​First Generation

“For me, as a first generation college student, it was all about graduating in four years and getting a job so I could make money.” She opted for nursing because she knew after four years she would graduate and come out with a relatively well-paying job. “Culturally, there was a lot of pressure, you know? After you graduate from college you get married. I saw that going down the path of becoming a doctor might interrupt the marriage-and-kids plan. Again, it was a very narrow and naïve way of thinking, but it was also what made nursing a good choice for me.”

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Try This!

Jessica’s family didn’t go on too many vacations. If there was money in the summer, or if she could get scholarship help, Jessica went to summer camps and programs. But she never missed a trip to the library. “Every week we would go to the library. The max number of books you could take out was ten books. I’d get my ten books, come home and read, and very quickly say, ‘Mom, we’ve got to go back to the library, I’ve got to switch these out.” And what was she reading? “I would find books that were about kids in science, or about different kinds of science projects. I was able to travel to so many different places and spaces through all the different amazing books that I read.”

 

On the Bottom

“Money makes things happen,” states Jessica. Going from having been in a public school in a a city to a private school in a suburb was a tough adjustment. “I struggled in grade six, because even though I was a smart kid, I was coming into a school where the other kids had had this level of education all their years of school. I had always been one of the smartest kids in public school, and now I wasn’t that kid at the top. I was in the middle in science and math, and in English I was way at the bottom. I was like, ‘This isn’t a good place for me, I don’t think I’m cut out for this.’ My Mom said, ‘You’ll be okay, you’ve just got to give it some time.”

 

I think that was the time when I realized that education really can make a huge difference. Middle school for me was that shift where I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to college, I’m going to do something!

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A New Low

Jessica’s move to high school presented another level of adjustment. “I really tried to explain to my mom, ‘I am living between these two worlds, and I don’t want this.’ After lots and lots of pushback and arguing with my Mom — you know, teenagers can be rough! — my Mom finally allowed me to leave that school in my junior year.

 

“In retrospect, should I have stayed? Absolutely. It was an amazing opportunity that I shut the door on, but as a young person, that was really challenging for me to navigate, and even though academically I knew that I belonged there just as much as anyone else, lifestyle-wise it was just a world of difference.

 

At the magnet school where she finished high school, Jessica felt that she belonged. “But — this sticks out in my head — I took an AP English class in junior year, and we were reading books that I had read in 8th grade. So there was just this great divide academically. But it was a switch that I needed to happen.

 

Jessica’s high school education helped her get into all three of the colleges she applied to — New York University, Fairfield University, and the University of Connecticut.  Because the process of applying for college was new to Jessica and her family, she didn’t apply to too many colleges — and her decision to go to UConn was because it was the farthest from home.

 

A First Fail

“My first semester on campus, in my very first chemistry test on campus, I actually failed. I had taken chemistry before and always did super well. This was the first time I’d ever failed a test, never mind a science test, any kind of test in my life!” She was devastated. “I thought my dreams of graduating college were done and over. I remember calling my mother hysterically crying, telling her to please come pick me up from campus because I was going to have to drop out of college.”

 

Nowadays she tells this story to her own students. “Sometimes students struggle with our anatomy and physiology courses, and I’m like, “it’s one test in a really big picture of things that you have to do.” But I remember that feeling of ‘how can this be, I’m such a good science person. I’m a science nerd! How could I fail?’

 

“I had studied for hours, but you have to do different kinds of study.“I studied a lot, but I was studying the wrong things. I had to meet with the professor, and she was tough. I said, ‘What would you suggest? Here are my notes. What am I missing?” Oh, that was an eye-opener. It made me realize that college was going to be different from high school. I was going to have to do study habits a little differently, I might have to take notes a little differently. I might have to talk with the professor. It opened my eyes to, I’m going to have to do the work a little differently in college for sure.

 

And my Mom was funny. She was like, ‘You’re not dropping out of college. It’s okay, it’s one test. But we’re going to come pick you up so you can come home for the weekend so you can reset, and then you’re going back.” I think about that now when I wonder how I can talk to my kids. I have college experience, but for my Mom to be able to do that for me without having it herself, I appreciate that so much about her. And my Dad? He was the person who would come pick me up faithfully and drive me back on Monday morning so I could be on campus for 8 am class. (My Mom said that she had cried so much on the drive back from taking me to college for the first time that she could never bring me back to campus again after that.)

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