Spotlight: Samantha Cuevas

Samantha Cuevas and Richard Reyes reconnecting at the PLUS ME Storytelling Center.

When Samantha Cuevas, a junior at Occidental College, met PLUS ME Founder and Executive Director Richard Reyes at an Oxy InternLA gathering this summer, she shared something unexpected:

"Your journal helped me get into college."

Three years earlier, Samantha was a rising senior at Upland High School navigating the college application process. During a Cal SOAP college prep workshop at Cal State San Bernardino, she received a PLUS ME My Story Matters Journal as part of an essay-writing session.

"I had ideas floating around, but I didn't know how to turn them into essays," Samantha recalled. "The journal allowed me to think about my life first before stressing about turning it into an essay."

The My Story Matters journal uses self-reflection tools, prompts, and guided activities to help students identify and articulate their experiences. For Samantha, this structured approach helped her transform her accomplishments into compelling narratives.

"I realized the college essay isn’t just blurting your achievements—you're telling a story," she said. She transformed her experience running cross country with asthma into a narrative about perseverance. She also wrote about her social anxiety for the first time, reframing it from a story of limitation to one of growth:

"Being able to really write about my challenges in the journal helped me acknowledge, ‘Yes, this is an issue, but how do I move forward?’"

Samantha Cuevas holding the My Story Matters journal she used to write her college essays three years ago.

The results were tangible. Samantha was accepted to multiple UC schools, including UCLA. And the self-awareness she built shaped not only her essays, but her college decision—she realized her preference for a quieter, more intimate campus experience, and committed to Occidental College where she now studies diplomacy and world affairs.

Samantha is now in Oxy’s InternLA program, where Richard Reyes visited as the cohort’s first guest speaker of the summer. When Richard shared his story and mentioned the journal during the workshop, Samantha immediately recognized the tool that helped shape her college path. Three years later, she still has her journal—a memento of her accomplishment: "I got into college. I was successful in that part of my journey."