well, there is nothing holding her back to create the reality that she has always worked towards.
“I want to be able to be a part of something bigger than just myself,” she says, smiling, knowing it will happen because she makes it happen – something no one can ever take away.
