First-Gen
I was a first-generation college student, and my journey to higher education wasn’t easy although I was afforded a few more opportunities than your typical #FirstGen kid.
I unwillingly came to the States via parental kidnapping at the age of six. My mother was forced to migrate from Singapore in search of her children, the traditional narrative of “coming in search of opportunity” slammed shut. (The American judicial system apparently doesn’t work for immigrant women when one marries an American roughneck.) My mother did, however, continue to fall in line with the proscribed narrative of making a living working labor-intensive jobs as an under-the-table maid in a mansion River Oaks, where old money in Houston resides. I was thus raised in west Houston in a barely middle-class household with social stigmas all around me, but I was afforded the opportunity to attend a local parochial school. From there, I graduated with high marks to earn a scholarship to one of the best private high schools in the city.
For me, college was an unspoken expectation, yet simultaneously it was not exactly a given once I entered the foster care system at 14. I had to motivate myself to pursue postsecondary education and be my own cheerleader because that part of my struggle was invisible to those around me. There was an assumption I had doting adults pouring over me, ensuring each “t” was crossed and each “i” was dotted, and that was the farthest from the truth. I felt limited by my choices because I was having to figure out how to finance my own education while simultaneously worrying where to go when I aged out of the system at 18, 2 months before my high school graduation. Securing a roof over my head and housing took priority over filling out apps and a FAFSA. I was in survival mode.
Through my college admissions process, I ultimately ended up with a partial scholarship to The University of Houston as pre-law English major where I was blessed to accidentally find a team of mentors through my work study program. On a fluke, I had accepted an office assistant position at the College of Education in their Educational Leadership and Cultural Studies Department. There, I was mentored, cared for, and loved like a daughter by the ELCS Department Chair Dr. Richard Hooker who, in turn, had his faculty support me as I pursued my bachelor’s degree. There Dr. Betty Baitland, Dr. Don Hooper, Dr. Cynthia Norris, Dr. Lianne Brouillette, Dr. Robert P. Craig, Dr. Yali Zou, Dr. Bart Herscher, and Dr, James A. Pickering became my family. I would work at the office Monday - Friday from 8 am to 5 pm, leaving here and there to attend classes. Oftentimes during the day, I would be given “tasks” to do for several hours where my explicit directions were to sit at my desk and study for my exam or write my paper. My evenings were spent after office hours making coffee for the superintendents and professors, who, in kind, set up one of the graduate school study carrels for me. In between their evening class lectures, they always made it a point to pop by to see if I needed something to eat, needed someone to proofread an essay, or to just give a friendly word of encouragement. Honestly, without the love and support of these educators, I would never have finished my degree.
People always ask, often in casual conversation, why I am so passionate about being an advocate for my own scholars at the high school, especially those who are first generation, but it’s not something I can just answer without espousing some glib response. It’s because I’ve lived the experience and there is no one panacea for helping first generation college students. It’s about building relationships. It’s about being there when they ask for last minute help because they did not know what they did not know. It’s about schools being there for faculty and giving them contract time and resources to be the change we wish to see, I’m tired of those in power saying they care about these matters when the systems are not in place to support change, and there has been little movement to do so over the years and years of “conversation”. It’s time to stop espousing the ideologies and actually walk the walk in our daily interactions.
Namaste.
