When the last strains of "Pomp and Circumstance" faded in 1999, Victoria Gonzales was composing the next stanza of her life.

She would become the first member of her family to attend college. She would go to a university. She would graduate and become an elementary school teacher.

Yet, as an untold number of graduates learn, fate has a way of detouring the best-laid plans.

Four years later, the 22-year-old who was once so clear about her future had become uncertain, unemployed and uninspired after getting an associate's degree.

The circumstance is not uncommon for her generation, experts say.

During the 20 years she has worked with college students, marriage and family therapist Ellen Mayer -- who works in counseling services at California State University, Northridge -- has seen countless people Victoria's age paralyzed with indecision.

"People in their early 20s are certainly in a stage of finding themselves," Mayer said, "separating from their families and trying to figure out who they are. With all the pushes and pulls we have and all the choices that are available, it's not easy."

Those around them may need to be patient because each person is following an individual timetable, Mayer said.

"People take their own time and in their own pace find a direction that seems right for them," she said.

In between

Victoria's life-learning curve began almost on the day she graduated from Channel Islands High School in 1999.

She hated Bs, whether they were the Bs edging her grade point average below 4.0 or the Plan B she would have to adopt instead of Plan A.

"I hate settling for anything," she said at the time.

Plan A was to attend a four-year university, but her 3.68 grade-point average was not high enough to land her a scholarship to a four-year university, although she had been accepted to more than one.

The problem was, her family couldn't afford tuition. Like many other grads from working-class families, Victoria's parents made too much money for her to qualify for financial aid but not enough to send her to a four-year university.

"Scholarships are the only other recourse they have and they are so competitive," Ray Campos, head guidance counselor at Channel Islands High School, said at the time.

Victoria has said that, with the help of her counselor, she applied for many scholarships but nothing panned out.

Victoria is half Hispanic, a quarter Japanese and a quarter Hawaiian, but she said she couldn't find a scholarship based on ethnicity. She also said she didn't qualify for any money based on her athletic ability, after having played volleyball and basketball and run track in high school. Once again, she felt she was falling through the cracks.

Ultimately, her athletic ability offered a reasonable and affordable solution. When Moorpark College basketball scouts first recruited her, she was not interested because it didn't fit in with her plans, but now a community college was starting to look like the best alternative. She could always transfer to a four-year university later and begin to pursue her dream of being a teacher.

"I've always wanted to teach," she said back in 2000, "since I was in the fifth grade."

So, Victoria made peace with Plan B and enrolled in Moorpark College that fall.

In search of diversity

There, she learned how important diversity and a sense of community were to her.

She thrived on playing basketball for the Raiders but the fact that she was among only 30 percent of the students of color at Moorpark College made her feel conspicuous.

"I took it for granted how diverse C.I. (Channel Islands High School) was," she said.

The point was driven home for her one day when she looked around a classroom and noticed she was the only person of color in the room.

"The hardest thing to adjust to was the race thing," she said.

To make matters worse, gas prices were rising, so the commute was costing her money and something else she valued: time.

"I never got to see my friends, my cousins, my family," she said.

So, after one semester at Moorpark, she transferred to Oxnard College, which is a few miles from her home.

Back in Oxnard

Victoria flourished at Oxnard College. As a liberal studies major, she made the dean's list almost immediately, even though she was juggling Lady Condors basketball and a job at an Oxnard stationery store.

California State University at Channel Islands looked like it was going to open for sure, and Victoria saw it as a possibility.

"I don't have the money to go anywhere else," she said then.

During her second year at Oxnard College, she volunteered in a local kindergarten class. She still had her eye firmly on her goal of teaching elementary school.

Corine Reeber, the teacher in the Oxnard classroom where Victoria volunteered, was thrilled. Reeber believed Victoria was a natural teacher.

"She guides (the students) with positive reinforcement," Reeber said. "If they get something wrong, she doesn't embarrass them. She merely says something like, 'Let's take a look at this.' "

"I told her, 'I expect big things from you,' " Reeber added.

But after Victoria graduated with high honors from Oxnard College in 2001, her old nemesis Indecision made another visit.

The working jungle

Victoria took a few more classes at Oxnard College in the fall of 2001 so she could play volleyball, but she quit school altogether at the start of 2002.

She continued to work at the Oxnard stationery store full-time, then left in the spring of 2002 to accept a job at Mr. Rags, an urban clothing store in Ventura's Pacific View Mall.

Hip-hop music often pounded through the store as Victoria rang up purchases of items like belts with silver studs and T-shirts printed with sentiments like: "I have gone to find myself. If I get back before I return, keep me here."

She was still searching.

"This would not be my life career, but for now it's OK," she said that year.

That spring, the frustration that had taken root at her 1999 commencement was growing. Her plans to attend a four-year university and become a teacher seemed to be veering off-course.

"Since high school I've been undecided and it really bugs me," she said then, plucking at the arm of a sofa where she sat in the mall. "I'm still at the same place I was in high school."

She was also starting to complain about appearing in the newspaper. She didn't like the way she looked in photos and she didn't know why the Star was interested in her "boring little life," as she put it.

She didn't answer the Star's phone calls when we contacted her in December 2002, necessitating a visit to Mr. Rags, where she agreed to do an interview.

By then, she was working as an assistant manager but, she said, "I don't want to work at the mall for the rest of my life."

Customer service was also giving her some cruel lessons in human nature. The aspiring teacher who had been so gentle with kindergarten students learned some people could be abusive. One angry customer ranted that her name on paper "means more than our lives," Victoria said.

Her academic plans seemed to dim with her faith in human nature.

Although her parents were urging her to enroll at the newly opened CSUCI, Victoria seemed to have lost interest.

"I don't want to stay around here," she said. "If I do the college thing, I might as well do the whole 'living away from home' thing."

She wanted to make enough money to attend an out-of-county college, although she was living paycheck to paycheck.

Harsh realities

Mr. Rags closed over the winter and Victoria was laid off. She has been collecting unemployment and continues to live at home. She has never left.

"Her life is undecided right now," her father, Steve Gonzales, explained.

Victoria's parents provided the information for the final installment of our four-year series on four graduates because Victoria did not make herself available for an interview.

At no point during the past four years did she come out and say she didn't want to continue to participate in the series, but she made her feelings clear this time by failing to return repeated phone calls and by failing to respond to several messages left with relatives, friends and on her front door.

The Star's final attempt to interview Victoria was about two weeks ago, when her parents answered the door and invited us into the living room. But when her mother asked Victoria to come downstairs from her bedroom, Victoria declined.

Her parents confirmed that participating in this four-year project has been far from enjoyable for Victoria, now 22.

"The longer it went on, the more she didn't want to do it," Steve Gonzales said.

"I think she didn't think it would be so personal," Victoria's mother, Tracy, explained, when asked why Victoria didn't like it.

As for their own feelings about their daughter, both said they would still love for her to attend CSUCI, but she doesn't seem interested at the moment.

That troubles her father because hardly a day goes by when he doesn't regret not earning his college degree.

"It bothers me because there are people at work who are not as smart as I am, but they get paid more because they have a degree," he said.

Tracy Gonzales, a customer service supervisor who also did not attend college, has looked into loans and offered to put a second mortgage on the house to help send Victoria to college, but juggling the finances would be tough.

"We're living bill to bill," said Steve Gonzales, who works in receiving at a shipping company.

In 2001, a Thousand Oaks woman who preferred to remain anonymous read about Victoria in the Star and offered to pay Victoria's way to CSUCI, no strings attached, including lab fees, parking -- everything.

"I didn't want anything in return, except the hope of another college grad," said the woman, a former engineer.

But Victoria declined.

"I think she felt weird about it," Tracy Gonzales said.

"I would have taken it," Steve Gonzales said. "But I would have paid it all back."

Victoria wouldn't accept money from a stranger; she wouldn't even accept help from her own parents.

"She said, 'You shouldn't have to pay your own money for this. I should pay my own way,' " Steve Gonzales remembered.

No blueprints

If Victoria is feeling overwhelmed or uncertain, she is far from alone. According to experts, inertia and indecision about the future are common dilemmas for many people of her age and background.

Thousand Oaks clinical psychologist Priscilla Partridge de Garcia, Ph.D., was a high school counselor and for 27 years also ran the Oxnard College Re-Entry Center, a facility that assists adults who want to enter college from the work force. In addition, she has personal experience what it's like to be, like Victoria, the first member of a family to attend college. "It's really difficult because you don't know about college, financial aid -- the rules," she said.

Partridge de Garcia, now 60, attended the University of Southern California on a scholarship.

"Nobody could relate to me and how hard it was," she remembered. "They thought, 'Hey, how great; you're going to college on a scholarship!' "

A lot of people don't realize the social and psychological obstacles that confront those who are the first in their families to attend college, according to Partridge de Garcia. For example, she could relate to Victoria's sense of conspicuousness at Moorpark College because of her race.

"My first year in college, I called my mom every other day for the first semester saying, 'I don't think I can make it! I don't belong! I don't fit in!' " Partridge de Garcia recalled.

"I dressed funny and I didn't have the extra money to buy the right outfits to go to the football games."

She tried to work part-time her first year, but it was too much, and she almost lost her scholarship.

Partridge de Garcia also could relate to Victoria's unwillingness to accept financial help from her parents.

Although her parents never complained, "I married early because I knew what a financial burden I was to my mother and father," Partridge de Garcia said.

It was hard 40 years ago, but Partridge de Garcia believes the housing and employment market have made it tougher than ever today.

"If you are a parent or friend of a young adult of this generation, it's really important that you stick with them, see that they get their education, and somehow be able to buy their first home," Partridge de Garcia said. "And then they'll be up and running."

Student loans are a possibility for some in need, but that's a burden, too.

"Many of them don't want to borrow because they graduate from college with $50,000 to $100,000 worth of loans they have to pay off before they even start their lives," she said.

Parents of the first generation of college-bound students may want desperately to support their children, but they don't have the social network that many families of college-educated parents take for granted.

"They don't have the uncles, aunts or grandparents who might be able to loan them the money to get them through this, or co-sign (a loan) so they can make the next step up.

"It's a whole mindset when you have a whole bunch of people behind you saying, 'I don't care what you're going to do, you're going to get a B.A.!' " Partridge De Garcia added. "It's a whole different idea than people who are trying to support you and don't know how."

Solutions

The first step to getting yourself unstuck, Partridge de Garcia said, is to talk to somebody outside of the family, like a priest, rabbi, minister, career counselor, therapist or any adult "who can give them perspective about what to do."

If you are feeling paralyzed, it might be important to see a mental-health professional to rule out any psychosomatic disorders, such as depression, according to Mayer, the marriage and family therapist from Northridge. "With a clinical depression," she said, "it just sort of takes over the way a physical illness would."

No amount of willpower will help a person overcome a chemical imbalance, she said, so if the barriers in your life seem insurmountable, you could be suffering from a common and treatable disorder.

Next, experts recommend that you figure out exactly what you want to do, put your eye on the prize and focus every bit of your energy on whatever you have to do to reach that goal.

"If what you want to do is go to school and be a teacher and you need to pack groceries for the moment, then that's what you do," Mayer said. "It's not a career; it's a job, a means to an end."

Many resources are available to help in career decisions. The community college system, CSUCI, Cal State Northridge and California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks all have career counselors.

CSUCI counselor George Morton, who has a Ph.D. in counseling psychology, said he would talk to anyone about career possibilities. Even those who are not attending CSUCI but are considering it can visit the counseling center and check out resources.

There are career interest tests, job shadowing, internships and a research library of specific career information.

"It's set up by majors," Morton explained. "A student can look at a major and find out what job occupations will apply to that major."

When it comes to financial help, colleges all over the state have programs to help people from all sorts of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. It may involve walking into the financial office of that college, but it's there, Mayer said.

More often than not, each person's future is well within his or her control. "The bottom line as to whether they will succeed is more internal than external," she said.

Counseling professionals hope anyone who can relate to Victoria will come out from behind the door and, as Mayer phrased it, "put one foot in front of the other."