Students from both campuses came together Feb. 11 to listen to Special Agent Jessica Triola share her path in fulfilling her dream of being in the FBI.
While students snacked on sandwiches and lemonade during the “Using Humanities Skills in the Professional World: How an English Major Became an FBI Special Agent” presentation, Noreen Rivera, an associate professor for the Department of Literature and Cultural Studies introduced Triola to the room of aspiring agents.
After earning an English degree at Texas State University and a master’s in international relations from St. Mary’s University, Triola said she worked hard to be a part of the FBI. She is currently the special agent applicant coordinator and recruiter at the San Antonio Division.
Stemming from her love of language, Triola, who has worked for the FBI for eight years, began her presentation with a haiku, “the right way always, leader with integrity, well-suited justice.”
While explaining the haiku, she started with the first stanza, which symbolizes that it is the duty of FBI agents to always do the right thing and uphold the Constitution.
“So, ‘leader with integrity,’ because one of the things that I really like to talk about, and I’m going to focus on today, is characteristics and competencies that make up special agents,” Triola said. “We’re evaluated on certain competencies throughout our career, and its applicants that exude the competencies that I’m going to go over, particularly leadership, that find success in obtaining a career with the FBI. And integrity goes without saying.”
Finally, Triola explained that “well-suited justice” represented the suits that FBI agents typically wear and the stereotype of an “unapproachable individual in a dark suit.”
“We are people coming from a lot of different backgrounds,” Triola said. “We all look different, we represent different cultures, different humanities that we’ve studied. … Everyone has to bring something to the table. But it’s different with everyone, I mean, we are not just lawyers, attorneys, accountants; we are people with unique backgrounds, unique skill sets. And having a diverse range of backgrounds is really what helps us work more effectively and serve the communities we work in.”
Triola began the story of her path to the FBI. She developed her dream at an early age after watching “Silence of the Lambs” as a child. Throughout her career as a student, she was always thinking about her goal.
“I thought, ‘Is this going to be something that the FBI is going to look at favorably? Is this going to be something that could get me in trouble for background investigation? Is this going to violate a policy that would allow me to get in?’” Triola said. “Those were always thoughts in my mind. So, having that goal set of ‘I want to become an FBI agent,’ even though I didn’t have a true picture of what it meant to be one, it’s something that I’m very grateful for and helped me, kind of, mold my path.”
In her undergraduate career, she didn’t have a high GPA, however, she emphasized the benefits her English degree brought her, and how it has constantly helped her career in the FBI.
“Especially as a special agent, everything that we do and document becomes testimonial in nature,” Triola said. “So, that means, we may do something today, but two years from now, we may be sitting on the stand in a federal courtroom explaining what we did and why we did it, just based on how we wrote something up. So, that has been really vital to me to comfortably and confidently write and document what I do.”
She urged students to plan their futures and seek out opportunities that would benefit them. She used her own experiences of reaching out to the police department for any chance to work with the law, until eventually she became a dispatcher.
“I really encourage you to seek out opportunities where you can get an idea of what it takes and what it’s going to be like working in a professional environment,” Triola said. “It may take a little more work to get one of those positions, maybe, like, an unpaid internship or volunteering your time.”
After she graduated from Texas State and was hired in sales at a local news station, she realized what she was doing was not meaningful to her. Triola made attempts to contact the FBI, until she eventually got in touch with the recruiter for the San Antonio Division.
After speaking with the recruiter, she decided the experiences and skills she had were not enough to make her competitive among the thousands of applications the FBI receives, fueling her drive to pursue her master’s.
“You have to have certain skills, qualities, experiences that are going to make you stand out in a crowd of thousands of applicants, which is what we get every year for the special agent,” Triola said. “We have 12 to 15,000 applicants a year on average and just about 3 to 5 percent make it through to special agent FBI academy class.”
After receiving her master’s, Triola worked as a juvenile probation officer to fulfill the requirement of working one to two years full time.
During the long process of applying to the FBI, she became pregnant with twins and was unable to do the FBI fitness test portion of the process. Triola had to put things on hold, but still wanted to get back on her path toward the FBI.
When she decided to continue her application process in 2010, Special Agent Triola was accepted into the Quantico training academy class of 2011, where they were taught legal training, interview-interrogation practices, defensive tactics, firearm trainings and more.
“So, the prize at the end of all of it was the 21 weeks of training at the academy,” she said. “You do not have to be a skilled law enforcement officer to go to the FBI academy. They want you to have unique skills that you bring to the table that they will utilize to supplement the foundation of knowledge that they’re going to teach you to be a federal law enforcement officer.”
Triola concluded her presentation by listing qualities successful individuals posses, such as “organizing and planning,” “stepping into leadership roles,” flexibility and adaptation to the situation, and being able to “communicate well” and “collaborate” with their peers and superiors.
“I mean, FBI stands for Federal Bureau of Investigation, but an acronym we officially and personally use as FBI is ‘fidelity, bravery and integrity,’” she said.
Carolina Bendaña, an English senior, said she always wanted to become an FBI agent and hoped to find information beneficial to her.
“I knew it took a lot to be an agent and all that, but the way she put it just made it seem, like, ‘Oh, keep working, keep doing what you’re doing, and you’ll eventually get there.’ So, it’s very motivational,” Bendaña said.
The Literature and Cultural Studies Recruitment committee was responsible for organizing the event. The committee hoped to show students there are viable pathways after receiving an English degree and plan to bring in several speakers throughout the academic year.
“I’m hoping I can bring in a lawyer soon,” Rivera said. “Well, I have one in mind but because it hasn’t come to fruition, yet, I don’t want to make any promises.”
Later that day, students interested in speaking to Triola, as well as five agents of different educational backgrounds, could attend, Coffee with an Agent, at Jitterz Coffee Bar from 4 to 6 p.m.
