An image that will forever stay with me is my mom telling me, with tears in her eyes during my senior year of high school, that I would not be able to go to college. At the time, I was in a naive bubble about the path to college. I strongly believed that if you worked hard in high school, the path to college was as simple as applying and receiving your acceptance letter. Before I knew it, all of my dreams of becoming Dr. Ruiz were shattered and I found myself completely frustrated by how I, an honor roll student, student body president and overall great community member, wasn't going to be able to continue my education due to something I had no control over.
Whether it was my anger or dedication to prove every person and statistic wrong, I managed to get a job, save a good chunk of money, get some scholarships and head off to the opportunity of a lifetime at Idaho State University. However, the hardships didn't stop when my time as a high school student did.
Coming from a pretty tight-knit family, being away from them was incredibly difficult. I've always been the more independent one in my family, but not having them within a 15-minute radius was hard. Staying in contact with them was a must, but a very frustrating one at that. Without fail, every single time my dad talked to me, the first question he asked was, "How are your grades?" He didn't ask about my friends, my involvement on campus, the internship opportunities, or the different ways I was making a home out of Pocatello.
I was so frustrated by this. Time after time, he reduced my entire college experience to grades. It took me a long time to understand that he did this because he didn't know better. Most of my friends' parents have college degrees, so they understand the difficulty of classes, the challenge of maintaining a delicate balance of work, homework, internships, relationships and everything else that makes up the college experience. My parents lack that insight, thus making them incredibly unsympathetic toward me not just focusing on classes. They don't understand that college doesn't only come down to classes.
Even though I consistently make the Dean's List and achieve a great GPA, my parents don't understand when I call them stressed out, overwhelmed and sleep-deprived, because they think that it's my choice to partake in clubs and other activities. And it's true, it is my choice to have different priorities than just my academics. But not really. It's something that I need to do in order to make the most out of this opportunity. They fail to understand that future employers don't care entirely about the grade you got in PSYCH 202, but rather the internships, clubs and leadership positions that give you transferable work skills and experience.
Beyond the lack of empathy and understanding, the amount of pressure to succeed as a first-generation student is almost unbearable at times. This experience, this opportunity isn't just about you going to college. In fact, you become a living representation of all the sacrifice, hard-work and dedication that you and your entire family has made in order to give you the opportunity to attend college. Most college students see a failed class as something that can be retaken, but to me, that was and never will be an option. There is no re-do, no room for mistakes. There is only this one chance to get it right.
This looming pressure to have a flawless experience makes the thought of failing even more terrifying and the entire experience even more stressful. This is an investment that my entire family is making. The thought of me failing wouldn't just be a let-down to myself, but an expensive failure for my family.
Despite all of this, I constantly have to remind myself that there's a bigger picture in my story. When I was figuring out the path to college, I had no role model, no living example that I could indeed accomplish something that seemed so impossible. I was stuck figuring things out for myself. It is during the times where I am exhausted beyond belief but still have a stack of papers to write, where I haven't slept for 30 hours straight, where there's nothing more that I want to do more but give up, that I remember my moms tears, that I remembering figuring things out, that I remember that I am not doing this for myself, but for an entire population of students who are also like me–scared, full of doubts, but determined to succeed.
Being a first-generation student is more difficult than any traditional student could ever understand, but knowing that I am doing this for my family, understanding that I am doing this to prove that si se puede, makes every hardship so incredibly worth it.
So keep pushing, keep achieving, keep proving the entire world wrong, my friends, because soon, our dreams will be a reality.
