First-generation. Although this word may be a demographic for universities and institutions, I know that my fellow first-generation students know the pride, weight, and the burden this word carries to us — especially as a first-generation student of color.
I come from a mother and father who never exceeded their education past the eighth grade. Back in Thailand, my mother and the rest of her five siblings were stripped away from their school to go work in the fields for money. At a young age, she and her siblings were struck with labor by day and night.
Although my father didn't know English, he persevered and went to get his degree at a community college a few years after we moved to the United States.
My mother later told me as I got older that she would stay up and read my father's textbooks because she yearned to be educated.
There are certain responsibilities that the oldest child of the family must uphold. Besides being the first to help our parents achieve their "first kid things" totem, as a child in a marginalized community, there are other aspects that we must be responsible for.
Not only are we role models for our siblings to either look up to or learn from, but we are also the catalyst and the stepping stones to help our family move forward.
For a child of immigrant parents, one thing that is apart of this catalyst is education. For our parents who saw education as an opportunity to escape poverty, it means a lot to our parents when we are the first to graduate from high school and furthermore, college.
It is not just about our degree anymore that we worked hard for, it is the decisions and sacrifices our parents made for the success of their children.
As our parents worked hard for us, we are going to school for them. Soon, when we graduate from college, not only have we accomplished a milestone in our lives but we have accomplished theirs as well.
One day, I came upon this picture as I was scrolling through my newsfeed on Facebook, posted by Leta Makaveli:
The caption said in a more censored version,
"My parents didn't build their life up from this to where I'm at just for me to sit around and not do anything with my life."
As a student and the oldest in my family, I felt this. This photo has humbled me and for me to remember where my family came from, poverty, sweat, and persistence.
To all my first-generation, students of color comrades, it is hard.
As we go through life, we struggle to find a mentor that will help us with our firsts in a country where our parents only know the basics.
We will struggle to be comfortable in our first few weeks at college because there was no one to guide us. We will struggle with telling our parents what our job really entails and the cool things we do there — for some of our parents will ask what we do, but they won't know the depths of what we actually do.
Sometimes, we will even struggle to find a community because for so long, we were always searching for a community for ourselves.
But, there is joy in being the first-generation student. It is knowing that we have come so far as independent students and paving the way for our siblings, children, and future generations to follow.
Even if we didn't have a specific role model or mentor through life, we can share our experiences with those younger than us.
There is so much more than being a first-generation student than just being the first child to go to college. As first-generation students, we carry the weight of our parents' dreams, hoping for them to blossom one day.
Although it is hard sometimes, I am proud to be a first-generation, Hmong-American student.
