A Cuban from the municipality of Florida, in Camagüey, shared on TikTok her winding academic and professional journey before emigrating to Galicia, Spain, in a story that mixes humor and honesty about the unexpected twists that shaped her life on the island.
Leyanet Franke, who publishes under the username @leyanetfrankedelp, opened the video with a warning: "sit down because this looks like a Netflix series and has more plot twists than a Mexican soap opera."
Her story begins in elementary school, where she acknowledges that mathematics nearly defeated her from the start. It was in fifth and sixth grade, thanks to good teachers, that she started to improve. In middle school, she managed to get by without much recognition, but with aspirations.
At the end of that cycle, she wanted to study Teacher Training, but some friends convinced her to attend pre-university. "There's always a friend who comes to change the course of your life," she said with a laugh.
In high school, he set a new goal: the pharmaceutical industry. "I could already see myself creating medications and discovering important things for humanity," he said. Unable to pursue that career, he enrolled in Chemical Engineering through a modular course format, a semi-presential option where students attend only on Saturdays.
The problem was twofold: he lived in Florida and had to travel every weekend to Camagüey to attend classes, and upon returning to his municipality, he had no classmates to review the material with. "Who did I study with? Nobody," he recalled.
The final blow came from Calculus. "Calculus and I had a toxic relationship: I would look at it and it would look at me, but neither of us understood what the other was doing," he described. "When calculus came around, my brain would shut down like a blind."
At 18 years old, aware that his mother spent money every weekend on trips, he made a difficult decision: "Although I liked the major, I knew that with math I wouldn't even reach the graduation door." He dropped out of university in his first year.
What followed was also far from linear. Her first job was as a secretary at an agricultural company. Then she spent eight years working in the hemodialysis unit of a hospital, a profession completely different from everything she had studied or dreamed of.
Today, she lives in Galicia, where she dedicates herself to making cakes and publishing content on TikTok. As early as January of this year, she had shared videos about the things she hasn't adapted to in Spain and the mistakes she made upon arriving in the country.
"My academic and professional journey hasn't exactly been a straight line," Leyanet summed up at the end of the video. "It was more like a roller coaster without a seatbelt. But here we are, alive and kicking, now making cakes and videos for TikTok."
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