My parents dropped me off at college with 2 trash bags which contained my clothes and various 'supplies'. They said good luck and left.
I worked an average of 3 jobs while attending classes full time. If I lived at home in the summer I was responsible for paying partial rent and one utility bill (they had 6 kids)
I chose to attend graduate school realizing that a bachelors degree would not be enough to rocket me out of the poverty I had grown up in.
My parents could not and have not ever provided me with any financial support.
I stole my books when I could.
I'm actually sick of screaming about the massive disadvantages that a first-generation college student has when you have no money. If I had chosen a career selling my soul in business I would be making tons of money. But then I look at my sister who became a nurse and she continues to struggle with some kind of poverty mentality (despite how optimistic and deteremined we actually are as people) But the thing that comes up again and again is the lack of emotional and financial support that parents with college experience and money can give to their kids.
I am at that point now in my adult life where I am ready to knock over the little fat girl who knocked me over to get the pink tutu leaving me with the ugly, lime green tutu...I am ready to make and take my choice instead of pretending to be happy and grateful for the leftover, used, stale crumbs of existence.
What We Can Learn from First-Generation College Students
Rising to the challenge of the unfamiliar
Posted Jul 16, 2012
First-generation college students — undergraduates whose parents did not attend university — have reason to be proud. They’ve made it, against daunting odds. But once they get on campus, many of these individuals struggle. First-generation students “are more likely to encounter academic, financial, professional, cultural and emotional difficulties than are students whose parents attended college,” writes Teresa Heinz Housel, an associate professor of communication at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, who studies this population (and was herself the first in her family to attend college). More than a quarter of low-income first-generation college students leave after their first year, and 89 percent fail to graduate within six years. The number of these students is growing — nearly one in three entering freshmen in the U.S. is a first-generation student — and so is interest in helping them succeed. The practices researchers have identified can be useful for all of us embarking on endeavors for which our background and experience have not prepared us.
First: Know what you don’t know. First-generation students are often not prepared for university-level work — but they believe otherwise, reports Karen Boden, a researcher at Azusa Pacific University in California. Her study of first-generation Latino students, published in the Journal of Hispanic Higher Education in 2011, found that the participants perceived themselves as academically prepared, even though they frequently lack the skills and knowledge of the offspring of college-educated parents.
Second: Figure out the unwritten rules. First-generation college students don’t simply lack the learning of their more privileged peers. They also arrive on campus without skills that other students take for granted, like knowing how to take notes and how to participate in class. Housel, the author of Faculty and First-Generation College Students: Bridging the Classroom Gap, notes that she, like many newcomers to university life, had to learn about “what conversational topics were appropriate for dinners with professors, how to make an airline reservation, what outfits were appropriate for professional interviews,” and other crucial but unaccustomed aspects of collegiate culture.
Third: Make connections. First-generation students feel less support, both emotional and informational, from their parents than do continuing-generation students, reported Susan Sy, a professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, and her coauthors in a recent study published in the Journal of College Student Retention. In these cases, research shows that social connections, whether it’s a mentor who’s a professor in the student’s area of interest or a study group of students with similar backgrounds, are essential to academic success.
Fourth: Embrace a new identity while preserving the old one. First-generation college students are often less involved in extracurricular activities than other students. They may be more likely to work outside jobs and to commute rather than live on campus, but they also may feel isolated or alienated by an unfamiliar university environment. Building bridges between home and school, old friends and new ones, is key to ensuring that the first generation to arrive at college departs there with diploma in hand.
Read more about the science of learning at www.anniemurphypaul.com, or email the author at annie@anniemurphypaul.com.
This post originally appeared on Time.com.