Chapter 1: “Edge Walkers”: New Majority Students Negotiate Two Worlds
The students we interviewed sometimes talked about what going to college looked like in the movies or on TV. We have all seen the images: the doting parents helping their child move into often luxurious dorm rooms, the dawning of a life far from family supervision or responsibilities, a time to explore new friends, new ideas, and new interests. Freedom. But the parents are always there for financial and emotional support, with their own memories and advice to share about how they negotiated college. College in the popular imagination is an extension of childhood, a sort of utopian interlude between the restrictions of living at home and the responsibilities of adulthood
Our students’ entry into college looked nothing like that. For starters, their childhoods had usually ended by their early teens, if not sooner. They already had adult responsibilities, and going to college was not going to change that, in part because most of them would continue to live at home. Their parents relied on them for a wide range of activities, some of them consuming several hours a day. Many had to work to cover whatever college costs their financial aid did not cover, and often to help out their parents and other family members, too. And although their parents usually emphasized college, they seldom understood much about it, including that it required much more homework than high school had. For most New Majority students, PSU is like high school, only much more time consuming, expensive, alien, and confusing.
Familial Responsibilities
Children of well-to-do parents sometimes joke that they choose a college largely on how far away they can get from their parents, and the farther, the better. Many of our students remarked that they chose PSU precisely because it was close to home. Anonymous 12 went to PSU “because it was close to family, . . . in case they needed me.” Anonymous 18 went to PSU because it was “the cheapest option,” and her Mom “wanted me to stay with her, and I wanted to help her out.” Anonymous 19 “would rather be at home in case my Mom needed something or my Dad needed something.” “In my culture,” remarks Balkhiis Noor, “it’s taboo for a woman to live on her own.” Leaving home for college was never an option. She characterizes people like her, the daughter of Somali immigrants, as “edge walkers.” On the one hand, going to PSU for most of the day was a sort of “liberation.” But her life continued to be defined largely by her responsibilities to her family. She characterizes people like her, the daughter of Somali immigrants, as “edge walkers.” On the one hand, going to PSU for most of the day was a sort of “liberation.” But her life continued to be defined largely by her responsibilities to her family.
Mark Mosad came to the U.S. from Egypt in his teens with his family. He graduated from PSU in three years and, in the summer of 2025, is about to start an optometry program. “I was the older brother and wanted to be a role model for” his younger siblings, he explains, and “had high hopes to become what my parents had always wanted me to be.” He chose optometry after watching his father nearly lose his sight due to inadequate care: “it motivated me to become an optometrist.” And “my parents helped me a lot.” “Go to college, get a degree, make a good living” had “been drilled into me” by his parents, recalls Anonymous 29. He describes PSU as “a default school for a lot of us,” namely Portland-Area students from immigrant families.
Ximena Rivas Quiroz Bejar, who came to the U.S. from Mexico in her teens, describes an intense mix of familial responsibilities and warmth. She remained “in charge of cleaning the house” after starting college and spent a great deal of time caring for her baby brother, born during her first year at PSU. At home, in their tiny apartment, she learned to do her architectural projects at “a really small desk” and “a really small space on the floor,” would sometimes drive to PSU in the evening to work in a much larger space, then drive back home “to sleep for a little” before another day of intense work at PSU and at home. “That’s how Mexicans work,” she concludes, “we all have responsibilities.” But her parents cooked for her and nurtured her, too. “In Mexican culture,” she remarks, “we want to be together as long as possible.” At the same time, she has a vivid memory of being at freshman orientation on her own, since her parents, who lived less than ten miles away, had to work and might not have felt comfortable on campus: “seeing other students with their parents, . . . I was a little sad.” “I was there by myself, trying to figure out everything, I was really lost.”
Even parents who emphasized college often struggle to understand its demands. In high school, says Liliane Kwizera, “my parents always were expecting me to do things at home,” and “they always had the same expectation” once she went to college. “My Mom especially really wanted me to go to school,” remarks Anonymous 18, but she “subtly wanted me to” keep working both inside and outside the home, at her mother’s cleaning job. “It wasn’t forced,” but she had been raised to “do what my Mom says,” so “I knew I couldn’t say no.” Taiye Timothy’s Nigerian mother is “passionate about education,” but she still expected her daughter to work around the house and would say: “you’re always doing homework, you’re always gone, you’re always at school.” Her mother especially struggled to understand why Taiye was involved with the extra-curricular activities that her scholarship required.
Hector Amezola stayed home for all five years at PSU, and there was not “a big change” in how he related to his parents, in part because they assumed he did well in school because of his intelligence rather than his work ethic. Since his mother cleaned houses for a living and did not drive, he spent “two to three hours a day driving her around town.” “I really got tired of it,” he recalls, but his mother’s work was “back breaking,” and “it was the least I could do to drive her around.” Some students who live at home report that they simply cannot get any school work done there, that it is too noisy or crowded or that their families are simply unable to give them space to study.
Anonymous 19 resorted to studying only after everyone else in the house had gone to sleep. “Sometimes I don’t know how to say ‘no,’” because “they’re my parents.” “It’s hard to work at home at all,” says Anonymous 1, and even when she is not at home, “they often want more texts and calls.” “Why aren’t you ever with us, you’re always in your room, studying,” the parents of Lily A. remark. But “they try to support me however they can,” through actions more than words, such as her mother cooking for her and her father working to earn money. Some of her white friends have told her that their parents do their financial-aid forms for them. She notes that as a first-generation college student, anything related to college, such as FAFSA [federal aid forms], she has had to figure it out on by herself with little to no help from her parents, she in fact fills out a lot of forms for her parents.
Students do a wide range of intensive work for their parents and families. “It’s almost like you’re the parent and they’re the child” at times, remarks Anonymous 18. She has for many years made her mother’s appointments, paid the bills, and taken charge of her younger brother’s education and behavior. “You’re kind of the one holding it all down” she summarizes. The extended family even expects her to do their taxes, though her degree is not related to accounting. Since she has a college degree, she is “the smart one,” and is counted on “every time they have trouble with something,” from dental work to computer problems. Since she has a college degree, she is “the smart one,” and is counted on “every time they have trouble with something,” from dental work to computer problems.
Prabina Sunuwar, a refugee, “always had responsibilities for my family,” including more distant relatives who “would call for me to help them, and “it was hard for them to understand” that sometimes she simply did not have the time to help them.
“I’m pretty much the breadwinner of the family,” remarks Fatima Almowsawi. “I am a student, but I don’t feel like a student,” remarks Naomi Morales Rodriguez,” noting that she had extensive responsibilities to care for her brother, who is autistic. “I have to watch out for my grandma,” remarks Donny Vu, which requires making sure she exercises and monitoring her vital signs. He has also taken over some of the work she used to be able to do in their three-generation household. Anonymous 2 is “kind of the personal interpreter of the family,” so is often “going to the hospital” with them.
Omar Mahfouz took on the heavy legal work required for his family of four to apply for a visa. He recalls spending countless hours “always following up with the lawyer . . . checking on our immigration status,” making sure nothing fell through the cracks during the process. Anonymous 29, who entered PSU at age seventeen, also labored over family immigration papers and also worked at a retail job “to make my own money.”
Peter Nguyen’s Vietnamese “family expect me to always be there and to have all the answers” as they try “to negotiate through such a complex landscape.” For example, his mother recently “got scammed,” and he helped her untangle all of the ensuing financial complications. Daisy Duran Navarro during her first year at PSU felt as if “there was always something terrible going on,” in her family, and “if something happens, it’s my fault.”
Vinuar Gardi is the oldest child: “My whole life I was kind of focused on helping my siblings, helping my family,” so “it was difficult to start focusing on myself” upon coming to PSU. Thierry Ndayisaba is unable to untangle his responsibilities to his family with his college education. In the first place, he is at PSU “to break the family curse” of not being able to get a college degree, and to “be an example to my younger brothers and sisters.” “It’s my responsibility to take care of my younger siblings” in more concrete ways, too, such as taking them to the hospital, as he is the oldest sibling still at home, and he translates for his Congolese parents: “every time my Dad goes somewhere and he doesn’t know what to do, he calls me.”
As the oldest daughter, Balkhiis became her mother’s right hand—helping to oversee the household, meaning a lot of “cleaning and paperwork.” The family shared a car, and it was up to her to drive her mother and younger siblings where and when they needed to go. “It was like a twenty-four-hour job,” she sums up.
Several students were grateful that older siblings had already educated their parents about how difficult college could be. Anonymous 8’s parents learned from her older sister that being in college meant that their children would “lose quality time with the family and with church.” “But there are still times they try to convince me to go to family events” when she has a lot of homework, and they occasionally still argue.
Several interviewees share that their parents gradually understood how time-consuming college could be. Letty went home every week-end her first year at PSU, in part because “I care a lot about my sister . . . . who struggles a lot with her mental health.” Her parents continued to rely on her as a translator and to pay bills, and even when she was at home every week-end, “they wanted more from me.” “I felt guilty for even having . . . thoughts” of not going home every week-end, but during COVID, at home in their “small trailer,” working at her desk “in my parent’s room,” they could see for themselves how demanding her classes were, especially her mother: “Her mindset kind of changed.” “I learned to put boundaries down,” recalls Anonymous 12, but “it was a very difficult thing to do.” For the first year, “I felt like I was living a double life,” negotiating home and PSU.
Motivation and Inspiration for Higher Education
But immigrant parents are often inspiring, and many of our interviewees said that their parents’ sacrifices were a source of immense motivation. “The biggest reason I decided to go to college was my family,” says Diego Argaez. “I try to hold my family above everything else, knowing what my parents went through.”
Lily A. recalls that it was at her high school graduation, where she was the salutatorian, that for the “very first time I had my parents say they were proud of me.” So that made her even more motivated to succeed at college. “Your whole life is filled with the idea to be able to support your parents,” observes Anonymous 29. “I see how hard my parents work,” so “it would be a very sad thing for their hard work not to be rewarded” by seeing him graduate and by him being able to help them have a more comfortable life.
Gabriela Cano-Hernandez explains that low-income, first-generation students commonly feel a great deal of pressure “to be the breadwinner of the family” as soon as possible, “because we know the struggles” of their parents, parents who are commonly working at low-income jobs that are breaking down their bodies, their health, and it is hard to see them suffer. “The money is going back to our families,” she remarks, even before graduation, from work-study jobs.
Fatima Almosawi is acutely aware of the advantages she has compared to her many family members who remain in Iraq: “I’m the only one here, and I have to succeed.” “In my eyes, it would be kind of a slap in the face for my parents if I didn’t go to school,” is how Diego Ramos looked at the question of whether or not to go to college. Esmeralda Lara Garcia regrets that “my parents never really had the chance to go to college. They did a lot for me, and I feel like I should return that favor the best I can.” All of this is unstated, unsaid, in her family. But she and a Latina friend have discussed “how their parents sort of see themselves as less,” as they are “working at jobs people don’t desire.” She wants to tell her parents, “You’re everything I want to be, strong, motivated,” that their worlds, the daughters at PSU and the parents in their low-wage jobs, are not so different.
“A lot of my family didn’t know what I was doing” during her four years getting an undergraduate degree at PSU, remarks Aline Alvarez, let alone in her master’s program. But they say, “échale ganas” (keep going). “They moved here for us, to get a better education,” remarks Mohammed Al Qudah,” who is from Jordan. That sacrifice motivates him, perhaps even to get a doctoral degree.
Gaps in Understanding about Higher Education
A few of our interviewees said that their immigrant parents had not emphasized college and in fact did not understand why they, their children, were attending. “They didn’t even know I was going to college,” for a while, recalls Htoo Say. Miguel Izquierdo’s father “didn’t even know I was going to school,” didn’t know his major, and asked him “why” he was majoring in mechanical engineering. Attending college “has definitely” made his relations with his parents “more distant,” not only because of his time away, but because “I’m doing something completely different” from them. Going from his home to PSU is like entering a foreign country.
Adylene Garcia “always wanted to go to college because my brothers didn’t,” and she wanted to “make my Mom proud,” since “she was my number one supporter.” But “my parents don’t know anything” about college or how to get in, and her “dad would blow up” when she asked him to help with the financial aid forms, so she had to learn how to work around that, to take “the initiative in finishing the documents,” and then “walk them through” the parts they needed to do.” “When I first started” PSU, “I did have a temper,” and she and her parents clashed over what this step meant. But over time she has learned to understand what is behind their questions and concerns, and “they know that it’s something I want to do” and are “all very proud of me.”
Stacy Martinez Arroyo speaks at length about how she struggles to connect her parents to her life at PSU. “They don’t fully understand what I’m doing,” she remarks, in part due to “the language barrier.” Their English is limited, and she is not as fluent in Spanish as she used to be. “I wouldn’t know how to break it down for you [what she has been learning] in Spanish,” she sometimes explains. In fact when she asked her mother, who has done some work in accounting, for help in that subject, “I had trouble translating the words to Spanish.” On the other hand, she recently asked her father and a Latino neighbor for help with an architectural assignment having to do with concrete, as they had worked a lot with that material. “They had a hard time understanding what the point of the project” was, as it was theoretical rather than practical. It “was hard for them to wrap their heads around” a task that was “just an experiment,” not an actual job. But they made a connection, nonetheless, and “that moment with my Dad was very important.”
Balancing Parents’ Hopes and Dreams
Several students spoke about how to balance their parents’ hopes and dreams about what education would mean for them and their families with their own.
Monica Nesta-Beltran worked all four years while attending PSU and “I felt like there were three of me,” one at home, one at work, and at PSU. Her parents are from Mexico, and “for them, getting a degree means making a lot of money.” When she changed her major to linguistics, “they would always ask what it was” and “what kind of job can you get from that.” Her parents are from Mexico, and “for them, getting a degree means making a lot of money.” When she changed her major to linguistics, “they would always ask what it was” and “what kind of job can you get from that.” When people asked her mother what Monica was studying, her mom would answer “I don’t know.” But when she got financial support for her research, they were impressed and curious.
Anonymous 17 felt a great deal of pressure to succeed in school from her Vietnamese parents. From grade school forward, “my report card was the most important thing in my life.” For her first two years at PSU, she therefore felt very little interest in any of her classes: “I just have to push through this class and be done” and do perfectly, she would think.
Daisy Duran Navarro reports that her parents have been a big motivator in her decision to go to college. Her father cannot really understand her academic record, but he often says “let me see your grades,” so “I could tell he cared.” But she eventually realized that pleasing her parents “cannot be my only reason to be in college,” that “it’s a lot of pressure . . . if your family is your only reason,” that “I should be here for me.” Liza Ramirez has undertaken a similar journey. The youngest of five children and the only one to go to college, she realized that “my parents worked really hard for me” and wanted her “to go beyond what” she felt “capable of.” So going to college seemed essential: “I knew I needed to do it for them.” At the same time, she felt guilt over the expenses of college, especially when she lost her financial support “because my Dad makes too much,” and her parents seemed to be passing up an opportunity to buy a house in order to fund her education. “I can remember crying so much” about that, going to the Center for Student Health and Counseling (SHAC) and saying “I need help.” She knows that part of the answer is “to figure out I was doing it [college] for myself,” that attending college could not just be to make her parents happy.
Andrew Hoang’s parents insisted that he go to college and major in pre-pharmacy. But “they don’t know pharmacy,” and “they don’t know the struggle.” They think that it is an easy way to a good life: “eight years, and you’ll make a lot of money.” “They raised me and gave birth to me, so I obviously want to give back” and “I don’t want to disappoint them.” But pre-pharmacy is a very hard field, and “I have to think of myself, too,” and he is not sure what he wants and doubts that it is to become a pharmacist.
Lucy Martinez is the first child on her Latino father’s side of the family to go to college, and “the pressure hit me . . . when they were telling me they were really proud of me and were coming to my graduation.” This intense mix of sacrifice, love, expectations, and misunderstandings often make it difficult for New Majority students to enjoy the process of learning or to step back and give themselves time and space to discover what they are most interested in learning about and pursuing a career in.
Balancing their parent’s hopes and expectations with their own is far from the only burden New Majority students bring to PSU. Letty’s parents had from a young age encouraged her to go to college, but “I saw my parents suffering,” and when her father was deported “it really hit me, and I knew the same thing could happen to me, so I settled on the idea that I couldn’t do more” than work at the same sort of low-paying, body-breaking jobs that her parents had. No amount of academic success can completely heal such wounds. Ximena Rivas Quiroz Bejar “never talked with my parents about” her many challenges at PSU. “In some families,” she explains, “you’re not supposed to focus on the sad parts of your life.” Besides, “I’ve always been really independent, and I didn’t want them to know I was going through that stuff.” “I didn’t have anyone to trouble” with her anxieties, she concludes.
Language and Cultural Barriers and Lack of Sense of Belonging
The familial pressures so many New Majority students bring to PSU are exacerbated by fears that they are not smart enough to be at university, that they do not belong. Balkhiis Noor had felt stupid at school from a young age; she was “not fitting in with other students” in elementary school because of how she dressed and smelled. Autumn Cabral felt embarrassed at PSU because she did not at first have a major. Everyone else seemed to be sure of their path, so she had to wonder, “am I smart enough?” Kashindi Heragi felt at first that “I was expected to know what I did not know.” She struggled to keep up, and “every time you go into class, it’s something new, they don’t repeat” topics. Naomi Morales Rodriguez had thought that “college was only for smart people,” and that she was not smart. Once at PSU, she felt more hopeful, but still out of place compared to some of her white friends, who talked about their parents paying them for getting high grades and of going on trips over holidays while “I’m going to babysit and work all month.”
Living for the first time in an environment dominated by complicated and at times specialized English intimidates many students. Ximena Rivas Quiroz Bejar at first “felt embarrassed because I was in college” and “didn’t have the words in English.” “I was trying to learn how not to have an accent, because if you have an accent,” she recalls, “they look at you and put you in a certain category because of your accent, your color, and your hair type.” She vividly recalls a professor who did not have the patience to explain to her what they were doing for a class project, who “did face” and said, “is it not easy for you to understand this?” “He thought that I was so slow,” she recalls. But other students were “the most difficult part” of being at PSU. They “made faces. . . . whispering something and you knew they were talking about you because you are struggling” to speak. That “really embarrassed me.” They “made faces. . . . whispering something and you knew they were talking about you because you are struggling” to speak. That “really embarrassed me.”
Eve (not her actual name) felt out of place even in graduate school, as it seemed like “everyone there had amazing professional vocabulary,” so “I felt I would never meet the same standard.” That feeling lasted her entire two years, “even though I got straight ‘A’s.”
New Majority students in more specialized majors felt especially out of place. “I have no idea what they are talking about,” Stacy Martinez Arroyo remembers thinking in one of her introductory classes. Hector Amezola was also intimidated by classmates who had already studied extensively in his major, which his low-income high school had offered no courses in. Gio Garcia “didn’t know how to find my classes” when he arrived at PSU due to “the language barrier.” “I wasn’t even prepared for college academically,” he recalls. When instructors asked them to write an essay, he struggled to understand what he was supposed to do. “I had to find a way to understand the class,” he recalls. “I had to work harder than the other students.” That often meant working from 5:00 am to 11:00 pm, and passing up invitations to socialize.
Like Gio, Daniel Duarte struggled with the “language barrier” when he arrived in the U.S. in his teens. “I thought I was just going to be working” after high school, but a high school teacher “gave me the options,” and urged him to go to college. Like Gio, his work ethic served him well. Living in a poor section of Mexico City, he was accustomed to having “nothing in my pockets,” so the problems and challenges he faced in the U.S., at PSU and otherwise, “didn’t surprise me.”
Brianna Crevier spoke at great length, and with much passion, about how her humble background has shaped her educational journey at PSU. “I always knew I wanted to go to college,” she shares, as it was the only route for success “for people who look like me and have parents like me.” But, nearly two years in, she has been discouraged by the many costs of college, such as gas and parking, how many hours she needs to work, and how much attention she has to pay to “my mental health, family” to succeed. Comparing herself to students from more comfortable backgrounds, she can see that “I didn’t really get to have the college experience.” She made the hard decision to take two terms off: “I cried a lot.” But she is determined to return with the resolution “to fight for myself.” “I was told by some white boy that I don’t fit the standard,” but she is now “glad I don’t fit the standard.”
Struggles with Costs and Financial Aid
The great majority of the students we interviewed worried about the costs of college, and many of them struggled to understand how financial aid worked at PSU. Much of this confusion was rooted in the complexities of the federal financial-aid system, which seemed to grow more complicated each year.
Serena Camarillo was very surprised at being charged out-of-state tuition when she arrived at PSU: “I just cried.” She had to take out a big loan, and “to this day I don’t know why they took it [her aid] back.” Masao Arasato, in Admissions, “was great at comforting me and hearing me out!” she recalls. Liliana Kwizera and her parents also struggled with finances when the aid package that had drawn her to PSU was withdrawn for a year. She found out eventually that the problem was due simply to a wrong social security number. Helping her “felt like it wasn’t a priority” to the people she talked to. Anonymous 17 did not know that reaching out to the Financial Aid Office was an option, and since “my parents don’t speak English” and did not know how much income they had made, “the paperwork was really hard for me.” Anonymous 26 left PSU at the end of her first year due to owing money. She did not want to let her parents know about it, as they would have paid the money instead of “looking after my grandma, she is really sick.” She concluded that PSU “is for kids who have money.” She transferred to PCC, as it was cheaper, and she could pay for it by herself.Anonymous 26 left PSU at the end of her first year due to owing money. She did not want to let her parents know about it, as they would have paid the money instead of “looking after my grandma, she is really sick.” She concluded that PSU “is for kids who have money.” She transferred to PCC, as it was cheaper, and she could pay for it by herself.
“It was easier to buy bitcoin than to find your balance” with financial aid, quips Daniel Duarte. He was once told that he owed a great deal of money, then the next day, when he went in person to inquire, he found out that the issue was easily resolved. Prabina Sunuwar, a refugee from South Asia, ran into “financial problems” her last year at PSU, and had to ask her mother for help, which she of course had hoped to avoid. Anonymous F1 at first struggled to understand even basic aspects of financial aid. “I have work study, now what?”
Davika Dige was especially angry about the lack of financial assistance she received from PSU. She was living on a friend’s couch shortly after her grandpa, whom she was very close to, had passed away. None of the several offices she appealed to helped her. “I’ve had to advocate for myself, I’ve had to find resources on my own.” She laments the irony that although parking is very expensive, cars in the parking garage are often broken into. Serena Camarillo also worried about her safety on campus and recalls feeling threatened in a parking garage and that her concerns were not taken seriously. Choosing between the costs and challenges of parking at PSU or the risks of using Portland’s transit system drove some students to resort to enrolling in online classes, even when they much preferred face-to-face learning.
Lack of Practical and Professional Guidance
Many students also expressed frustration with PSU’s advising system, and how long it took them to understand it. Jesus Jimenez “didn’t feel like I got help, especially registering for classes,” when he entered PSU. After receiving so much guidance in high school, “it was a shock when I got here.” First-year student Elizabeth Rodriguez “felt like I didn’t have enough help registering for class” and did not realize how many resources were available to her until Professor Michael Lupro introduced them in her FRINQ class. Anonymous 17 “was more confused after talking to” her advisor than she had been at first:
It felt like ‘my advisor’ expected me to already know so many things about college, which was not the case because I am a first-generation college student and could not get help from my parents. I remember feeling so belittled and ‘stupid’ when the meeting ended. Meeting with them felt more daunting and demoralizing than informational and reassuring. I wish for more advisors to understand that not all students entering college know what to expect because they did not have role-models to help prepare them. I hope that future advisors will meet the students where they are at and not show any judgement when answering questions no matter how simple and repetitive it might seem to them.
So she did not meet with an advisor for several years, when Cierra Wade helped her a lot. “Cierra did an amazing job making me feel comfortable asking questions and asking for reassurance.” Eve remarked that her biggest challenge at PSU had been to “figure out how to graduate” after her advisor left. She did not know how to get a new one, so she was on her own for three years. Davika Dige found her advisors “very vague. They tell you to take extra classes you don’t really need.” She eventually found a “really great” advisor who told her that she could apply 100 hours of volunteer work to a graduation requirement. Fatima Almosawi is frustrated with “how little I know” about how PSU works, how long it has taken her to learn how incompletes become “F”s, for example. It feels as if the advisors “just want to get you out of the room.” Andrew Hoang finds his advisor helpful, “but always booked out,” so “sometimes it’s hard to know what to do.” Nearly halfway through his degree, “I’m kind of lost.”
Anonymous 18 had a particularly difficult time getting clear and accurate guidance on how her PSU degree would prepare her for a subsequent professional program. She was assured during orientation that her PSU degree “would somehow get me” into a highly selective program, then, well after starting classes, discovered “this isn’t really what I thought it was,” was told “that’s not what we do here.” In fact she did not understand how her undergraduate degree was preparing her for more specialized training until after she had graduated. Her advisor would explain that she had a lot of students to advise and that the best way to find answers to her questions was to “look it up.” She was unable to switch advisors. Looking back, well after having graduated, she believes that “I wouldn’t have wasted so much time at PSU” and “have been so confused” if she had received better guidance.“I wouldn’t have wasted so much time at PSU” and “have been so confused” if she had received better guidance.
Several students planning to go to graduate or law school after their undergraduate studies, felt unsupported by PSU. Anonymous 9 did not meet with any advisors after her first year and found that PSU’s program for supporting her career path was “not that useful.” “I got advice through social media” on what she needed to do to strengthen her application. Lizeth, the daughter of immigrants with little formal education, went right into an outstanding graduate program after graduating from PSU, but the PSU faculty in her major did not help her learn “what you even need for graduate school,” such as taking the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). The only professor who “asked what are your plans” was her FRINQ professor, from her first year, and she received the most guidance from a mentor outside of PSU, in the I Have a Dream Foundation.
New Majority students tend to be very practical or pragmatic about college, are primarily interested in how obtaining a higher education will help them earn a good living and to financially help their parents and are therefore frustrated when professors seem disinterested in linking their classes to getting a good job. “The professors teach from the book,” remarks Peter Nguyen, rather than “connecting” students to career “pathways.” The attitude of many faculty seems to be that practical guidance on how to turn one’s degree into a job is work for advisors and the Career Center, but, those staff members are often overwhelmed by the number of students they serve, and of course New Majority students are often unaware of these options, or too intimidated to take advantage of them.
Students who sought help from the Disability Resources Center (DRC) and SHAC tended to be happier. Jayden Martin met with the DRC right away, upon entering PSU at age 17, and “they did a really great job.” They established that Jayden should have the option of three-day extensions for work, and that has been “really helpful” in having a successful transition to college. Jo Do’s peer mentor and instructor in FRINQ helped her to find SHAC, where she received both individual and group therapy. It “was a very positive experience,” though, as a peer mentor herself, she has learned that there is often a long wait time for both SHAC and the DRC. As noted above, advisors also commonly lack the time to help students as fully as they would like to.
Hiring more staff in these programs that support students outside of the classroom would certainly help. But many students will not seek out this assistance unless faculty tell them about it, and that usually requires doing more than listing resources in the syllabus. It can be helpful to think of faculty’s role as a bridge, not as the therapist, for example, but as the link to the therapist. But that link will not be made unless PSU students have sufficient time with and trust in faculty to share with them what sort of help they need. Hence some of the faculty we interviewed talked about literally “walking” a student to SHAC or some other resource.
A sense of how various cultures work is helpful for staff, but each student’s situation is unique. Edgar Ruiz Garcia’s eight-year journey from a recently arrived teenager from Mexico struggling to learn English to a civil engineer is a particularly vivid illustration of that. He had been in the U.S. only a few years when he pursued a Civil Engineering degree at PSU. Being away from his family in Newport for eight months a year exacted an emotional and financial toll, so rather than taking the extra time that an internship would require, he graduated in four years while spending his summers back in Newport, where he could be with his close knit family, live rent free, and make more money in the family restaurant than he could in Portland. This approach seemed to have backfired when Edgar’s applications were turned away because he lacked experience, because he did not have the work experience that an internship would have supplied. Edgar’s parents had for many years taken a great deal of pride in his academic accomplishments, and were extremely disappointed that those years of hard work and sacrifice had not led to a job. At a job fair, many months after graduating, Edgar met a supervisor who was willing to listen to “my story, how I overcame the challenges I had.” This man ensured that Edgar was considered for an opening, and in fact he got the job. “I wanted to cry,” he recalls.
The Cultural Balancing Act
Edgar’s story is a vivid illustration of the cultural balancing act, the edge walking, that even highly successful New Majority students must execute. Though his parents were very supportive and proud of him pursuing a degree, their financial constraints meant that he felt compelled to complete his education in four years, which less than one in five PSU students do, and in a very demanding major. His social commitment to spending summers with his family also essentially made it impossible for him to secure an internship, which he, if not his parents, understood was almost a prerequisite for getting a job in his field after graduation. Through perseverance, intelligence, and some luck, he was able to walk that fine line.
PSU is justly proud of graduates such as Edgar. But, listening to their stories, it at times seems that they have at times had to succeed in spite of more than because of the university. And of course there are many Edgars who did not find a manager who took the time to listen to and appreciate them, graduates who are working at more or less the same jobs they had in high school or, even more commonly, students who gave up on their dream, and their family’s dream, of a college degree due to some combination of poor grades, financial struggles, personal or familial tragedies, faculty disinterest, or many other variables. New Majority students typically come to PSU with very high expectations, a great deal of internal and external pressure. The best case scenario for most is a degree and a career, but also a set of experiences that inevitably move them away from the very parents who so often insisted that they go to college.
