Confessions of a first generation student

http://talentegg.ca/incubator/2009/09/confessions-of-a-first-generation-student/ September 29 2009

I always knew I would go to university or college, but I was never sure what I was going to school for, since I had such a large variety of interests. I applied to an array of programs at a bunch of different schools, and was accepted into them all. (I made my choice based mostly on a campus visit that involved cotton candy and bubbles.)

I became the third person in my extended family to go to post-secondary education and the second to graduate; however, in my nuclear family I was the first for both. I am what is known as a first generation student (also called first gen or FGS): the first person in my immediate family to go on to post-secondary education.

With the number of students attending university and college on the rise in the last decade, the number of first gen students has increased as well. We fill an interesting demographic and face challenges that students whose parents have post-secondary education do not.

In general, first gen students often confront the following issues:

• Being confused by the application process
• No knowledge of academic expectations
• Use of confusing jargon by the institution
• Lack of information regarding support-systems on campus
• Coping with life as a post-secondary student
• Financial barriers
• Not having support of parents and family
• Guilt in regards to the post-secondary experience
• Higher dropout rates than traditional students

The hardest part for me was not having anyone to turn to. I knew nothing about choosing courses, how university experience worked, living in residence or what the university could offer me when I was applying.

I also did not know the benefits that some schools had over others, in terms of reputation, cost, location, transportation, programs offered, class sizes, supplementary fees and extra-curriculars. The only real form of guidance I had about Canadian universities was the annual publication from Maclean’s magazine.

My parents didn’t have any way to assist me in my choice; the only advice they could offer was from other parents to their children, which in many cases did not apply to me.

Once I made my choice, made it through Welcome Week and started my studies, I was once again inundated with unknowns. I sort of fumbled my way through, and more or less ended up OK (I’m still alive, aren’t I?).

But I faced another problem: the language I was comfortable using at university was completely foreign to my parents.

Things that became normative to me and my peers had to be explained to my parents, oftentimes more than once. They have become more familiar with terminology and practices as time has gone on, but there are still many things I do not think they understand.

I noticed my world progressively became more and more dissimilar to theirs. I can’t really say what will happen in the future in terms of my relationship with my parents, since I am not sure if I will pursue more post-graduate education.

But if I had gone straight into the workforce, I honestly believe our relationship would have been much different, as there would be more things I could relate to with them and vice versa.

Since I came to university, I have noticed that many colleges and universities now offer support programs to first gen students in terms of peer mentoring, financial assistance, orientation sessions and workshops during the academic year.

There has also been an influx of information about first gen students in academic literature, suggesting schools have recognized the impact felt by FGS in post-secondary education.

If you happen to be a first gen student, take advantage of the programs offered by your school. Such a program did not exist in my first year, but I wish it did. It likely would have helped me avoid some of those snags (and there were quite a few) in my first year.

A few years ago, I was a peer mentor for first year first gen students as part of the flagship year of the program. Not only did we face a lot of the same issues in our respective first years, but I was able to assist someone else in their transition into university life.

I know my mentee was grateful for the information I passed on to him, and he passed on his experiences to other first year students while being involved as a Community Advisor in the residence system.

MFNSA Welcoming Powwow September 25 2009

http://www.macinsiders.com/showthread.php?t=24069, September 22 2009

The McMaster First Nations Student Association (MFNSA) will be hosting a Welcoming Powwow on Friday September 25th 2009 from 11:30am to 3:30pm in front of JHE (John Hodgins Engineering) building.

This powwow will be MFNSA's first event of the year, and the first-ever powwow on the McMaster campus. The powwow is a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the creation of MFNSA in 1989. The event allows MFNSA to inform students, staff and faculty about Indigenous cultures on campus, as well as promote the Indigenous Studies Program at McMaster University.

There will be a number of different demonstrations at the event, including dancing, singing and drumming. Some of the participants will be giving presentations about the different styles of dances and about the dances themselves. There will be information tables from a few different groups, including MFNSA, the Indigenous Studies Program, and the Aboriginal Health Conference. Traditional cuisine samples which include strawberry drink, Three Sisters Soup, bannock, and wild rice will be available. Speakers from the Indigenous Studies Program will also be in attendance.

For more information, check out the Facebook event, or the event poster (attached). You may also email MFNSA at mac.first.nations@gmail.com

The Faculty and Program Series Part Nine: The Arts and Sciences Program

http://www.macinsiders.com/showthread.php?t=24027, September 20 2009

Introduction
The Arts and Sciences program at McMaster is relatively new, with the first cohort of students enrolling in 1981. As the first program of its kind in Canada, it was designed as a demanding program aimed at students who are capable of doing well in classes in the arts and sciences. This broad liberal arts education has the goals of providing substantial work in the disciplines of both arts and science; allowing students to further develop skills in writing, speaking, and critical reasoning; and fostering the art of scholarly inquiry into issues of public concern. Approximately sixty students are accepted into the program each year, making it the smallest faculty at McMaster.

Students take courses from within the Arts and Science program, as well as courses from the Humanities/Social Sciences and Science. Twenty percent of a student’s course load will be from Science, twenty percent will be from Humanities/Social Sciences, twenty-five to thirty percent will be interdisciplinary, and the remaining courses are electives. Students are usually registered in a combined Honours program in Arts and Sciences and another academic discipline within the Humanities, Sciences or Social Sciences. In their fourth year, students undertake a thesis project, which may be from any program at McMaster. A list of current thesis topics is available here.

Some Recent Awards:

• Patangi (Chari) Rangachari: winner of the 3M National Teaching Fellowships (2008)
• Miroslav Lovric:excellence in teaching from the Ontario government's Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (2007)
• Ken Blonde: OUA Men's Epee Individual Championship title for fencing (2007)
• Bob Henderson: Association for Experiential Education's (AEE) Michael Stratton Practitioner of the Year Award (2006)

Important Undergraduate Contacts:
Program Administrator: 905-525-9140 ext. 23153 asadmin@mcmaster.ca
Program Secretary: 905-525- 9140 ext. 24655 artsci@mcmaster.ca

Tips for Success:

• Participate in the Big Sibling mentoring program
• Talk to your professors and ask them for help when needed
• Check ELM often
• Use the SASS forums
• Keep up with your readings and assignments
• Utilize the Arts Sci GradNet

Undergraduate Social Events/Student Societies:
Society of Arts and Sciences Students (SASS) http://www.sassweb.ca/index.php is involved in Welcome Week activities, socials during the year, a “Big Sibling” mentoring program, Survival Series, and the Arts Sci publication, the Agora.

Notable Alumni Careers and Awards
Brenda Matthews: Researcher at University of California at Berkeley’s Astronomy department
Farah Mawani: Epidemilogist:National Coordinator for the New Canadian Children and Youth Study
Kat Kinch: UBC Law’s Best All-Around Graduate, one of Maclean’s "Best and the Brightest – Twenty-five faces for the Future" in 2004
Ying Ying Li: Yale Law graduate
Sacha Ghai: completed an M.B.A. at Harvard University

Career Options
Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the Arts Sci program, its students have the opportunity to pursue careers in a variety of fields. These include, but are not limited to:

• Graduate Studies
• Medicine
• Dentistry
• Law
• Journalism
• Naturopathy
• Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy
• Photography
• Social Work
• HR/PR
• Teaching
• International Development
• Library Science
• Resource Management
• Urban Planning
• Epidemiology
• Chiropractor
• Speech Language Pathologist

Dr. Alexandre Sévigny Gives Students Letter of Advice

http://www.macinsiders.com/showthread.php?t=23981 September 17 2009

Dr. Alexandre Sévigny is an associate professor of Communication Studies & Multimedia and French at McMaster, and has an excellent rapport with both current students and alumni.

He recently wrote an open letter on Facebook to students, which was later re-posted on the TalentEgg Career Incubator in order to reach a larger student audience with the aim of being seen by both McMaster students as well as those at other post-secondary institutions.

The letter is available in full below. If you have any comments or a response to this don't forget to add it to the TalentEgg Career Incubator article so students everywhere know how awesome we think Dr. Sévigny is! You can do so here.

The three or four years you will spend at college or university should be some of the best years of your life. You have a rare privilege: a few years to devote most of your time to learning about yourself, your culture, your society and your areas of interest. Understand that your real purpose here is not only knowledge but also to develop a life guided by wisdom and reason.

You have moved out of your parents’ home. You are meeting new people and starting to make your own decisions, your own life. You are now pretty much your own boss. But you are also on your own and that can be unnerving, lonely and a little scary.

This is your opportunity to struggle with your new environment, to understand your challenges through reflection, insight and the help of others. Use the support systems at the university. You are never alone, and the very act of seeking help or advice, of opening up to others, may become a vital part of your education – of your experience of learning about yourself through others.

Speaking of dialogue, I recently met a woman at an alumni dinner, a graduate of my department. She had graduated with high B average and now works in a public affairs agency. I’ll call her Simone.

It was a beautiful night – a fancy dinner, elegant surroundings and quiet, meaningful conversations among alumni and professors who shared the bond of having been members of the McMaster community. I was seated beside Simone and we chatted for much of the evening, mostly sharing memories: people we knew in common from her grad year, observations that she and classmates had made about faculty quirks of dress or mannerism, little things. We laughed a lot and reminisced. At the end of the evening, as we got up to say goodnight, she looked at me fixedly and said:

“Alex, I want you to tell your students something from me. Do you know what I really gained from my years at Mac?”

I shook my head, surprised by her suddenly intense expression.

“I gained understanding. Understanding that the world is complicated and profound, even when it is trying to be simple and ridiculous. Understanding about how to learn and how to know. Above all, I understood that although the world is sometimes sad, it is never boring and that I should love it, and try to improve it, even though it sometimes seems to betray me.”

I was surprised by her comments. She had obviously thought about this very deeply.

“Alex, I didn’t understand until maybe the middle of third year. I finally understood that education is about storytelling – the stories of art and science, society and engineering, health and commerce and how they all weave together into the grand story of our lives together.”

Heed Simone’s advice. It is wise. Learn to catch the storyline of the courses and conversations and relationships and solitary epiphanies you will experience at college or university. It isn’t easy. It requires a lot of hard work. It requires a personal sense of purpose. It requires an open heart and a seeking mind. But the payoff is amazing: a life that is transformed from mere existence to living. From shades of gray to millions of colours.

A life in which every experience becomes a possibility for adventure, growth and love.

The first year of university from the perspective of a continuing education student

The first year of university from the perspective of a continuing education student

The majority of us go to post-secondary within a year or two of graduating high school. It’s just the way it’s done; how it’s explained to us in high school and what our parents expect of us.

However, for those who came before us, not everyone wanted to or thought they needed to get post-secondary education in order to get a good job. But now, more “adults” (i.e. those of earlier generations than our own) are opting to attend post-secondary education as continuing education students than ever before.

Like many of you, I came to university right out of high school so I never really know what it was like to experience working full-time for anything more than a summer.

But I recently became the acquaintance of Mark Reeves, a 31-year-old former Tier II Technical Support for Apple computers, and asked him about his experiences so far as a first-year social sciences student.

Q. Why did you decide to go to university after having been in the working world for long?

A. University was something I wanted to do from the get-go, but I didn’t have the grades before. I fell into a routine of getting up and going to work which I didn’t want to disrupt. Workplace politics finally pushed me over the edge and I decided to apply to school last year.

Q. What separates you from the average first year student?

A. Besides the obvious – age. I haven’t really met any first years yet so it’s hard for me to say for sure.

Maturity level would be the big difference. I’m at university for me, [while] many first years are expected to go by their school and/or their parents. I should be able to put more effort into what I’m doing of my own volition because I want to do it. Another thing that is also tied into maturity is committing to things. I will get up and do it because I signed up to do it. Waking up for an 8:30 class isn’t a chore for me now in the same way it was when I was younger (and for many students) because I am used to getting up early for work now.

Q. As a mature student, what are some challenges you have faced and/or can possibly foresee?

A. The biggest challenge is the social aspect of everything: I’m mixing with people 10 to 12 years younger than I am.

Re-adjusting to school life is going to be a challenge. It is different to get up and go to work every day when work doesn’t come home with you. Now I’m going to have to buckle down and do the readings and the research, etc.

Q. What do you think a university degree can give you?

A. Hopefully a better job in the end. Mostly I’m here to prove to myself and everyone else that I have potential. There were people who said I’m a failure and could never do it and others who believed in me and said I would be able to. I want to be able to say yes I can do it and go shove it up your ass to those who said I couldn’t do this.

Q. What sorts of things do you hope to learn (or re-learn) while you are completing your next degree, either over the next year or over the next four?

A. Time management skills are something I need to work on. My job didn’t really require these skills.

My financial responsibilities are much different than bringing in a steady, relatively large pay check every couple weeks. Now I’ve got to live off of OSAP and a part-time job.

I need to learn some social skills. I’m not known as a social person, and you have to be for group projects and whatnot.

Commitment – I’ve got to stick things out to the end and do what I want to do and not get fed up and do what I was previously doing.

Why I walked away from a job opportunity

Why I walked away from a job opportunity

This is the first year in a few that I do not have a job for the school year, and am not involved in any way in Welcome Week (McMaster’s orientation/frosh week). But I happen to have McMaster’s campus events co-ordinator on Facebook, and in my news feed it showed up that a company she knows of was hiring a promotion team for a few days during Welcome Week.

It also turns out that I somehow managed to get both Thursdays and Fridays off for first semester this year (long weekend every weekend woohoo!). In my head, I thought “Hey, this could be a good way to make some extra money before school, and maybe turn into something a bit more permanent during the year.” So I emailed the contact person asking what sort of information they wanted from me, hoping for a quick response.

Shortly afterwards, I got a reply. They told me to send the sort of things I was expecting:

• Resumé
• Contact info
• Time available for a phone interview
• Availability during the school year

But there was another item on the list that really threw me off. I was required to submit a head shot. But I didn’t feel comfortable applying for a job where part of the basis for me being hired was my physical appearance.

This position instantly reminded me of the scantily-clad girls at sporting events and concerts handing out swag, samples or coupons. That is something I could never see myself doing. I do not ever want to feel like I’m using my body to sell a product – it would make me feel I had abandoned my values.

I’m not necessarily insulting my physical appearance here, but I feel that my ability to work for an organization should have nothing to do with what I look like, but the skills I possess. I have developed lots of skills that would be useful for doing promotions because I’ve previously done some niche marketing work.

Now, I’m not saying that the people who do this kind of work are knowingly using their physical appearance to sell products. Money is money and sometimes jobs in your field of interest can be hard to get, especially without a degree to back it up. I’m just saying it’s not for me because I feel it compromises my values.

Part of me still wonders if I should have gone through the application process. Maybe I’m making everything seem worse off than it is. I don’t know how likely it would have been for me to be walking around campus in booty shorts and a halter top hawking a product – as well as part of myself – to passers-by.

What I do know, however, is that having a bit more extra spending money right now would be useful.