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Looking back, after working for three years between finishing high school and starting post-secondary, I’m glad I took the year and a half that I did being both an upgrading and open-studies student before committing to a degree program. I probably needed the time to adjust to campus life.
Sometimes, I would wonder things that I feared would make me look stupid if I asked them out loud, like, “Rubric? What the hell is that?” On a quick side note, journalism school was fortunately quick to plant the bug in my mind that it’s OK to ask stupid questions.
Like all first-gens, I’ve never been given the wisdom of parents’ advice on making it through post-secondary life to fall back on. I only knew what I knew about campus life from Hollywood comedy flicks (not good), so I had to depend entirely on first-hand experience of what was expected of me as a student.
Bumps along the way happened, of course. Working too much and putting studies on the backburner; and too many loonies spent playing pool at the campus pub (plus all the beer) were two of the big ones.
Being “creative” with a paper and going off of the rubric (oh, so that’s what it is) landed me one C+.
There was also a little bit of culture shock, but mainly in a good way. Unlike high school, university students seem to have, for most part, grown up and let go of the idea of cliques. I didn’t really like high school—I hung out with the misfits who’d smoke on the parking lot. On my first day at post-secondary, I was a bit apprehensive that it would be more of the same.
I was also taken aback that Canadian campus culture doesn’t really have as strong of an Animal House or Van Wilder sort of sense of brother- and sisterhood that you see in U.S. fraternities and sororities. Hell, I’ll confess that I first got involved with my student alumni chapter, way back in 2007 when it was first born, because I stumbled upon a Facebook event for an on-campus summer retreat hosted by it. I thought that it would be more like a fraternity-recruitment shindig where we would eventually go out in the bush somewhere at a leader’s (or his parents’) cabin. Ultimately, the retreat had the goal of forming the group and planning its year ahead. Happy accident that I came; I went with the flow of the retreat’s theme, contributed my own ideas and ended up volunteering for the chapter for more than three years.
On May 31st, 2012, I officially received this piece of paper proving that I had joined the ranks of “them edumacated smart peoples.”
Although they’ve either never went or finished, my family still knew that post-secondary education was important, and they wanted to see me succeed. It was a (sadly, not granted) last wish of my late grandmother for her to live long enough to see me walk the stage in my gown and that ridiculous cap—convocation can be an even huger deal when that rite of passage is a brand-new type of leaf to grow on an immediate family tree’s branch.
I’m not sure how much on-campus support there is out there for first-gens vs. other student minorities, but first-generation learners do seem to be considered a disadvantaged population. Based on a quick Google search of work done by U.S. scholars, it seems to reveal that retention rates aren’t as rosy when compared to students whose parents are post-secondary-educated. This one 2009 paper cites one dramatic finding from the University of Oklahoma, indicating that first-generation students are a little more than twice as likely not to finish, with financial problems being one contributing factor. To add to that, the paper also cites another scholar’s work that lack of preparation and self-confidence issues can also potentially accumulate.
Closer to home, I did find one summary of research done by the Université du Québec à Montréal on the persistence of first-gens, acknowledging from the get-go that they face some of the said disadvantages mentioned in American research.
The odds of success, statistically speaking, seem to have not been in my favour. So how did this blue-collar bum see it to the end? I can’t really explain that to you other than sheer will, backed by good emotional family support.
The scholarships that I earned, as well as government low-income grants, were a relief and in one instance, a lifesaver. They’ve kept me from deciding to take a year off and kept my student loan debt from becoming an intimidating number.
I was eager. I was ambitious. I was engaged. I was an excited 20-something little kid. But throughout, I was sometimes a nervous wreck.
Was it a matter of wanting to be one of the best? For me, at the time, sometimes it was. But perhaps the healthier outlook is not to see it as a matter of strictly winning or losing, but rather to be open to the journey of becoming more and more self-aware of just how far you can go.
I’m still a bit surprised I made it all the way to being an editor-in-chief of my J-school program’s newspaper website. Maybe it was my gratitude to be back in school every day that drove my (damn near single-minded) commitment to learning and applying the knowledge to be entrusted with such leadership.
Going back to my quick Google search, it looks like there are some support and mentorship programs in Ontario universities tailored specifically to first-gens but I truthfully can’t say with certainty if there are any programs like that here in Calgary’s institutions (leave a comment with a link if there are any). If not, then maybe it’s worth discussing the idea of starting some here? Do we first-gens need the extra attention in the eyes of peer-support services? It’s good to ensure that special needs of ethnic and sexual minority students, as well as those with disabilities, are met. However, even here in “Gas Town,” socio-economic status shouldn’t be forgotten.
I’m sure there are many other blue-collar bums out there who can make their own self-discoveries that, yes, they can succeed in higher education.
LINK: Watch a short documentary following the lives of first-gen students in Nevada here.
