Being First-Gen – Q&A with a student and a Dean
What does it mean to be a first-generation college student?
My advisee Lynna Ngo and I talk about this a lot. Lynna is a rising first-gen junior at Brown University where she is concentrating in Health and Human Biology. I was a first-gen college student two decades ago and now identify as a first-gen Dean. We often talk about the academic, social and familial experiences of first-gen students – an important part of both our lives.
I invited Lynna to co-author this Q&A post for Hidden Curriculum so we could share our first-gen stories, lessons and insights. We hope the two perspectives offer a deeper sense of being first-gen in college and beyond.
When did you first identify as first-generation?
Lynna
I initially learned about the first-generation identity sometime in high school. My sister Nancy, who is two years older than me, had just started the journey of applying for college. For us, college isn’t a given. No one in our family has professional careers and most of our relatives work minimum-wage jobs to support themselves. The desire to break through the cycle of poverty fueled our motivations to pursue postsecondary school. We also wanted the knowledge to pursue careers in business and medicine. Our dad was never really engaged in our education at an early age, and this divide had to be bridged during the financial-aid process. We overcame the challenge of understanding tax documents, reporting W2s, and translating the essential parts of the FAFSA to our dad in Vietnamese. I’m grateful that the college admissions process ended with full-ride scholarships for both of us!
Dean Smith
I don’t recall the first time I fully appreciated the term first-generation student, but it certainly wasn’t during my college years. In fact, I was well into graduate school before I realized that my family’s story was different from my peers’ and that it mattered. The majority of graduate students in my program had parents with advanced degrees and high level careers in medicine, business, academia and law. I did not feel the difference between us academically, but I felt it socially and financially. I was one of very few graduate students with college loans to pay off, who had not travelled extensively, and who didn’t know a thing about which wine to pair with my meal! As I realized I was a minority in this way I was drawn towards others with similar backgrounds - two of whom remain very dear friends twenty years later.
Describe your first-gen experience.
Lynna
When I began college, I felt both excited and overwhelmed. Truthfully, my transition from high school to university wasn’t the easiest. It took a while to find my sense of belonging on campus. The most challenging part was being away from my tight-knit family. They are my pillar of support. They helped me move forward as I struggled to balance the academic and social pressures that came with an elite school like Brown. My dad does not put as much pressure on me as I do myself, but working to earn a degree represents something far beyond me. A degree would provide opportunities for my family to scale the socioeconomic ladder.
I’ve already been two years into college and I still find myself frequently adjusting to the experience. To manage this, I surround myself around peers who motivate me to do my best. Subsequently, I have built life-long friends among the U-FLi (undocumented, first-generation, and low income) community. Engaging with U-FLi students has been one of my most fun and memorable experiences because I learned that I’m not alone. This realization came during my first-year when I attended the 1vyG conference at UPenn. 1vyG is the largest first-generation, low-income student conference in the country and has historically served as a safe space for those of our background to come together. Learn more about it here. Navigating college and connecting with friends, professors, and mentors has taught me that you belong in the spaces that you are in. After all, having a seat at the table means nothing if you feel that you can’t speak up while you’re there.
Dean Smith
My first semester of college was not exactly a success. I earned a C in Intro Biology where I fell asleep in class on more than one occasion (and got called out for it). I watched soap operas (Days of our Lives, General Hospital anyone?) every afternoon with my roommate, and got caught up in the social life of my dorm so fully that I got far too little sleep. There was a recent study on the impact of sleep on college students. The researchers found that quality and quantity of sleep is the best predictor of college success and completion. Read about it here: An Underappreciated Key to College Success: Sleep.
I was not at all prepared for what it took to stay healthy and focused in college. I figured it out eventually thanks to some older student role models and by discovering my academic interests, but having a heads up from parents or more prep work during high school would have undoubtedly helped me. College requires critical academic thinking, independent time management, and ownership of healthy living - three skills few high schoolers have fully experienced until college. Parents who have lived through the college years know what to expect and can prepare and empower their kids to practice successful college living from the onset.
Perhaps a benefit of my first-gen experience was the complete lack of pressure to pull straight A’s. My parents were just so delighted that I was at college and doing well they never did anything but express praise. Interestingly, my undergraduate mentor / advisor never pushed the straight A message either. Indeed, I think they were all far enough along in their own paths to realize it was the knowledge and experiences that mattered more than the letters on the transcript. Related to the pressure for all A’s check out this article from Adam Grant: What Straight A Students Get Wrong.
What are some of the main ways you feel first-gen in college?
Lynna
Moving onto campus for the first time without my dad and stepmom is when I really felt a first-gen student. When I have a question about navigating higher education, I don’t call my parents to ask. Instead, I share stories about my classes and try my best to explain what “office hours” or “organic chemistry” means. It wasn’t until very recently that they discovered what the Ivy League is. Speaking with my family about my successes and challenges at Brown is one way in which I feel first-gen.
Dean Smith
As I mentioned above, I didn’t feel this so much in college, but did in graduate school. I went to the University of New Mexico for college. I think the confidence I felt there may have been because I was in the majority - many of my peers were first-generation like me. We never ever talked about this, but I can see now that the sense of connection and ease we had may have come from this shared family narrative. My message to my students now is to find others you relate to. A community of peers is invaluable to success in college and beyond.
What are some specific things your University or Professors have done to support you as a first-gen?
Lynna
Financial support is necessary for many people, including those who are new to the college experience. Here are a few things that my university has done to support me as a low-income student:
On the first day in a public health class, my professor offered to loan textbooks for free - without any question.
My university’s CareerLAB funded my transportation expenses to and from a national conference.
To combat food insecurity for low-income students who stayed on campus during spring break, the school provided meal vouchers which gave us access to dining halls.
The university funded my unpaid internship in NYC. This gave me the opportunity to have a meaningful summer while exploring the medical education industry.
Many colleges and universities have support like this so look to your advisor, the student center and your peers to learn more.
Dean Smith
In college I worked in the Brown Lab at the University of New Mexico. My faculty mentor, Dr. Jim Brown, treated me like a graduate student and included me in the lab in a genuine way from the very beginning. He taught me how to be a field ecologist, how to read the primary literature and discuss it, and he taught me how to write. This last lesson was a real gift. To this day I remember sitting with him side-by-side at the computer going through my senior honors thesis. We must have spent several hours together working on this document and talking sentence by sentence about how one writes a scientific paper. I was very self-conscious during this process, feeling like an imposter, but he never once judged me and instead reminded me I was there to learn.
My mentor taught me these three things about writing in STEM:
1. Writing is a craft which means it requires continuous work throughout one’s life. This gave me a growth mindset about the process (I had a fixed mindset before that).
2. There is great value in writing science with depth and brevity. It is a challenge, and I still work on it to this day, but you can produce great papers when you focus on the most important parts of your message and leave out the pieces that are not necessary (or put them in an appendix).
3. Writing simply and avoiding jargon and wordiness makes for the best received papers.
To this day I firmly believe the most important thing a first-gen student can do in college is to find a supportive and invested mentor. Someone said that students don’t care what a teacher has to say unless they know that the teacher cares. I cared tremendously what Jim Brown had to say to me. In Richard Light’s book Making the Most of College (I book I highly recommend and which my students are required to read), he urges all students to get to know a new professor every semester. This is a good way to start honing in on a potential mentor.
How has your experience as a first-gen college student impacted your relationship with your family?
Lynna
In high school, I distinctly remember going to a peer’s house for a graduation party. It was a typical house in a suburban neighborhood. When I went to friends’ homes, I often looked around and thought, “Wow, I wonder what it’s like to live in a house.”
I grew up in a mobile home and it’s where my dad, stepmom, and two younger siblings still live today. I honestly have no idea what it’s like to live in an actual house. On many occasions, I heard peers calling my neighborhood “the ghettos,” which made me assume that people looked down on my community. Quite honestly, I was embarrassed about being first-gen, low-income, and living in a trailer park. This sometimes led to tense conversations with my family, especially with my dad. As a naive teenager, part of me didn’t know any better. It didn’t take long, however, for me to shift my attitude and gain a new perspective.
Being at Brown has grown me in ways that I’d never imagine. It has allowed me to think critically about how my path to postsecondary school began with my family. It has also grown my relationship with my older sister, especially because we’ve bonded over our experiences with navigating college. The trailer park, that I was once so ashamed of, is where my family calls home - not by choice, but by circumstance. My parents raised children to succeed in higher education, something they never had the opportunity to be part of. They worked blue-collar jobs, allowing me the opportunity to obtain a privileged education. This is something that I could never take for granted.
Dean Smith
My experiences as a first-gen college student, first-gen graduate student, first-gen faculty member, and now first-gen dean have made me more grateful for my family. My parents are extraordinary ordinary people who passed along many qualities that can’t be learned in a classroom. The biggest ones are kindness, resilience, work ethic, and frugality. These lessons were more formative for me than any theory, method or concept I learned in college or graduate school. My dad likes to talk about the concept of paying it forward. He and my mom gave me the character traits that count most, and I hope to pay this forward through mentoring my own students and raising my own kids.
What are the upsides of being first-generation?
Lynna
The perspectives of first-generation students are an asset, not a shortcoming. The best thing about being first-gen is that I’m learning more than just academics! Working part-time since I was 14 years old to finance personal expenses has taught me the importance of resiliency, independence, and resourcefulness. This has all led to understanding myself more. While the truth is that my parents may not always be able to provide advice about college or choosing a professional career, they’re always there to offer support. I love that I can forge my own path and discover subjects that I truly enjoy learning such as biology and public health. I’m also building practical skills including time management, prioritization, communication, and critical thinking. All of these skills will come in handy during the future.
Dean Smith
My education was not paid for by anyone but me - through loans, jobs, and the scholarships I earned. This feels really good! I am deeply proud of and grateful for the family taught hard work that resulted in the education I have and my ability to pay for it. A related benefit is confidence in my ability to figure things out. I had to navigate the FAFSA on my own, learn to do my own taxes, budget my student loan repayments, figure out what a W2 was, handle my own health care, and more in my late teens and early 20s. I recall how daunting some of these lessons were, but I got through them and came out the other end empowered. I learned through perseverance and now know I can handle just about anything life throws at me. This gives me confidence.
If you could say one thing to your past or younger self, what would it be?
Lynna
Take care of yourself! You know those times when you stayed up until the crack of dawn, overworked yourself, or practiced unhealthy daily habits? That’s what self-care is for! Schedule alone time, be honest, and listen to your intuition. Connect with your support system, sleep earlier, keep a journal, and unplug from technology to recharge and feel grounded again.
Dean Smith
Only 1!? Here are 3:
1. Spend more time looking in than looking out. I wish I had spent time early on checking in with myself, thinking about my short and mid-term goals, and striving to find my true joy and purpose. This kind of introspective work did not come into my life until relatively recently. I see how powerful it is now and would tell my younger self (and current students) to put mindfulness and purpose seeking into the Google calendar.
2. Get educated in personal finance as soon as possible. Check out this NY Times article: A Financial Checklist for Your Newly Minted High School Graduate.
3. Einstein himself said, ‘A quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest.' I hope I would listen to this one, but I’m not sure I would have. I think this is bigger than joy and actually has a health impact as well.
