First in the family

I was the first in my family to go to university. My mom finished high school. My dad didn’t get that far. (People attended university less often then.)

What strikes me now is that I don’t know how that affected me.

In my institution, much is made that most of our students are “first generation” students. There’s a lot of talk about how hard it can be for them to transition to university, how they don’t know how to navigate university systems, and that we should try to provide more support mechanisms for them.

I don’t know if that was even a conversation faculty at my undergraduate university were having at the time. In any case, I never felt like I needed any of that.

Maybe it was because I was graduating high school from a small town with no university that I had no idea which adults had university degrees and which didn’t. It seemed to me that the cohort of students from my high school were all just in the same boat. I never felt like people from families with university experience had any sort of “inside information” coming from their parents.

Maybe it was because I was a white middle class guy. I wasn’t faced with some of the socio-economic hurdles that are often associated with “first generation” students in some places. Particularly here.

Maybe it was because I was academically inclined, and a nerd, and universities were just a good fit for me that I didn’t feel the culture shock that others felt. After all, I liked universities so much that I’ve basically spent my entire adult life in them.

But I think this is something I need to mention to my students more often. It might help some of them see that university degrees are not inherited feudal titles. And maybe it can help my “first in family” students see the possibilities for themselves. “You can’t be it if you can’t see it,” as the saying goes.

Just because you are the first to travel a pathway in your family doesn’t mean you’re the first ever.

Hat tip to TatooedDevil on Twitter for the hashtag, #FollowFirstGenerationAcademics.