Okay so today is first-generation
college day the national day is Friday
with Chattanooga State is celebrating
our wonderful students today. We also
have faculty and staff out here who are
also the first in their family to attend
college. Some of the challenges I faced in
doing that was really getting over my
own mindset that I surely was going to
fail. Clear to me that I was the first in
my family to go to college was the day
that they dropped me off. But it made me
feel good and they gave me an
opportunity to you know get in from one
of the team. you know you know if you
have Tennessee Reconnect and stuff like
that so I try to encourage them stuff
like that. I didn't know how to seek
resources when I got to campus. Neither
of my parents had been to college so
they didn't really know how to instruct
me or how to guide me so there were a
lot of things that I just had to kind of
figure out for myself.
So when I decided to go a thousand miles
away to college and leaving a very small
rural community in northern Arkansas to
go to Washington DC for college and then
my parents dropped me off I was like
what have I done?
So my dad had attended a little bit of
college a long time ago my mom did not
go to college at all and my sister had
attended some but she quit and told my
parents you know I don't go to class I
don't buy the books
you're wasting your money and so I was
convinced that College must be
incredibly hard and probably too hard
for me so I'm probably not going to pass.
Pride one of the good things I went to
Purdue University in West Lafayette
Indiana
and one of the great things about Purdue
is that you actually get the diploma
when you walk across the stage and when
I received my bachelor's it happened to
be a Mother's Day. So when I came you
know when the ceremony was over I looked
at my mom and I had her diploma say hey
happy Mother's Day. It was that kind of
moment of clarity that convinced me that
I was gonna stay and I was gonna try to
get involved so I joined a student
organization and my the second part of
my spring semester of my freshman year
and I found the people in my major who
were interested in the same things that
I was and I started making friends on
campus. How do I feel about being the
first person in my family to have
graduated? Well I'm really proud of that.
I'm really proud and and now it's it's
been such a long time ago since that
first graduation that it it's just a
part of who I am but it was such a good
feeling of no one can ever take this
away from me. I would definitely say a
sense of accomplishment and then also
just thankful that I'm now there to
guide my younger brother through the
process because that's been super
helpful for him as well. I wouldn't trade
that moment of realizing like I've got
to take advantage of where I am and just
do it I think my willingness to travel
alone to go abroad by myself all of that
can be traced back to that first year
that I was kind of asserting my
independence. So Boss stands for
building outstanding service scholars
and we are a student organization here
on campus. We welcome all students for
our target demographic is
first-generation college students as
well as African American students.
Statistics show that those two
populations of students are least likely
to be retained and so we offer extra
support to that population of students
to ensure that they feel connected to
the campus, like they belong here, and
like they're supported.
