Today we’d like to introduce you to Daisha Smith.
Daisha, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Growing up, I always had a passion for dancing. My mom told me that ever since I could walk, I was practically dancing. At the age of two, my mom enrolled me in dance classes and I was immediately hooked. I went on to perform at amusement parks, festivals, and parades. Fast forward to twelve-year-old Daisha. I received a scholarship to attend a hip-hop dance camp that was hosted at CSU Channel Islands for an entire week. I remember being so excited to go because I would be getting to dance all day every day, make new friends and stay on a college campus. I really did enjoy myself during that week and I pushed myself to try new things that I would have never sought out to do on my own, for example–breakdancing. During one of the classes, the dance instructor was teaching us how to do a freeze which is when you put all your weight on your hands and head and have your feet and legs in the air. I remember my arm becoming swollen and I thought it was just inflamed from continuously trying to achieve a freeze. On the last day of camp, my family came to watch me perform in our final showcase. I did the best I could with my swollen arm. After a few days, the swelling did not go down and my mom was concerned so we went to the doctor and that’s when my life took a dramatic turn. The doctor recommended that I get tested for arthritis because my mom had it too and I was showing symptoms of it. Turns out that I did, in fact, have arthritis, Rheumatoid to be exact, which is the worst possible one to have. Mind you I was only twelve years old and in the seventh grade. It was a tough adjustment and I even had adults tell me that I was too young to have arthritis and that I was faking it. Two years later, I was also diagnosed with Lupus which is an auto-immune disease that affects your white blood cell count thus making it harder to fight infections. Lupus affects everyone differently and for me, it attacks my internal organs the most. Now, in high school, I did really well managing these diseases. I was still dancing, on two dance teams as a matter of fact, and had really good grades. At times, it didn’t even feel like I was living with Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
SDSU was my dream school because they had a Foods & Nutrition major and it was the perfect distance away from home where I could still go back to attend my doctor’s appointments. I met such amazing people and was truly happy with the decision I made to attend SDSU. However, classes did get a little stressful and I must admit I wasn’t taking my meds as faithfully as I should have been. I was just trying to fit in and be like everyone else in college, drinking and partying. That’s when it all started going downhill. College had been a rollercoaster of constantly dealing with hospital visits along with trying to manage the stress of difficult classes. Every semester that I have been enrolled at SDSU, I had been hospitalized for at least one week and had to miss class and often important exams and assignments.
At the beginning of my junior year, I was not even sure if I would be able to graduate on time and walk across the stage in May 2020. Later that semester was when I first learned about the Interdisciplinary Studies (IS3D) major. I met with my major advisor under the College of Health & Human Services and she brought to my attention that if I switched into IS3D I could choose the classes that I would like to take from three different disciplines and it would allow me to still graduate on time. From that moment on I started crafting my own individualized major. I decided to keep Foods & Nutrition because it was the reason I chose SDSU in the first place. I added Kinesiology and Africana Studies as my other two disciplines. I wish that someone would have told me that this was an option sooner in my college career because maybe I would have been more successful from the start with actually being enrolled in courses that I was genuinely happy to be in and wanted to truly learn.
All was well again until the end of November 2018. I went to a beach bonfire with some friends one night and my fingers got so cold that they started to turn blue and were numb. I tried to warm them up by running them under warm water but nothing seemed to help. Even after a few days, they did not make any improvements and seemed like they were getting worse so I called my family and they came down to San Diego to take me to the hospital. Little did I know that that first trip to the hospital would set the tone to how the next six months of my life would go. The doctor’s diagnosed me with Raynaud’s Phenomenon which is a condition resulting in discoloration of the fingers and/or the toes after exposure to changes in temperature. This was common for patients with Lupus. My fingers on my right hand kept progressively getting worse and worse. I was on heavy pain medications and at one point I received botox shots in my wrist in an attempt to try and reopen the blood vessels in my fingers. Fortunately, it worked for the majority of my fingers however one was too far gone and I had to have part of my ring finger on my right hand amputated in March 2019. I remember being depressed during this time of my life and I felt that I was never going to feel like the old Daisha ever again. After the surgery, I remember being nervous to look at my newly deformed hand. When it came time to take off the bandages, I cried because this was something new for me. But things got better. By the end of April, I ditched all ties with the gauze and resorted to only having to cover my fingers with bandaids. One day, I just decided to leave the house with my fingers not covered at all and I haven’t looked back. I am proud of what I went through and have overcome it as a new and stronger version of myself.
What should we know about your business? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
My favorite job that I have had during my undergrad here at SDSU was being a mentor for the Harambee Scholars Mentorship Program now known as the Henrietta Goodwin Scholars Program. Being one of the only three sophomores hired as a Harambee Scholars mentor in 2017 allowed me to grow together with my mentees as they were only a year younger than me. We learned how to navigate through SDSU as young black students and I value my first mentees more than they will ever know. They showed me what it means to be a good mentor. My next year of being a mentor, I had more experience and took on a new group of fresh faces. It was important to me to never lose contact with the previous year’s mentees because a mentorship should never end. I just wanted all of my mentees to be successful and thrive in whatever they set their minds to. My last class of mentees this year has been given access to the Daisha who is almost finished with her college career and is now seen as someone with a credible reputation who knows the ins and outs of what it is like to be a black female student at SDSU.
Do you have a lesson or advice you’d like to share with young women just starting out?
It is okay to set your pride aside and ask for help when you need it. When they say, “a closed mouth doesn’t get fed,” that it real and they mean it. I was a shy person and did not like letting others see that I couldn’t do certain things on my own but once I learned that just because I needed help didn’t mean that I would be looked at differently, new doors opened for me and I have built stronger relationships that I value.
Contact Info:
- Email: dsmith9216@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daishasmith_/
Image Credit:
Akil Adisa – @raresight.photography
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