What People Get Wrong About First-Generation College Students

[sanantone]

It's probably not as much of an issue now since almost every college and university has a decent website, but when I was about to graduate from high school, I also didn't know about application fee waivers based on income. Some colleges told prospects to ask about possible waivers right on the admissions page while others didn't advertise it.

[ReyMysterioso]

I went to a small, rural, podunk school in a factory town where the factory died (NAFTA). Our guidance counselor was mostly useless and got fired (along with the rest of the administration) the year after I graduated for cheating on a state competency exam.

My parents had never even seen a college. Other than my teachers and the town doctor and pharmacist, you basically didn't run into anyone who went to college.

The only teacher who talked about college was my English teacher who gaslit us constantly about how hard college would be compared to our "easy" high school experience. She described how little college professors care and will kick you out of their classes at the slightest infraction and are happy to let you fail. "They already GOT your money. They don't care." She made it sound like such a miserable experience that I said eff it, and put no effort into figuring out college.

I got into a relationship with somebody who did go to college (first gen) and followed her onto campus during an advising meeting. After listening to them talk a while, I got intrigued and said I might also be interested in college. The college advisor said, "Well... I mean ...I could give you a catalog." "Oh okay!" I thought it would be some kind of guidebook full of information and how-to. It was just a phone-book-sized printed raw catalog of every course in the entire college system. I didn't know what the heck a major was or a degree program or core or major or anything. I'm not even sure I understood there were different degrees back then. I could not make heads or tails of the catalog other than seeing all the really interesting different things there were classes about. "You mean you can study movies? And they'll grade you on it?!"

The person I was in a relationship with couldn't manager her money or manage her time. Got behind on studies. Got behind on bills. Couldn't catch up and ended up flaming out after a single semester. Saddled with compounding student debt, bad credit and no degree for years. To this day, she's never returned to college.

I've become friends over the years with very accomplished professionals with advanced degrees who had wealthy parents who'd also been very accomplished professionals with advanced degrees. They definitely knew what they were doing with education and career path WAY earlier than anybody I grew up with. I think a lot of headlines talk about how much monetary wealth disparity there is between classes...but I don't think there's enough headlines about the information and knowledge disparity between classes. I learned as a middle-aged person a lot about how to build pathways to opportunities and how to socially engineer connections. (Not necessarily for me, but the ability to get two people together who need to meet. Just the nuts and bolts of how things get accomplished.) Others from higher social classes often learn all that stuff much earlier.

I don't ever want anyone else to have the same experience I did, which is why I go out of my way to try and spread educational information, opportunities, etc on social media. And why I frequent this forum in the hopes of reporting anything that might be helpful to anyone.

Don't be fooled by the watch on my arm. I'm still, I'm still Jimmy from the farm.