Chapter 2: “I’m on My Own”: Belonging and Not Belonging at PSU
As we saw in Chapter 1, New Majority students come to Portland State with particular strengths and challenges. They tend to be very determined to succeed, to make good on the sacrifices their parents made to get them to college. Those parents often modeled resilience and courage in the face of daunting circumstances. In fact many New Majority students themselves have already encountered and met many more challenges than students from more privileged backgrounds, such as becoming fluent in a second or third language or balancing extensive home responsibilities with school.
But this determination is often tested severely at Portland State, where the faculty, students, and curriculum often seem much more alien than in high school. Chapter 3 will examine more particular interactions between New Majority students and faculty. In this chapter we are more concerned with the broader cultural disorientation New Majority students often experience at PSU, how their family responsibilities, language, ethnic or racial identity, or other cultural elements often made them feel like outsiders at PSU, contributing to what is often referred to as Imposter Syndrome.
Contrasts in Culture, Values, and Priorities
Several students contrasted the warm and sociality of their families and cultures with the cold impersonality of PSU. Aline Alvarez earned a bachelor’s degree at PSU before returning for graduate school and recalls a long history of feeling like PSU’s values and priorities conflict with how her mother from Mexico raised her. “We are very family oriented,” she says, so “[i]f I can lend a helping hand, I will.” PSU felt much more aloof. Her most vivid memory of that came in her first year, when a close friend died. “It was a lot for me,” so “I stopped going to school” for a while.
Only one of her professors was supportive when she returned. Another demanded “proof” of her friend’s death. “It was kind of crazy for me,” since this was “my first experience with loss and death,” and she had no idea how to prove a death. She now strives in her work at David Douglas High School to connect with every student she can, and urges PSU faculty to do the same: “None of us have the time, but we make the time,” is her motto. She wishes that PSU faculty would learn how to “show up” and “give grace” to their students. She barely remembers any of the professors in her major, and most were neither flexible nor understanding about the demands she faced at work and at home. “One hundred percent,” she responds upon being asked if she experienced a culture clash at PSU, contrasting her “family oriented” life in her home and community with the “very individualistic” one at PSU. At PSU, “I’m on my own.”
Likewise, Liza Ramirez wishes for white professors who would “get to know my story.” But that has seldom happened. “Hell yes,” she responds, when asked if there is a cultural gap between her and her teachers. “I can’t share with these white professors,” she explains, and often feels “like I’m a rubber duck in a pond of real [white] ducks. “There’s some academic words I just don’t understand,” and so “I just feel dumb, because no one else can relate to how I talk.” “There’s some academic words I just don’t understand,” and so “I just feel dumb, because no one else can relate to how I talk.”At the same time, the subject in many of her classes is her very own culture, and “I know a little bit more about my community than a white professor” does. But the white professors and students seem disinterested in her and her experiences.
Peter Nguyen also believes that most of his professors came from a culture very different from his and had little interest in understanding him or his values. Vietnamese “are family before everything,” he remarks. Through high school, most of his teachers seemed to understand and embody that, and to take a personal interest in him: “outside of academics, they wanted you to succeed, too.” Peter’s life outside the classroom often included intense family responsibilities. He also, during the pandemic, started online social networks that provided meaningful social connections for hundreds of people across the globe, a project that by the time he graduated in 2025 consumed about thirty hours a week of his time to administer and was closely related to much of his course work at PSU. But he never felt that any of his professors in his major would be interested in knowing about that work.
Misunderstandings About Responsibilities Outside of School
Many New Majority students report that their professors seem to assume that college students have no responsibilities outside of school. Anna Bui found that a mentor expected her to work eight hours without a break at a volunteer opportunity, after she had worked night shifts as a CNA outside of PSU. When she tried to explain that “this is getting a bit too much,” the mentor replied that they had worked more hours at a time with no break at her age. It should not be something to complain about. Anonymous 20 had to work long hours at a job outside of PSU and make a long commute to campus and found that even if he asked for an extension a week ahead of time, he would often be told that only a serious illness would suffice. He came to accept that this was “the mindset” and “you have to deal with it.”
Kevin Yang turned to online classes to accommodate his work schedule, but found that many online faculty “don’t understand” that so many students chose online courses precisely because their time is so dear. One included a welcome survey with questions about when students were working “but she never did anything with that” in terms of adjusting deadlines.
Stacy Martinez Arroyo reports a particularly vivid experience with a professor who did not understand her life situation. When he saw her at her job, far from PSU, he was surprised to learn that she was both working and going to PSU, then asserted “this is what’s killing your . . . prospects,” her working rather than devoting all of her waking hours to academics. “To assume I had the option not to work,” Stacy concludes, “is insane.” In fact the same professor had encouraged students to stay at school and study rather than spending time with their families at Thanksgiving. Her primary factor in choosing a professor has become: “who would understand my situation the most.”
New Majority students often struggle to explain how intense their family commitments are. Lizeth relates a particularly harrowing memory, at the height of COVID. “My mother was in the hospital, I needed to take care of my younger siblings” and “we weren’t able to get groceries.” She “couldn’t apply for unemployment,” out of fear that it might endanger her DACA status. “I needed to work, but I couldn’t work.” Only one of her professors gave her an extension. Many years later, and after graduating not only from PSU but also from a very distinguished graduate program, she concludes that her professors “just assumed we were home doing nothing.” She wishes that she could have explained to someone: “When you are in fear of your parents dying, the last thing on your mind is doing an assignment.”
She believes that her high school teachers, also largely white, tended to be more understanding than her PSU instructors because they were more likely to come from low-income backgrounds. “More teachers were willing to go with their students,” to stay after school to help them, to learn about their lives. PSU faculty “seemed more privileged” and “didn’t see” that many of their students had to work and “had responsibilities at home.” She was proud of having “started working at age fourteen,” of buying her own computer, for example, but at PSU there were “no props [praise or acclaim] to students who had to work.” Liliane Kwizera recalls her first two years at PSU as being very lonely. “I would just go to class and go home” largely due to “the expectations at home.” Looking back, now graduated from PSU, she wishes she had shared more with her professors about her life, but professors can be “very condescending,” and she feared being judged or criticized.
Feeling Belittled by Professors
Indeed, several students shared vivid memories of feeling belittled by professors. Gio Garcia, who had only been in the U.S. for a few years, struggled with understanding English and therefore many assignments. When he asked one professor for clarification on the assignments, the instructor responded “just read the book.” Gio wondered, “what chapter, what page?” At least once a term, professors answered his questions with “the minimum possible, . . . . read the syllabus . . . read the book,” when he had already done both, but still had questions.
Likewise, Anonymous 8 in her sophomore year was trying to understand “the idea of thinking for yourself” and how to demonstrate that skill through Zoom discussions in which the instructor spent so much time talking and students commonly talked over her. The professor eventually “went off on me” for lack of class participation and informed her that she would not pass. “I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat there. . . . disappointed in myself.” The professor eventually “went off on me” for lack of class participation and informed her that she would not pass. “I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat there. . . . disappointed in myself.
Naomi Morales Rodriguez had a similar experience in a class whose subject she did not understand at all: “I fell behind really fast.” After two weeks of trying, without success, to meet with the professor to strategize on how she might succeed, or whether or not she should drop the class, the professor took her aside during a class break and without asking any questions simply informed her to “drop the course because it’s too late” to succeed. The interchange was much more public and “humiliating” than Naomi had wished for. “She basically told me to my face that I’m kind of dumb.” Anonymous 30 has also felt disrespected in some interactions with faculty. She took and flunked the same class twice with an instructor who responded to her pleas for help with “‘rewatch [the] videos,’ which I’d already done.” “I felt no support whatsoever.”
This sense of being dismissed and derided because of one’s life circumstances or culture happens in more subtle ways. Brianna Crevier recalls a professor who “gave me a look” because her large bracelets were making noise as she took notes. Her Mom said “take them off. . . . I need to fit in. . . . I have to give them what they need.” “So I took off the bracelets, the hoops, the necklaces.” “I couldn’t be myself,” she concludes, “I couldn’t speak the way I speak” or move the way she moves.
Brianna Tuy felt especially vulnerable during the pandemic, when Asian-Americans faced more bias than usual. “I was so scared,” she recalls. It seemed like “everyone hates me.” In her online classes “I was seeing a lot of white people . . . a lot of white men,” which exacerbated her sense of vulnerability. But she hesitated to reach out to her professors about these or other challenges because “I don’t want to annoy the professors.” Her feelings “were not their fault,” she concluded. So this student, whom her friends describe as extraordinarily outgoing and confident, kept quiet.
Other students report challenges with faculty who made students feel uncomfortable focusing on their ethnic identities before and without getting to know them individually. Gabriela Cano-Hernandez was a teaching assistant for a professor who quickly jumped into asking students about their ethnicity and then “followed up every one of the identities with a stereotype,” an opening exercise that was “not welcoming.” A large proportion of students of color soon chose not to attend class very often. “It was so hard to watch. . . . and hurt me a lot, sat in my body,” she recalls, this neglect of actual students of color from someone who was professing so much concern about racist systems.
Adjusting to Classrooms Dominated by White Students
Since many of PSU’s New Majority students come from low-income high schools dominated by people of color, adjusting to majors and classrooms dominated by confident white students is often daunting. “Am I even smart enough to go to college?” wondered Dulcebeth Lopez Martinez in one of her introductory classes. She “felt like I was always behind in that class.”
Lily A. recalls feeling “crushed” in the introductory course to her major. The assigned readings were “extremely hard,” and “I just cried while doing my reading.” Several young white men dominated the class discussions, and one used many words she was unfamiliar with. “I did not understand a thing he said.” Though the class was diverse, “I didn’t feel like I was represented. . . . I felt so uncomfortable.” Though she received an “A” in the class, and had been the salutatorian of a large high school class, she soon changed her major.
Elizabeth Rodriguez wept as she remembered her first term at PSU. “Everybody was a little more ahead . . . they’d had these opportunities” that she had not. One large introductory class in particular was difficult: “I would raise my hand and ask for help, and the professor ignored me.” “Maybe it’s something with me,” she wondered, “I said something wrong?” “Maybe it’s something with me,” she wondered, “I said something wrong?”The Latina teaching assistant “would come to me” and speak in Spanish, which helped. But the professor seemed determined “to belittle your intelligence.”
Wilondja Denis Mashimango, who spent much of his childhood in a refugee camp, also struggled to understand the English that his PSU professors used. The “language was very hard,” he recalls, much more difficult than it had been in high school. “You start with everybody,” believing that you are in the same place as your classmates at the start of a class, but then “you have no idea what he is talking about” and “kind of feel like you’re behind.” “I don’t think I can do this,” he remembers thinking. “You have homework, you don’t know where to start, you have no idea” and “you feel discouraged to reach out to the professor.” Wilondja graduated, but “there were so many feelings of giving up, so I had to remind myself of why I was there.”
Maria Castro-Mendoza, who grew up on the East Coast, struggled to come to terms with being part of a small minority in Portland and in many of her PSU classes. “The rest of school,” outside of her FRINQ class, “and the city itself are overwhelmingly white,” She had only one faculty of color in her undergraduate course work, and “to not see yourself” represented among professors “gets in your head.” “If you’re not seeing people of color in positions you hope to be in,” she concludes, it is hard to imagine yourself in those positions. Which is not to say that white professors could not understand her life. “It’s easier to transcend those [racial] boundaries,” she concludes” when professors are really trying to understand your experiences.”
Michelle Galvan was often “the only person of color” in smaller classes as she progressed at PSU, and “definitely felt” a sense of “misplacement.” “I can’t talk to anyone else about the reading,” was how she felt. Anonymous 18 “didn’t come across anybody like me” in her major, it seemed like “everyone was white,” so “I felt like I didn’t belong, . . . . like nobody cared.” Anonymous 19 “struggled the most” in “those big lecture classes,” where “the people don’t look like me.” “I don’t belong here,” she concluded, “should I even be here?” She sought refuge in “our own little group” from FRINQ, but then the pandemic brought further isolation, “just listening to the professor talk the whole time” over Zoom.
Feeling Behind and Alone
This sense of being behind can be particularly intense for students in more specialized majors. Stacy Martinez Arroyo was intimidated by students “from a privileged background” who “are more outspoken” and were talking about information “I know nothing about.” When professors immediately “throw all this information at you” she was tempted to conclude that “I don’t think I fit in here.” She recalls “feeling like you don’t know enough, you don’t belong.” “It’s hard to learn more when you feel like you already don’t know enough.”
Vinuar Gardi also entered the introductory classes in her profession “completely blind.” When she asked her father, a refugee, if he knew anyone in the field, he replied “there is this guy I met in 1974 you could talk to.” There was a stark divide between students from families like hers and students with parents in the field, people who already knew so much. “We have this ongoing joke about nepo babies,” she remarks, students who have a big head start and who upon graduation use their family connections to slide into well-paying jobs. She emphasizes that there is a lot of camaraderie and mutual respect throughout the program. But “a lot of us have to work a lot harder” than others.
Autumn Cabral encountered many students in her program who had family members in the profession, and they would say things to her such as “you should already know this,” though she eventually experienced a sense of community with many of her classmates. Taiye Timothy also encountered classmates who would “talk about their parents’ experiences” in a way that made it clear that “they’d been immersed in this world” of higher education and professional life in a way that she had not. She found that faculty often assumed growing up in a privileged family was the norm, as the illustrations they used in the course were “so different from our experiences,” such as the advice to use one’s family connections to advance one’s own career.
“Most of my [white] peers try to be nice,” remarks Kashindi Heragi, but there are limits. “You can ask for a pencil, but you can’t ask for help with the homework.” “I used to sit in the corner . . . the student would see you in the corner, but no one would come and try to sit with me.” She concluded that to be popular, to be approached by fellow students, it was necessary to be “pretty or not black” The white faculty, as well, “have that pride of, hey, I’m white, what are you going to do about it” when she approached them for help. “The white students do get the help,” she concludes, because “most professors try to help their own more than others.” Serena Camarillo has often felt “on the outskirts” at her PSU job, as nearly all the other student employees are white, and she has so little in common with them. Brianna Tuy “was just so used to being around a lot of white people” in high school and most of her PSU classes that she got accustomed to “just putting on a face that I thought people would like” in her classes.
Lisa (not her actual name) grew up in Asia and at first felt very offended by how white students interacted with her. She was very confused when some told her that “you don’t have to take it [school] so seriously,” and “I thought a lot of people were rude” for addressing people by their first names, for example. “The first time I heard someone call me ‘dork,’ I thought it was very rude,” she recalls, but over time she understood that such comments were often made lightly, were a form of teasing.
Racial, Gender, and Social Divides in Classes
Indeed, many students recall a strong, if unspoken, racial, gender, and social divide in their classes, one that made it very difficult for them to feel as if they belonged or even had permission to open their mouths. Denisse Meza Santellano seldom spoke, despite their excellent academic record. “Most people in the class,” they explain, “don’t look like me,” and some had parents who were professionals. “Those people want to talk, so I’ll just let them do it,” since “I feel like I can’t take up that space.”“Those people want to talk, so I’ll just let them do it,” since “I feel like I can’t take up that space.”
Anonymous 17 recalls that the white students in her class spoke much more frequently than the others. She did not feel that “I had permission to raise my hand or walk up to” the professor. “It often felt like if I were white,” she concludes, “college would be a lot easier.”
Jo Do describes herself as part Mexican but also “white passing sometimes,” but having been “raised a girl . . . sometimes . . . it is hard to ask questions.” “It feels sometimes that classrooms aren’t really built for me,” she concludes, and “I don’t want to look stupid.” She observes in fact that “a lot of female students will apologize for asking questions.”
“I did notice an energy” in some classes, recalls Anonymous 4, that “the bulk of the discussions were very male dominated.” Daisy Duran Navarro believed that such students often create “a competitive atmosphere” that discourages other students from speaking. “Some students,” mostly white, “are stingy and don’t want others to get ahead of them.” Anna Bui, who was the valedictorian of her high school, struggled in one of her first-year classes, both to understand what the professor was saying, as English was her second language, and on how to work with confident native English speaking students who had a “I got this” and I “don’t want to be in groups” sort of attitude that she did not at first feel comfortable challenging due to her imposter syndrome.
Some of the interviewees recalled struggling to understand how their white classmates could be so brash. Serena Camarillo was often in classes that were about half brown, but the white students often took “ the space away by talking so much . . . they just talk and talk about unnecessary things.” “It’s just the white people talking,” and she wondered, “how do you not notice that you’re talking so much” and “you don’t even raise your hand?” “It’s kind of disrespectful that they take everybody‘s time without being aware” of doing so.
Professors of course often pay the most attention to the students who speak up the most. Jo Do reports that the “students who tend to connect a lot with professors. . . . are white male. . . . students who are very confident in themselves.” After all, “the spaces have been built for them.” Indeed, despite having had four classes with one professor in her major, and really appreciating the way he teaches, she has never tried to connect with him. Anonymous 18 believes that the professors in her major preferred to work with the students “who talked more,” who came from more privileged backgrounds. “I’m very shy, . . . I’m not very confident . . . so I’m not going to raise my hand.” Maybe the professors felt like the quiet students didn’t care, but “we were just confused.” When she and her family had challenges, when “I was not going so good” the professors’ attitudes “almost made me feel bad or ashamed” about her life. She felt like “they probably wouldn’t have cared” about what she was going through, “so I didn’t tell them.”
Teaching Yourself
New Majority students at times link this lack of attention to quieter students to a more general disinterest in teaching. Diana Melgar Ruano recalls a large class in which the professor began by announcing that “you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” By the end of the term, only about one tenth of the class bothered to attend, in part because the professor “didn’t explain the material well,” failed to link class time with the subject matter, and seemed disinterested in engaging with the students who did attend.
Olivia Monestime found it “especially disheartening when they just took their material straight from the internet.” In such classes it was easy to pass the tests by finding the answers online, but the classes were a waste of her time and money. Adylene Garcia recalls that “a lot of the students” in one of her classes “were doing the class on their own time,” using materials from outside the course, since the class lectures were not helpful in preparing for the exams.
Likewise, Prabina Sunuwar had a very difficult class in which “the professor wasn’t that good at teaching, so I had to watch so many videos” on YouTube. “I’ve been used to not reaching out to professors for help,” remarks Anonymous 9. “Sometimes you have to teach yourself . . . outside of class.”“Sometimes you have to teach yourself . . . outside of class.” Aqdas Juya, who graduated in four years, despite extensive family responsibilities, found that she often “had to teach myself” to pass a class, often by reading material that had not been assigned. “It’s very stressful,” especially when she needed to do that sort of work in more than one class per term.
“What are you doing here?” Denisse Meza Santellano wondered about some of their instructors. “I’m just paying for an ‘A’” if attendance is optional, the lectures are just the professor reading off slides which are available online, and there’s very little feedback on their essays. “I’m paying you to do homework.”
Challenges with Online Classes
Students especially criticized online classes. “There wasn’t much connection there,” remarks Anonymous 22. Anonymous 8 remarks that in many such classes, students feel as if they are “teaching themselves” and frustrated by lack of clarity in course objectives and how “to meet course expectations.” Lily Hathaway, who is very positive about her face-to-face PSU classes, describes online classes as a “fend for yourself” environment.
“I have to guess on so many things,” Anonymous 8 concludes, “especially if the professor doesn’t respond” to questions “in a timely manner.” Lily A. describes an online class in which the professor “ghosted us” for the first two weeks of class. In week three, she was able to extract some answers from an instructor about the course, but after that she received no response to her questions. In week five the instructors told students to “just post your final paper” in order to meet the course requirements. Lily A. received just a few words of general feedback on that paper. “It kind of felt like they didn’t care,” she concludes.
Olivia Monestime remembers “no lasting connections” from the online courses she took during COVID. “Nothing really stuck.” Some faculty were “doing the bare minimum,” such as devoting half of class time to break-out rooms which remained almost completely quiet. Amara Frost “appreciated the flexibility of online classes,” but “I didn’t connect with the professors at all.” ”I think asynchronous classes are designed to not be engaging,” observes Serena Camarillo. “It’s kind of a mess,” concludes Anonymous 4, speaking of online courses. “No one is connecting with anyone.”
Lack of Ethnic Diversity in Curriculum
Several students were disappointed about the lack of ethnic diversity in their major’s curriculum. Aline Alvarez remarks that her graduate program’s content “is so white” that “even white students” notice it. She seldom encounters course material that applies to the neighborhood she grew up in and now serves, in Outer East Portland. Anonymous 17 said that she sometimes heard about families like hers in the stories shared in class, but never in the assignment materials. Anonymous 4 chose her major in part because it related to her “Arab” and family culture. But her professors lacked the element of sociality so vital to that culture, both in the topics they chose to focus on, namely abstract principles or theory over real-world, practical skills, and in their disinterest in connecting with their students.
Daniel Duarte has a similar critique. Growing up poor in Mexico City, he learned how to use his wits to make a living at a young age, how to think on his feet and make connections with a wide range of people. After moving to the U.S. in his mid-teens, he found that these skills translated very well to working as a manager in a fast-food restaurant: “it’s politics, like chess pieces.” His professors, on the other hand, were focused on theory, on “however they’d like the world to be,” not how it actually was. None of them were aware of or seemed interested in his real-life experiences in Mexico or the U.S., aside from a professor who did not have a Ph.D. and was curious about the lives of his students.
Ignoring Local and National Events
Several students felt that PSU faculty and administrators were uncomfortable addressing local and national events that weighed heavily on students of color. Fatima, who is from Iraq, experienced “a lot of racism this past year,” including “random white guys [who] would walk up to me” and start accusing her of harming Israelis. Daisy Duran Navarro felt like PSU’s administration was attempting to silence work-study students during the protests about Israel’s occupation of Gaza during the 2023-2024 school year: “it was censorship.” “Calling SWAT teams on students protesting is not welcoming,” observes Anonymous 3. “Portland State perpetuates this view” of being very progressive, observes Maria Castro-Mendoza, yet has ties with Boeing and Israel.
Aline Alvarez was surprised that her professors ignored the Black Lives Matter protests when she was an undergraduate and that now, in graduate school, they are ignoring threats to immigrants: “The protests were down the street . . . and were not being talked about.” Faculty seemed unable to even ask students: “are you OK?” Faculty seemed unable to even ask students: “are you OK?”let alone to help them wrestle with topics such as “what to do if ICE arrives.” Latine student “need it. . . . I need to know what to do.” She wonders if her white professors are silent because “it doesn’t apply to them” or because “it’s uncomfortable for them” to talk about.
Issues Related to Inclusivity and Identity
Anonymous 27 is one of the growing number of PSU students who identify as nonbinary, and their experience of belonging in PSU classrooms was mixed. “I’ve never been terribly pushy about my [nonbinary] identity, they remark, and “there was a lot of people addressing the class as ‘hey ladies.’” But the professor was very inclusive, and covered queer topics and was very supportive when they, the student, asked for fuller coverage of those themes.
Several students recalled uncomfortable or very painful interactions with faculty who were determined to impose a particular point of view. Stephani Jeronimo-Martinez recalls having in her senior year an instructor who asserted that PSU students were too worried about pronouns and therefore created “a whole conflict . . . over nothing.” Anonymous 15 found herself taking a class in which “we had to say biological man” rather than just “man.” Since she knew so many people who “identify with the terms masculine and feminine,” including some who had been in same-sex relationships, this felt forced and extreme. “It felt like we were often walking on eggshells with our language,” that “we were being told what to believe instead of how to think.”
Bo Han Hurt had particularly challenging experiences around the topic of sexuality in several of his courses. Bo is an autistic transsexual male who believes that “we can’t ever really change our gender.” He also disagreed that being misgendered was necessarily devastating. And he raised questions such as: “why we are assuming there’s no nature of gender and claiming it is only nurtured by a social construct, and why it is necessary or moral for first graders to start learning about gay sex,” among other points of view. Several of his instructors termed these statements “transphobic and heteronormative.” One reported him for gender discrimination under Title IX. Though these “instructors said that the classes are discussion-based and that we don’t have to agree with the course materials, . . . we’re only presented material with one perspective, and the conversation is shut down when I present different research and perspectives.”
In one instance, he was at first blocked from the online discussions, then restricted to a small group. Some students agreed with the instructors, though one thanked him for speaking up, and many of “my peers seemed scared to speak up.” Realizing that his Asperger’s could inhibit his capacity to read social cues, Bo asked his instructors up front about how to communicate his points of view and research and “how much am I able to engage with” controversial perspectives. Though they assured him that the discussions were open, his experiences in the classes soon suggested otherwise.
A Clash Between Collectivist Culture and Individualistic Culture
Students who express points of view that their professors are hostile toward often feel acutely out of place. The New Majority students we interviewed most commonly felt alienated at PSU for much broader reasons that boiled down to a clash between their collectivist cultures and the highly individualistic and autonomous academic culture of the university.
Students express considerable dis-ease at having to negotiate a place that seemed so foreign and often hostile, a confusing place where it did not seem to be OK to be confused, with rules that often only became clear once you had broken them. Many found ways to succeed, to graduate, but many lament the lost opportunities for the community they had hoped to find.
