"Most of them hit ninth grade thinking, 'It's not for me.'"
April 26, 2016 10:48 AM   Subscribe

"Students who are new to America or lack college-educated parents often don't know how important college is. They don't know their options. They don't know that the sticker price isn't necessarily their price. They don't know how to choose schools and apply for college and financial aid. They also lack the support structure that can keep them on track." Guiding a First Generation to College [NYT]

NYT: First-Generation Students Unite
A professor once described how hardships become inscribed on one's body, and Ms. Barros thought of her father, a janitor at a home for troubled boys, and the wrinkles carved in his face from worrying about money and her mother's health. Majoring in sociology, she says, "has made me hyperaware of class differences here."

Weary of trying to pass as middle class, Ms. Barros decided to "come out," borrowing the phrase from the gay community. She joined and now leads the two-year-old Harvard College First Generation Student Union, which has 300 on its email list. "This is a movement," she said. "We are not ashamed of taking on this identity."
HuffPo: Navigating the College Financial Aid Process: Unique Challenges for First-Generation Students
In some cases, it is particularly difficult to get parents to file taxes early or even on time. This puts a lot of stress on the parent-child relationship. In addition, many parents do not have a traditional single job - they will work several jobs with the accompanying multiple W-2s, 1099s, etc. Some parents have jobs, for example, in construction or even in recycling cans and bottles that sometimes do not provide income verification. Finally, students often have to initiate the gathering of government assistance documentation, which can sometimes be overwhelming and typically is difficult to discuss.
WaPo: Guilt is one of the biggest struggles first-generation college students face
Although perhaps supportive of higher education, their parents and family members may view their entry into college as a break in the family system rather than a continuation of their schooling.

In families, role assignments about work, family, religion and community are passed down through the generations creating "intergenerational continuity." When a family member disrupts this system by choosing to attend college, he or she experiences a shift in identity, leading to a sense of loss. Not prepared for this loss, many first-generation students may come to develop two different identities – one for home and another for college.
Delaware News Journal | Opinion: First-generation college students are not succeeding in college
Everyone loves the story of a disadvantaged kid getting a full ride to college, maybe because people see money as the greatest barrier to higher education. But often that's not true. Even when students manage to cobble together scholarships, loans or gifts from relatives or churches, once they actually get into college, they typically find they have a whole new set of unanticipated barriers: academic, social and cultural, as well as their own internal self-doubt.

These challenges are magnified when a student is the first in their family to go to college.
Programs, organizations, and initiatives designed to assist and advise first-generation college students:
I'm First!
Students Rising Above
First Generation Student (previously)
Upward Bound (part of TRIO)
Sallie Mae Scholarship Search
Saving, Planning and Paying for College
Tips for First-Generation College Applicants [NYT]
First Generation Scholarships for First in Family College Students
posted by amnesia and magnets (25 comments total) 49 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh, the things I did not know as a first-generation college student. It cost me years and thousands of dollars. And this is as a student who got 5s on five AP exams - I started college with sophomore status!

I didn't like high school because I thought they treated students like a bunch of clods, and I thought I would love college because I would be free to pursue my own interests. I did not love my first year of college. I basically dropped out for four years. I eventually finished my BA at age 26 at a college I would never have applied to out of high school.

I guess I'm a first-gen success story: I have a Master degree, I'm a PhD candidate at one of the better public universities in the country. I spend a good chunk of my time talking to children of family friends, children who are also going to be first-generation college students. I was my younger sister's university navigation advisor. I help my friends get through the bureaucracy that seems to set up endless hurdles if you don't have endless time to devote to it.

It's really frustrating to have to keep conveying the message that 'college is at least 50% jumping through hoops' to the smart, motivated first-generation students I know. You still have to take the dumb-as-hell required speech class. If your instructor is a putz, you still have to abide by their putzy-ass standards if you want to pass. It's not about how good you already are at writing or doing math or whatever - you have to do it in the specific way that the class is requiring.

The discipline to not flip off an instructor or administrator and say 'fuck it' forever is one that is not intuitive to people whose friends and families have quit jobs in such a fashion. And to pay for the privilege of being condescended to? Tough sell.
posted by palindromic at 11:09 AM on April 26, 2016 [20 favorites]


About 30,000 students from poor families score in the top 10 percent on the SAT or ACT college entrance exams and yet don’t go to selective schools. And nearly a quarter of low-income students who score in the top 25 percent on standardized tests never go to any college.

So wrong.

I was a first-generation student, too, at a time when there was very little consciousness about it, and no special programs or services. It was sink or swim. Imagine my surprise during my first year, when I mostly sank. Thank goodness, I gradually got it figured out, but it was extremely confusing. Like palindromic, I've had lots of academic success since then, but it was by the seat of my pants, not because of preparation. I think my parents, who were very proud to send me to college, also thought it was going to be about the life of the mind and freedom to pursue my interests, when of course, that's far from the truth. I didn't know, for instance, that there were different kinds of colleges, or why a state university would be different from a private liberal-arts school. We also had zero awareness about how to approach the applications process, and so my school choices weren't super-informed. Once I got to school, I didn't really know how to do college: like, time management, studying, the idea of a "syllabus," why you might want to join student groups and do leadership work. It was a lot to learn.

I've started to become more interested in this and other class issues that impact educational outcomes, so much so that I'm thinking my next big volunteer commitment might be to mentoring college-bound first-gen students.
posted by Miko at 11:33 AM on April 26, 2016 [5 favorites]


I'm not sure if it's referenced in the above links, but the This American Life episode Three Miles did a good job of illustrating the struggles of kids who don't have a "you're going to college, young person" support system in place.

From the woman who was a really bright girl who gave up on her plans for college after one school turned her down, to the kid who got a Posse Scholarship -- a program designed to help first generation college goers succeed -- who couldn't hack it when he got there.

It made my heart hurt, and made me grateful for the parents that I was born with.
posted by sparklemotion at 11:42 AM on April 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


I spend some time every fall helping seniors who will be first-generation college students apply to college -- filling out Cal State or University of California applications, helping write or edit personal statements[*], doing FAFSAs.

It is notable that in the Cal State application, at least, there's a section detailing whether or not you'll be the first generation to go to college. The guidance counselor I volunteer for explained to me that a program at some of the Cal State colleges will provide first-gen students with extra resources specifically for handling the social, logistical and administrative situations.


* I got into the volunteer gig because I was asked to judge a scholarship essay contest & it was screamingly obvious who had help from adults at home and who was writing it on their own, in their second or third language. "This seems like a rigged system," I said, and now I'm working with a local high school.
posted by sobell at 11:47 AM on April 26, 2016 [11 favorites]


Short-term, just to add on to what Miko and Palindromic wrote, as a first-gen student not only did I not know how to go to college, I realized I didn't know how to go to high school, either. Of course I figured that out too late. That cost me a tremendous amount in work, struggle, money, and opportunity. And to this day I still feel like I haven't caught up completely, that I'm still lacking somehow or still behind - although what, I have no idea. I suspect it's some kind of impostor syndrome. (Except for networking and connections - that was, I think, the most surprising thing to learn and see in action when I started rubbing elbows with those in a different and higher educational/financial class than me.)

Long-term. . . I'm eager to read the WaPo article about guilt. My parents wanted me to go to college and were so proud I did so. But I'm also treated like I've "betrayed my roots" by doing so. It's obvious that just as much as I don't know how to deal with this change - still - my family doesn't either. (My grandparents on one side had 15 grandchildren, and I'm the only one who went to college.) I knew college would give me better and more opportunities for my future. I had no idea what it would cost me in terms of my connections to my past, family, and background.
posted by barchan at 11:56 AM on April 26, 2016 [6 favorites]


'm also treated like I've "betrayed my roots" by doing so... I had no idea what it would cost me in terms of my connections to my past, family, and background.

This is a very important notion, too. I have an acquaintance (who ironically I met in the private liberal arts college we both finally managed to land in) who has studied this issue extensively through the lens of his own experience coming from poor communities in Philadelphia and going to prep school with lots of affluent, privileged, mostly-white students, and what that has meant for his relationships and life trajectory. He's a filmmaker, and did this documentary about it: The Prep School Negro. It still screens from time to time on various campuses.
posted by Miko at 12:02 PM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


I was a first-generation college kid but sometimes I forget that fact.

Despite neither of my parents going to college themselves, we were solidly upper-middle class in the 80s. My dad had a really, really good job in a typically white-collar industry (though he did start as a blue-collar worker and very decidedly lower class economically). So I knew how to "get along" socially but I had no idea how to *be* in college.

I only applied to one school, the one I went to for high school band camp for four years. It was close to home, it was familiar, and it was a state school. I have no idea if I would have been accepted anywhere else. I suspect I would have been, but I never even tried and no one pushed me.

I eventually graduated (after flunking out and getting my shit together and getting back in), worked for a while, got married, and started grad school (at a fairly prestigious university) but ultimately left my program, ostensibly because I had a child but really because (and here I admit something for the very first time, ever) I didn't think I could succeed. So I have this bachelor's degree that is useless (the field it's in really demands post-grad work) and it's like 19 years later and I'm "stuck" in an administrative position (I love my job, but it's not what I thought I'd be doing) because I didn't know how to succeed. There weren't any programs for first-gen college students back then.

My father still kind of thinks I'm a failure, in that I don't "use" my degree and maybe he's right. I have to think that things would have been at least a little different if anyone else in my family had gone before me. I was a resource for cousins and siblings but I was the one blazing the path and it was hard. It was really, really hard.

My oldest kid is now a freshman in college and my husband and I have been helping him navigate the system. Sometimes he panics about the strangest stuff, but I know it's because he's only been alive for 19 years and although technically an adult, he just doesn't have the experience we do. So we help him. But my parents wouldn't have known what to do, even if I had asked for help.

I'm glad the resources exist now for first-gen students. I wish they had existed back then.
posted by cooker girl at 12:25 PM on April 26, 2016 [11 favorites]


BTW, thanks for this post, a&m. I had no idea there were so many resources out there now, particularly volunteering to help first-gen students out. I definitely want to do that! I've already found some good programs here in Colorado, including a few colleges involved with the I'm First program you linked.
posted by barchan at 12:40 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


The sheer difference between high school and college is, I think, one of the greatest metaphorical whiplashes in American society. Even for people who don't have to suddenly switch from living with their parents to living on their own, it's a shift between:

A) Academic environment that (for smart kids) is 90 percent just showing up and absorbing information, then walking down the hall and doing the same thing five to seven times a day, surrounded by pretty much the same people, in a system designed to move 90-plus percent of people through at the same rate.

B) Academic environment where you may be studying with someone who literally wrote the textbook (and is almost certainly at least capable of writing the textbook), in classes that you might not share with anyone you know and are scattered all over the place in space and time, in a system that only slightly cares whether you're on the correct track toward graduating, much less moving on to the next step, whether grad school or a job.

There is no way to prepare for that. At best, you'll have a family or other support structure that can help cushion some of it.
posted by Etrigan at 12:41 PM on April 26, 2016 [12 favorites]


This is a reason I try really hard to give students the benefit of the doubt about things that are generally assumed knowledge - e-mail etiquette, deadlines (within reason), university bureaucracy - and give as much and as detailed information about how you go about doing things as I can in my classes. So much of college success is knowing how to work within a rigid system, and I try to bend that rigidity for kids as much as I can, or at least make the steel pileons holding that system together as clear and obvious as possible.
posted by ChuraChura at 12:41 PM on April 26, 2016 [8 favorites]


I think this is a hard problem to tackle because a lot of today's university administrators may themselves be first generation university graduates, but a lot has changed since they graduated. My parents were both the first generation in their families to go to university, my mother an immigrant who didn't speak english as her first language and my father coming from a rural background. My wife was the first in her family to graduate university as well. But I think they had it easier than these kids do in some ways - costs were much, much lower. They attended schools that were close to their homes and were also very high quality. There's wasn't nearly the admissions arms race there is now. My wife put herself through school and I recall when we were able to pay off her student debt which was a not-very-stunning eight thousand dollars or so. But she certainly had her struggles with the basic existential issues of "what am I supposed to be studying? Where is this taking me?" although she did fine in the end. I honestly should have asked those questions of myself, but for a bunch of reasons, including my family background, they never came up and everything turned out fine. (being interested in computers in the mid-80's seemed like a boring career akin to being an accountant and in the end, not so much)

My parents were pretty laissez faire, but they did numerous things to indicate to me that I was going to university - they took me on campus tours, that sort of thing. It makes a big difference.

Watching my own son apply to university this year I don't know if I would have made it through the gauntlet he's had to get through. Applying to many more schools, varying application processes, numerous hoops to jump through, much less actually going to school in the fall.

And as the linked articles indicate, moving out of the family home is easier for some students than for others for lots of reasons. If you're lucky enough to have a good university nearby, great, otherwise things can be difficult.

Finally there's a lot of generic privilege stuff wrapped up among all the rest of the specific issues related to university. I failed a senior-level course in my last year and it never occurred to me that I wouldn't graduate. I asked the department what I could do about it, I think my father may have talked to the department head, I re-wrote the exam (after much studying) and graduated with a "pass" in that course. I'm sure many first-generation students wouldn't be quite so blasé about it.

Finally (finally!) one that that has surprised me about living in the US after growing up in Canada is how many kids aren't going to college from my son's high school graduating class. I'm usually the first person to say that college isn't the only path and it isn't for everyone, but it surprised me anyway. No doubt my personal biases at play.
posted by GuyZero at 12:52 PM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


A lot of the frustrating KIDS TODAY grumbling that faculty and instructors engage in is actually just people being frustrated that students don't know the unspoken rules that we - who were really good at figuring out and rigorously following those rules, and probably had legs-up via family with college experience - just knew. Sometimes it's also unexamined class and racial privilege. The thing that brought that home for me the most was at a diversity training when I was an RA. We were asked what generation reader are you? and it was the first time I thought seriously about the fact that my classmates included people who were first generation readers, never mind first generation college students. It was incredibly humbling.
posted by ChuraChura at 12:52 PM on April 26, 2016 [15 favorites]


"This seems like a rigged system," I said, and now I'm working with a local high school.

For those who live near an 826 location, they help kids write personal statement essays and such for college applications, at least in San Francisco.
posted by GuyZero at 12:55 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


A lot of the frustrating KIDS TODAY grumbling that faculty and instructors engage in is actually just people being frustrated that students don't know the unspoken rules that we - who were really good at figuring out and rigorously following those rules, and probably had legs-up via family with college experience - just knew

Many of these people graduated college in the 1960s or the 1970s. Things have changed and not everyone seems to have even noticed.
posted by GuyZero at 12:56 PM on April 26, 2016


maybe because people see money as the greatest barrier to higher education. But often that's not true.

their parents and family members may view their entry into college as a break in the family system rather than a continuation of their schooling.

My nephew is smarter than many people I know, and fought through a welfare upbringing, and living in shitty subsidized housing with really bad, scary people, to go to college. He didn't have support to get into a four-year university, and so he applied to go to community college. The community colleges in his area were all impacted and he couldn't get classes. He ended up enrolled in three different CC's simultaneously.

And then his father (my lazy, good-for-nothing, gangsta-wannbe BIL) put the ban-hammer on his college attendance and told him that he had to get a job to support the family (while this shithead sat on his ass all day and refused to work; him quitting his last paying job almost fifteen years ago and refusing to work since was the reason the family went on welfare to begin with).

And now BIL has forced, through the kind of coercion that only parents can do to their kids, my early 20's nephew to open a business under his own name (and using his own credit, btw) in order to provide BIL with a job. It's heart-breaking, when we know how much we encouraged nephew to go to school, that we would help with applications, that we would pay for books, that we would provide an alternate place to live if home got to be too overwhelming.

The selfishness of family who don't want the status quo to change. It's awful.
posted by vignettist at 1:17 PM on April 26, 2016 [7 favorites]


My public school district has a "college-bound" program at the poorer high schools that starts freshman year, where they dragoon parents into coming to an evening seminar (where they provide dinner -- you must provide dinner) where they talk about the college admissions process over the next FOUR YEARS. Because really if you're starting senior year, as a poor first-generation college student, you're kinda screwed. This walks parents through the whole process, from what skills and classes their kids need to learn during high school and how to design their curriculum, to what the actual process during junior and senior year is (ACTs, FAFSA, applications, etc.). They have quarterly meetings thereafter where the parents can learn about aspects of the process or how to help their kids succeed, and the kids go learn about study skills or talk with college admissions counselors. Because, yeah, you can't assume kids know how to pick classes in high school to go to college, or that they have to start aiming that direction freshman year, or what study skills they need to pick up.

If they go to the state system, or the local community college, they get handed off into the first-generation programs there, which is helpful in terms of immediately being on the radar and immediately getting the social and scholastic supports.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:35 PM on April 26, 2016


It's really frustrating to have to keep conveying the message that 'college is at least 50% jumping through hoops' to the smart, motivated first-generation students I know.

I would guess at least 75% of my students (at a community college on the poorer side of a fairly underprivileged border town) are first generation college students. I feel like I tell them "it's because that's how this game is played" about a million times a semester. I do my best to be their advocate, the guy who explains where the rules can be bent and where they can't, but for a lot of them it's an almost unmanageable adjustment from their high schools. (Where, according to their reports, they got passing grades just for showing up and there were no enforced deadlines. That story is consistent enough, both from people who liked it that way and people who were frustrated by it, that I've come to believe it.)

You still have to take the dumb-as-hell required speech class.

ಠ_ಠ

/speech program chair
posted by Pater Aletheias at 3:02 PM on April 26, 2016 [6 favorites]


If they go to the state system, or the local community college, they get handed off into the first-generation programs there, which is helpful in terms of immediately being on the radar and immediately getting the social and scholastic supports.

At least until they start killing those programs in a perverse effort to help the four year graduation rate. (I'm looking at you, Minnesota. If kids never enroll, they won't graduate in five or six years instead of four, you see.)
posted by hoyland at 3:23 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


If they go to the state system, or the local community college, they get handed off into the first-generation programs there, which is helpful in terms of immediately being on the radar and immediately getting the social and scholastic supports.

One of the things that really hurt me for financial aid, I think, is that while my college bound peers had the study time to do AP courses, extracurriculars, volunteering, and summer time programs like math/science camps, junior/summer year abroad programs, etc., I was working. I had a 20 hour a week job since junior high and full-time in the summer. But if I wanted money to pay for things like college applications/SATs (I sure as hell never could afford a college visit though) I needed a job, and if I wanted to stay after school I needed a car (no public transportation and parents couldn't do it), and if I wanted a car I needed a job. It was really depressing seeing a lot of those big blank spaces on various scholarship and financial aid applications.

But the community college was immediately helpful. I still had to work my ass off with a "real" job(s) to do it, but due to getting a really good track record there with some good recommendations and learning the system I received the scholarship funds to get my B.S. at a much better college than the one I was originally headed.
posted by barchan at 4:09 PM on April 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


as a first-gen student not only did I not know how to go to college, I realized I didn't know how to go to high school, either. Of course I figured that out too late. That cost me a tremendous amount in work, struggle, money, and opportunity. And to this day I still feel like I haven't caught up completely, that I'm still lacking somehow or still behind - although what, I have no idea.

Yes, me too. So much. My parents always encouraged me and - even were able to save a little - for me to go to college and they never backed down from that and were always proud of me. But once I decided to take the plunge? I was on my own for everything. From applying, to finding financial aid, to picking and scheduling classes, to getting books, everything. My parents supported me but were limited in the help they could offer as they hadn't been through it themselves. Luckily I somehow found my way through the system with a combination of: the experience and wisdom of friends (many of them older than me); a knack for being resourceful (i.e. being able to identify and utlilize the help and programs available to me); and no small amount of dumb luck.

Not to mention the fact that I probably wasn't well prepared for college because I didn't really know how to do high school for various reasons - none of them the fault of my parents - (learning disabilities, etc). So I hadn't really developed the habits (like study skills) that I needed for college. I remember talking to a friend of mine after graduation and telling her I wanted to try college but I was scared that I wouldn't be able to do it - how would I manage to work enough hours to pay my rent and bills and also find time to study and get good grades? I was convinced I would fail. And she said "you know, millions of people have done the exact same thing you want to do and they all made it. You'll be fine." And though it was probably an off-the-cuff comment for her, it was very literally that very encouragement that propelled me through my first couple of scary years at a community college, where I was able to get some scholarships and grants (including a scholarship for first gen college students), make my way onto the dean's list and eventually transfer to a small, private four-year school, where I was invited to be the RA for a student living program that was just starting out and has since gained national prominence.

I still had to take out loans to pay for the tuition and I worked two jobs my entire way through (as a nanny and a waitress, including my one year living on-campus as an RA, for which I got room and board). I just paid off my first loan last year, have another that will probably be paid off this year, which will leave only my big one (around $25k left on it) remaining.

I graduated in 2000 and feel incredibly fortunate that I was able to do all of this before college got so insanely expensive and job prospects so tight. This is why I am such a HUGE advocate for community colleges, without which I never would have been able to attend college. Because opportunities for education shouldn't be down to having a strong support network and/or dumb luck (both of which I had), not to mention the financial ramifications that make it so untenable for so many.

I thought we had had a great FPP here within the last few years about a NYT op-ed that someone (maybe Tom Hanks?) had written about community colleges, but I can't for the life of me find it right now. It made me really proud to have gotten my start in a community college, where I encountered some of the best and most dedicated professors I've ever had. And also grateful for the advice given to me at the time by people I knew, who told me that if I put my mind to it, I could a great education at pretty much any college, but there was nothing smart about burdening myself with crushing debt before I've even really started off in life to do so.

Community college granted me access to a life and a future I never could have imagined because I'd never really seen or experienced it while growing up, and they've done the same for millions of other people. I will always, always support them.
posted by triggerfinger at 6:06 PM on April 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


I worked on projects for a school in one of the poorest parts of Los Angeles, where none of the kids had a family member go to college before. The average grade level completion of the parents was around 8th grade.

The school's mission was to get kids ready for college. What we found was that getting them in to college was the easy part. These kids were bright, motivated, had amazing teachers and counsellors, and were the type of potential success stories that colleges want. We sent kids to the Ivy League, top liberal arts colleges, to the UC system, Cal State, and the city colleges.

The real challenge was keeping kids IN school. Some of the stuff we learned:

Common experience is huge in college. People describing even lower-middle class life to our students made them feel like total aliens who didn't belong. One example, in one class in liberal arts college in the Northeast, people had to go around the room and talk about "Summer camp experiences," which is something our student had only seen in movies. She excused herself to go to the bathroom and didn't come back to class. The embarrassment and outsider status is very hard to overcome. She actually ended up graduating but uses that story to show that even someone like her, who is a huge success, couldn't cope with the transition at first. Kids needed a lot of preparation for the kinds of people they will meet in college and the type of stuff they are expected to be conversant in, depending on where they're going.

Another one of our kids, totally brilliant, got a full ride to a UC. He got a housing stipend too. But when he got there, he had to choose between books and food and trying to go out with new friends, as his family couldn't contribute anything, and he hadn't applied for a school job in time. Our counsellors hadn't realized what the true expense of attending a school and hadn't applied for cost of living grants and other things. He wanted to leave, our ex-principal loaned him money for books.

One story we heard all the time was a kid goes to school and is actually doing well. Then he comes home for the summer and gets a job. Now the family is dependent on this summer job income and pressures him hard to stay and not go back to school. It's very hard for these kids to say no to their parents, who have struggled so hard to leave their country and come to the US.

The school has refocused to think about the right school for each kid, and how they can get students to complete college and not just attend college. Even if you have someone brilliant who gets accepted to Harvard, they may have a grandparent who needs care, or they may not be ready to live away from home, and a local school might be the right choice.
posted by cell divide at 6:44 PM on April 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


You still have to take the dumb-as-hell required speech class.

ಠ_ಠ

/speech program chair


Nothing personal, I swear! I definitely believe speech class can be a worthwhile inclusion to academic curriculum. Unfortunately, my experience of it at my (urban, heavily-commuter, heavily-non-traditional student) undergrad institution was not good.

My experience was talking - over a period of years - with my fellow students who were taking or had taken the same required speech course that every BA student had to take. It was an extremely easy A, which is not a quality I appreciate in higher education. In hindsight, I feel a lot more empathy for the very nice adjunct instructor, who did seem to want everyone to gain something from the class but was probably also motivated to see that nearly everyone pass.

The speech class was certainly not unique in that respect - there were music classes, intro to computers classes, writing classes. Overly basic classes like that* led to a lot of my friends growing disillusioned with the value of higher ed, while also highlighting the opportunity cost of taking classes. If you don't fully believe in the value of the end product - getting that degree - those classes are harder to put up with because they are eating up money and, more importantly, time.

*I do teach now, so I have some understanding of the challenge of constructing a class that works for the very wide range of student abilities inherent in a single class that all BA students must take, the cost of failing students, and so on, but I'm speaking strictly from my perspective as a student.
posted by palindromic at 7:08 PM on April 26, 2016


The difference between my kid's readiness for college, with parents holding 4 degrees between us, and my preparedness, coming from the enlisted side of Air Force bases, is remarkable. I didn't have a clue, picked a major on a lark, didn't know how to study, and ended up on academic probation before I got a girlfriend and a clue and got my act together. It's debatable on what came first, the girlfriend or the clue, but I married the girl so there is that.

Meanwhile my son is graduating magna cum lade in two weeks, and his younger sister is doing even better as a sophomore.

Growing up in the DoD school system probably saved me, as they were academically rigorous enough that I was able to skate by for two years without failing out out, before I got serious about school.
posted by COD at 7:54 PM on April 26, 2016


This essay about college really helped form my thinking in the matter and seems highly relevant.
posted by Cozybee at 9:39 PM on April 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


so much so that I'm thinking my next big volunteer commitment might be to mentoring college-bound first-gen students.

If anyone is interested in this kind of volunteering and happens to live in Chicago, a friend of mine mentors for the Chicago Scholars program and says it's really rewarding!
posted by misskaz at 7:03 AM on April 27, 2016


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