I am one of the 30% of college students who are seen as “First Generation College Students” which means in my immediate family, I am the first to receive a post-secondary education. It also means I have no clue what I am doing. Going into my freshman year my mom and I completed the FAFSA wrong; luckily the school corrected it and helped us in the right direction. Throughout high school I found myself behind compared to my peers; they knew what to do and what not to do when it came to school and extracurriculars. First year, first generation students have an 89% chance of dropping out before earning a bachelor’s degree. Also, they are 4 times more likely of dropping out over their peers.
To me, struggling in math was just a weakness that I had to work on, but to others it meant losing their top choice school. Every time I went to a college fair or a guidance appointment, I left feeling more lost than when I entered. All these steps to complete one application, then a whole new set of steps to completely different application just left me confused.Even though “I’m a first generation college student” is not tattooed across my forehead, I still feel different. First year students often have a feeling that they do not belong because they have a harder time relating to their classmates. Always having a constant pressure to succeed so that you feel like you’re not lagging behind everyone else. My summers are spent working to save up money to go to college, which will make it difficult for me to get professional experience such as unpaid internships under my belt.
Thankfully, my parents have poured every resource they can to get me where I am today. As a family, we are the blind leading the blind through the college process. Other students are able to put all the “administrative work” aside for their parents to do, but for me and mine, we have to do it together and often have to call the offices because we have trouble knowing what we need to do. Each week feels like another battle of what we need to fill out or get done because something was wrong with the paperwork the first time around.At first when I entered college, I thought everyone felt this way. But then I realized it was my self esteem and feeling different was the problem. Being a first generation college student is a lot more than clicking off the box on your applications.
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