Some students know what it's like to have to work and go to school.
The stress, the lack of sleep, the coffee bill - it gets debilitating. Unfortunately, students in Cuba have it worse.
Teresa Dovalpage - a former professor in a Cuban university and UNM student - has published a novel with an inside look the Cuban education system called A Girl Like Che Guevara.
From the tender age of 11 or 12, Cuban children have to go to what they call "school in the field." Once a year, the government requires that they work in the citrus and coffee bean fields on the outskirts of Havana for 45 days.
When they reach high school, they must work for three years in the tobacco fields, spending half their day in the field and half at school.
"You're not paid at all," Dovalpage said. "The parents really don't have a say because if the students don't go to school, they have no right to go to the university. You have two records in Cuba. Your educational record and your political record. If your political record is no good then they don't let you into the university."
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The political record includes things such as military marches, government demonstrations and the so-called volunteer work of field labor or construction.
"The living arrangements are just barracks, and the food was never very good," Dovalpage said. "One latrine for each barrack and the showers didn't always have curtains on them."
According to Dovalpage, fights broke out between the students often. There were 10 instructors to supervise 500 students. There would also be sexual relations between students and professors, and between the students themselves.
"You have to keep in mind that this is the first time a lot of these children are being separated from their families," Dovalpage said. "With so little supervision, a lot of things can happen."
When Dovalpage lived in Cuba, she also had to undergo this program. The program lasted from 45 days to three months per year every year until she graduated high school.
"Now they go for all three years of high school, though they still can go home for holidays," Dovalpage said. "And I think every 15 days they get to go home for a weekend."
Bad food, hard work and one latrine per barrack are what every cuban student ages 11-18 has to live with.
"Nobody thought about protesting really," Dovalpage said of when the program was first started in the 1970s. "Nobody really can question things in Cuba. We just do them."
A Girl Like Che Guevara focuses on the system as Dovelpage experienced it. It follows the experience of 16-year-old girl named Lourdes who shuns the old ways and yearns to be like Guevara.
The work tackles issues of Santeria - the African-based religion centering around the worship of Yoruban deities and the Catholic saints - sex, race and class. The harsh realities of the work camp force her to question her ideals and ask herself why she wants to be like Guevara.
Dovalpage also has a collection called Posesas de La Habana, or The Possessed Women of La Habana. It has the voices of four women from a 90-year-old woman to her 12-year-old great-granddaughter.
