Meet Reka
Rogreka Clayton is one of the inaugural cohort of Passaic High School graduates who helped launch More Than Bootstraps, a college access and success program, in Passaic, NJ, in 2020. As one of the college student Leaders in MTB, Reka served as a “near-peer” mentor to three of her younger peers, high school students in Passaic. When she began working with these students, she was a junior in college and her mentees were juniors in high school. Now, Reka is a proud, first-generation college graduate of William Paterson University, and her mentees are poised to graduate from high school and go off to college themselves.
Rogreka, who grew up in Passaic, is proud to be a first-generation graduate of two immigrant parents from Jamaica. No one in her family went to college, but her family prioritized her pursuit of higher education.
Reka knew she wanted to focus on athletic training in college, but she had to filter out a lot of outside noise about the college search as well as communicate her plans with her parents who thought college meant Harvard or Yale or NYU. She chose William Paterson for its athletic training program but also because it was a good fit in size (not huge, not small), far enough from home so that she could be on her own and learn things about herself, but still close enough that she could commute. William Paterson also offered Reka the best financial aid package. Reka felt lucky to have parents who supported her, even though her chosen career path was unfamiliar to them.
As a graduate, Reka wants to develop herself as an athletic trainer before transitioning to physical therapy school.
Reka joined More Than Bootstraps as her way of giving a piece of herself back to Passaic, a place that is very special to her and has provided her with many opportunities. Reka recognizes the “tremendous impact” MTB has had both on her mentees.
She feels as if she has had a professional relationship with her mentees, but she notes that she has been like an older friend to them, which she feels has made working towards the goals that they are achieving significantly easier. As Reka notes, for her, it was only a few years ago that she was in their position: “A lot of the things they are experiencing, I [still] experience. Me being there for them has helped them recognize that they have help and they have opportunities that they can go out and grab.”
Reka also recognizes how working as a mentor has helped her to grow. For example, when her Fellows were juniors, she stressed the importance of time management (having a journal, a planner, not working endless hours) because it was something she was grappling with. She emphasized with her mentees that without good planning and prioritizing, you might lose sleep, lose family time, or find that you don’t have as much energy for things that are important to you. Talking about time management with her mentees, Reka realized that she was also applying that idea to herself and noticed how much smoother everything was going in her life.
Reka sees MTB as a great starting point for first-gen, low-income students beyond Passaic and hopes the program will grow. As Reka says, “sometimes it really just takes more than bootstraps to get started.”