A first-generation college student (FGS) is a student whose parents possess no formal college degree. Although many FGSs are also low income or ethnic minorities, but that’s not always the case; many come from a rural background raised by wealthy parents in successful trade occupations. Regardless of socioeconomic background, however, being an first-gen student can be overwhelming and, at times, quite isolating—especially if you’re also the only one of your high-school friends to attend college or to attend the same college together.

Additionally, college differs from high school in numerous ways that first-gen students are usually unaware of, and when they attend large public universities with thousands of students, they might encounter difficulty finding information and supports specific to their situation. They also might struggle to figure out how and where to find general student resources that other students are more privy to due to having been mentored and prepared for college by their savvy parents or relatives.

Jargon is one example of a major difference between high school and college. Take, for instance, office hours. Most traditional college students are familiar with the idea that office hours are mostly used for networking—building a professional relationship with professors and peers that can be leveraged later when seeking graduate school or employment recommendations, internships, research and teaching-assistant opportunities, graduate apprenticeships (i.e., a graduate teaching assistant who gets paid a stipend, which sometimes includes medical insurance, as they work through their graduate degree), and much more.

I did not know this. I didn’t know any of this, in fact, until after I graduated with my BS. In high school, you only attended office hours if you were struggling in a class and needed help or to request an extension on an assignment. Naturally, I assumed the same applied in college, along with the additional preconceived notion that my professors were these super-busy, untouchable important people and that using their office hours for chit-chat about our shared interests in our field of study would be “bothering them.”

In recent years, more attention has been paid and efforts accelerated to improve student support services for certain demographics, first-generation and other nontraditional students among them. A huge driver of these efforts is the influx of nontraditional students enrolling in online degree programs. Nontraditional students in general, whether they are FGS or not, typically need more supports to succeed in college. They might be from an older age demographic that never took algebra in high school, or they might be a younger student who took a gap year or four and just needs a refresher on certain topics that maybe just weren’t their strength in high school.

Remedial Education Alternatives

The main solution to this has been to enroll unprepared students in remedial courses before they’re able to take their actual college-credit courses, but this has remained a barrier for students for multiple reasons, high among them being the additional cost  and time-frame until graduation.

To help assuage these barriers for nontraditional students, colleges are experimenting with revising the remediation route, with options ranging from colleges enrolling students in regular degree-granting courses alongside additional tutoring and services to get them up to speed, called corequisite remediation. Some colleges have made remedial courses optional or even eliminated them altogether, an extreme move that has its fair share of skeptics.

Recent Research and Trends in Universities

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published a Focus piece on first-generation college students. (You might need a Chronicle account to see the entire piece, but I’ve linked to some of the individual articles throughout this post and included the rest of them at the end.)

The third article in the compilation, “Micro-Barriers Loom Large for First-Generation Students” by Eric Johnson, opens with an anecdote about JD Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy,  detailing the crucial moment—a seemingly innocuous formality in Stanford’s law school admissions application—that led to him to Yale’s doorstep instead.

The formality was a request for the signature of Stanford’s dean, a woman Vance had never met and thus did not feel comfortable bothering for such a minuscule favor. Since Yale’s applications included no such request that he reach out for help from a high-ranking authority figure who is also a total stranger, he was accepted there instead.

As Eric Johnson explains in his Chronicle piece,

Self-reliance is a cardinal virtue in Vance’s world, where bonds of kinship and trust take years to develop.

This is often a mind-set of first-generation students. Where they come from, work ethic is a high virtue. Independence is taught from an early age, and responsibility and self-reliance are celebrated and bragged about. The earliest and most sage piece of advice  my mom gave me as a child was to “never depend on anyone but yourself.” I quote this still.

Granted, this was said to me shortly after my parents’ divorce, so now that I’m grown and married, I take it with a lot more salt. But I remain fiercely proud of my independent mind-set and thank my mom for instilling it in me.

But I digress.

When someone from a working-class family goes to college, the expectation from family is often to go become a doctor or lawyer—something that’s lucrative and whatever their idea of a better life is. A liberal arts degree and subsequent career in public service or academia isn’t usually what they have in mind, and that can lead to bafflement and dissonance. Parents and friends back home feel like their child or friend left for a few months and came home a different person. Students suddenly feel like outsiders in their own communities and homes; like strangers among the people they care for most deeply. When back in school, they struggle to navigate a foreign landscape full of strangers and no nearby support system of people slightly more in the know than they are.

It can be isolating trying to navigate knowledge gaps—the unwritten and oft-assumed rules of success in higher education—on your own. These are things no one thinks about, such as that it’s not only okay but expected that engaged, serious students will ask for things when they need them; that they will advocate for themselves.

Yes, this includes things like asking for extensions on assignments when there’s an emergency or you’re simply overwhelmed, asking for clarification on a challenging concept or assignment, or even just needing a sympathetic ear when you’re struggling and feeling lonely and homesick.

Also know that it’s never not a good idea to stop by your favorite professor’s office when you feel like saying something like, “Your recent lecture blew my mind! I’ve read [insert assigned reading], and if you have some time, I’d be interested in hearing more about [insert specific topic of interest”]. Anything that shows you were listening and engaged. Professors love that shit!

The simple fact is to realize that professors are, above all, people. That you are not “bothering” the almighty professor by dropping by for a chat. That that’s their job, and they expect you to do these things.

That if you don’t do these things, they won’t remember who you are a few years later when you ask for a recommendation letter to grad school—even if you did have the highest grade in their class.

Of course, the concept of office hours is only one example of the unique, often hard-to-pin-down issues that face nontraditional students. Other issues can include access to scholarship information and other forms of financial aid for low-income students. Many

Some colleges and universities have already implemented programs specifically designed to address retention issues and other obstacles nontraditional students face in college.

My ultimate goal is to spearhead and implement one of these programs at work, so I want to hear your own experiences!

• If you are or were a first-generation or other nontraditional college student or graduate, what are some of the knowledge gaps that you didn’t realize you had until halfway through your program or [worse] after graduating?
• Were there any professors or staff who helped you in some significant way? How?

I want to know all about your struggles, successes, failures, accomplishments, and proudest moments as a first-generation college student. I want to hear about your experiences either going home or not going home for the holidays.

• Did you move back home after graduating? How did that go?
• Did you move somewhere else?
• Did you work through college? Struggle with anything specific?
• Not struggle at all?

Tell me!

Leave your experiences in the comments! Nothing is TL;DR. 

Resources

[In the order they appear in the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s In Focus compilation]

• Katherine Mangan: “The Challenge of the First-Generation Student”
• Beckie Supiano: “Princeton Strives to Help First-Generation Students Feel More at Home”
• Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez: “I Fit In Neither Place”
• Eric Johnson: “Micro-Barriers Loom Large for First-Generation Students”
• Stacey Patton: “Here’s Smarty-Pants, Home for the Holidays”
• Justin Doubleday: “10 ‘Best Practices’ for Serving First-Generation Students”
• Scott Carlson: “Campus Child Care, a ‘Critical Student Benefit,’ Is Disappearing”
• Joseph Sanacore and Anthony Palumbo: “Let’s Help First-Generation Students Succeed”
• Dwight Lang: “Singing the First-Generation Blues”
• Elizabeth M. Lee: “Elite Colleges and the Language of Class”