Jocelyn Gaucin

Hello everyone, my name is Jocelyn Gaucin. I am 25 years old and one of the Attorney Liaisons here at Brandy Austin Law. I was born and raised in the great city of Fort Worth and am fluent in both English and Spanish. My hobbies include reading, listening to podcasts and occasionally watching anime with my fiancé, Anthony and our pet cat, Mia. I take interest in baking, watching sports, and conducting physical activities.

Growing up, I went to grade school in both Fort Worth and Saginaw and graduated from Saginaw High School in 2014. While there, I became involved in many of the extra-curricular activities that were offered such as the marching band, yearbook, powerlifting and wrestling. Along with being involved in many things, I was also enrolled in all advanced placement classes. So, it was very safe to say I had to learn time management at an early age. Each extra-curricular activity taught me something different whether it be to never give up or to never back down from any challenge.

In 2013, during my senior year in high school and at only 17-years old I enlisted into the Army National Guard where I served a six-year contract as a Human Resource Specialist. Little teenage me had no idea what I had gotten myself into. Right after graduation I left home and arrived at Fort Jackson, South Carolina for my Basic Combat Training. What should have only been ten weeks of training, turned into twenty-one weeks as a result of not being able to pass the marksmanship portion. The amount of resilience I endured during this time still amazes me because having gone through all of that a second time was definitely not easy. After graduating from Basic Combat Training came the training for my job as a Human Resource Specialist. The duration for that was only supposed to be eight weeks, but due to not having enough people to start a class I had to wait another month to begin. When graduation for that came around, the only thing keeping me from coming home to Texas was passing the physical training portion. After going through all of that I was not going to let this get in the way of me graduating. So, whenever we had personal time you would catch me running at the track or doing workouts in my barracks. Ultimately, the day of graduation came and I passed my physical training test that morning by a few seconds which then made me able to fly home that same night. The duration of my time there in total was only supposed to be five months so I could have made it back to start college in the spring. Unfortunately, I was gone for eight.

When I got back home, I enrolled in summer classes at Tarrant County College as a Mechanical Engineering major. During this time I was very fascinated with the way machines worked and my childhood hero being Anthony Edward Stark (Ironman), I felt like this was the right degree for me. With only having obligations to the military one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer I thought I could be how I was in high school and take a lot of classes at once. Oh how I was very wrong. After a couple semesters of struggling in very challenging math classes, I made the decision to change my major. During my time at Fort Jackson, I became very interested in how the body moved and worked so my new major became Kinesiology.

 In May 2021, I graduated from the University of Texas in Arlington with my Bachelors of Science and with two minors. Those being in Law and Legal Studies and Disability Studies. After years of studying the biomechanics of the human body my mind began to feel burnt out and my attention started going elsewhere. At this time I was a year from graduating so whether to change my major again was definitely out of the question. Instead, I made the decision to accumulate minors in my most current interests. That being law and legal studies and disability rights. For an extra credit assignment, one of my professors informed us that if we went to the wheelchair basketball tournament there on campus we would get five points added to our overall point system. My professor, having had polio his whole life and being in a wheelchair himself, wanted to introduce his students to the adapted sports the University of Texas offered. After attending the tournament and being very impressed, I couldn’t believe that I had gone all my life without knowing the disability community existed. Later, I found out that the wheelchair basketball team at UTA was the most successful sports team, having won the National Championship countless times. However, even though they are very successful the University didn’t feel a need to have any funding for them since they are an adapted sport. That did not sit right with me, and I knew I had to get involved. My last semester there, with the help of a lot of faculty and staff, I helped co-found a student organization called Mavericks with Disabilities. This organization is for both students with disabilities and allies and its mission statement was to help promote community and equity at UTA.