City Tech 101 4-Session Professional Development June 2024
Preparing Faculty Members to Facilitate CT101: New Student Success Seminar
Do you remember your own transition into college? Do you remember when you felt connected and found a community of people with whom you felt you belonged?
In the space below, we invite you to share your own story of becoming a college student. In what ways was your college experience similar to that of our first-generation students? How was it different?
The OpenLab is an open-source, digital platform designed to support teaching and learning at City Tech (New York City College of Technology), and to promote student and faculty engagement in the intellectual and social life of the college community.
I was basically a first generation college student – my father had taken some courses but never finished a degree. I remember feeling a vague sense of pride/honor in that – but also pressure. A sort of “all our hopes an dreams are riding on you…” although I’m sure it wasn’t that dramatic. We were a working class family and I think my parents were just excited at the notion that I might be saved from being another “working class stiff” as my dad used to say. So, I think my understanding at the time was that I was privileged to go and should take it seriously. Since we didn’t have money, financial aid and loans loomed largely over my decisions, but I learned you tend to push that reality out of your mind until its time to pay up!
I went to Clark University in Worcester MA. It was the stereotypical 4 year liberal arts college with a (sort of) quaint little campus. A very close friend of mine also went, and so I was lucky because I had a built-in familiarity and comfort on the very first day. Clark required all first year students to come a week early for freshman orientation, and we were separated into peer groups and had an upperclassman peer mentor. We were made aware of Clark’s support system, there were FA info sessions, mandatory advising sessions etc, but the hardest part was definitely the social aspect. Even with a ready-made friend, I remember feeling a continuous wave of mixed emotions. Who are all these people? Am I cool enough to here? Do I belong here? All of my insecurities felt magnified. I was lucky to make many friends quickly (many of whom I still speak with 25 years later) and that was when I felt connected, when I became a “Clarkie.” Once i felt like I belonged and had support, the rest seemed to fall into place. I think CityTech freshman may struggle with community, since we do not have a campus and the multiple spaces we have available are under-utilized or abandoned. And, it may very well be those first gen students who need to foster a sense of community the most, as they may feel the most insecure and would benefit most from the sense of belonging and support.
As a first-generation NYC student, my journey closely mirrors that of many City Tech students. I faced uncertainties about what it meant to be a college student, how to navigate my time effectively and when to utilize the resources at the college. I feel fortunate to have had incredible mentors throughout my educational journey, starting with my high school math club advisor. My math teacher often started our club hours by sharing encouraging stories that were not math related but focused on self-care and life skills. According to Davis, unexpectedly, my proficiency in math (and this great teacher) contributed to my undergraduate success.
Working part-time at the college in the catering department provided me not only with much needed income but also a social connection with the college community. These evenings working at college events connected me with fellow workers, faculty and staff and of course provided me with many memorable meals. I often share my college experience stories with my students and they seem very interested on how college is a very unique experience, with many shared celebrations and challenges.
My transition to college life was a two-stage process – the stages were dependent on my “college developmental level”:
When I first entered college right out of high school, it was because “I was expected to”. I didn’t have a personal goal in mind and while my family had goals for me, I was certain at that point that college was the time for me to achieve my objectives and not theirs. But without goals, I made the choice to be a Chemical Technology major because I was told that I was good at it… instead of something I wanted to do (which I didn’t know at the time). Being both unsure of myself and a smug a-hole at the time (I would wield the name of my high school like a weapon regularly), I didn’t integrate myself into the community of my peers at the time and trusted only myself (believe me, that is the nicest way that I could possibly put it because my behavior was for worse than that), even if my work was imperfect. And I left with an Associate’s Degree and a GPA of about 2.7.
When I decided to return to City Tech, I had goal in mind – to be a math teacher (a new major at the time), and a willingness to go “do this the right way, this time”. I can’t say that my pieces of my old personality didn’t still come out at times, but I was more willing to speak with others to help them… I had better; I have to communicate math if I want to teach it. But more importantly, I immersed myself into the culture of the students of the math education program at City Tech, and the professors of my major classes did their best to strengthen the foundation of that culture. I was led to the Peer Led Team Learning Program, where I would both practice pedagogy and find people with similar goals and experiences Once I had found that community in which I belonged, my school performance was much better, as my major average was a 3.7. I am still in contact with my cohort to this day, and we are still communicating professionally and personally with each other.
I firmly believe that college success does not begin until one embraces the culture of the school and their program.
I always knew I would go to college. I don’t think I ever thought about college being a choice. Perhaps at some disconnect/distance from myself, I knew some people didn’t go to college, but that didn’t apply to me (or to anyone I knew well). Though I didn’t grow up wealthy, I grew up in an environment where college was a given. It was many years before I realized what an advantage that was.
I attended a residential college, so community was – largely – built into the model. You had roommates, hall-mates, and dorm groups (as well as classmates). There were RF’s/RA’s who lived on the halls and whose job (in part) was to make sure everyone was making connections and socializing. From the first days, it seems that we had a group. Those people may not have ended up as best friends, but there was a group for you from the start. CityTech students don’t have that social support, and this is a huge disadvantage. It’s really hard for 18/19 year olds to find connections on their own. The college students that most need support in making connections and finding a “home” at school are the least likely to get it – simply because of the nature of commuter colleges.
I also never thought about how college might be different from high school. I had always done well in school, generally without putting in much time or studying very hard. If I thought about it at all (which I can’t say that I did), I figured that would continue at college – ie, that I’d do fine academically with about the same effort I had been putting in so far. That was not the case: for the first time in my life, I didn’t get high grades. This was a bit of a shock, and I had to make some adjustments – really study – something I had not ever really had to do. It took about three terms until I figured out how to schedule myself to study sufficiently for my courseload.
Similarities for first-generation students (for many of CityTech students): There are parts of going to college that is an adjustment – for everyone. I had to come to terms with not doing well right away, needing to study more, scheduling it, and then following through. Getting there was not smooth – I had some weak grades before I got a handle on things. The PROCESS piece of this may be helpful to talk about with first-generation students: Getting used to college isn’t automatic; you have to make adjustments until you feel (more) confident and start seeing results. It’s okay to have dips along the way.
I’m mostly going to skip over some rough parts of my transition – the three years after high school. First I refused to go to college, then I spent a few semesters going part-time to a college in the city. I don’t remember much of that other than long train commutes, cutting class to go to the Met, or sitting in Starbucks translating Latin (which was the only class I liked) and looking up every so often just in case one of the Olsen twins had wandered in for the iced coffee they were always photographed with.
Eventually I made it to Hampshire College, a small liberal arts school in Massachusetts with written evaluations instead of grades and student-designed majors. I was a few years older and was kind of adopted by some of the professors in the writing center. They asked me to TA for their writing classes, and that was how I really found my community. Friends from the writing center started a student group that tutored in struggling schools in nearby Springfield, MA and we somehow got paid to do this? I can’t remember how we worked that out, but we were all from very different backgrounds and bonded over our writing and our commitment to that work. I’m so grateful for that!
I haven’t thought about it in FOREVER, but before I found my people, I did feel very intimidated in a lot of my classes and just generally LOST in the world/life. Both my parents and my older sister went to college. I went to a high school where it was assumed that everyone went straight to four year colleges. I was jaded in a different way than I imagine a lot of our students are – I was annoyed at how much cheating there was in my HS and the fact that classes felt less about learning and more about trying to get into the best possible college. I was kind of a jerk and it probably would have shocked my HS teachers to learn that by the time I graduated from college my dream was to be a teacher. But that was what a nontraditional school did for me!
My mother was the only one of my parents to attend college. She never seemed particularly proud of being the only one of her seven sisters to get a degree. There was almost a kind of shame attached to it, as if she had quietly betrayed her blue-collar roots. As a result, my siblings and I understood college as one of many options available to us after high school. We could be like my father and learn a trade, or we could be like my mother and go to school. Either way, we had to do something. As my mother used to say, “I don’t care what you do after school, but you can’t stay here.” So, because I didn’t want to be a lobster fisherman, dig clams, or work at Wyman’s frozen berry factory, I went to college.
I attended the University of Maine, three hours from where I grew up. It’s the big state school with the big state school vibes. A notorious party campus, known for its ice hockey team and being the alma mater of Maine’s most famous gentleman, Stephen King. I remember my first semester being incredibly lonely. I mostly kept to myself, downloading movies illegally, treating the dining hall like an all-you-can-eat buffet, playing hours of Halo 2, and going to the recently renovated aquatic center in the evening, lounging in the Roman-style hot tub, reading paperbacks. I was a mostly good student. I attended class, did the homework, studied. On the weekends, I worked at the wrap place in the student union because, as my mother put it, “you need a job.”
It wasn’t until my second semester, during a film class, that I made some real friends. We worked for two full weekends on a project, and something clicked. I liked this college thing. This staying out as late as you want thing, this being a half-adult living in a snow globe with thousands of other people your age thinking about the same things all the time thing. I started attending social events put on by the school, hanging out in the student union, studying with some girls from my math class. I formed a band with some guys on my floor, and later we signed up and did not win the battle of the bands. Still, we learned to do other things together and became close friends.
Like most of my CT students, I always had a job. I always had to work. I worked part-time during the school year and full-time in the summer. I paid for most of my schooling, my books, my room and board, rent, etc. Much of it with loans, of course. But the day-to-day with work. At first, these jobs were, as I said above, making wraps and pizzas, etc. Later, I worked in the library, then the writing center, even Bank of America (woof) at one point. Over the summer, I’d work at the deli in my hometown from mid-May to end of July. For the first three weeks of August, I’d work in the Wyman’s berry factory during blueberry season for the overtime.
Unlike my students, it was very easy to make friends. My school pushed you to be social. Looking back that first semester, I really had to work at being lonely. I had a roommate that was never around (ended up dropping out of school mid-semester leaving the room to me), and so it was easy to lock myself away and be alone. But again, when I finally came out of my shell, the school was there to really push all of these ways to socialize and belong. Without friends, I am not always sure I would have finished college by the age twenty-two!
I was the first person in my family to go to a 4 – year college. In high school I was a pretty average student and it was really difficult for me to do well in classes I wasn’t interested in. If I am being honest one of the main reasons I went to college was that I grew up playing competitive sports and received an athletic scholarship. I remember it was not even really a question for me whether or not to pursue a degree, it just sort of felt like a natural progression.
When I began college I remember being nervous about not only my academic pursuits, but also about how to navigate this new environment. I had a bit of a different experience because I also played on a sports team. Although balancing everything was difficult, I know I was really lucky because it felt like I had a community and support system built in. Me and my teammates did everything together, which made adapting to college life much easier.
In addition, I was pursuing a degree in biology and our department had a fairly small cohort of students. We formed a study group immediately and worked together throughout the degree. This was such a valuable experience because it allowed me to build strong relationships with my peers and professors. The combination of my athletic and my academic cohort truly enriched my college experience and I am really grateful because it not only helped me grow as a person but I also really developed a love of learning in the process.
My dad dropped out of college and my mom went to a two year college in Vermont that primarily prepared young women to work as office assistants and secretaries. I flirted with the idea of not going to college, but going to culinary school instead while writing, which my parents were fine with, but I went to a very competitive high school on Long Island with tracked classes. I was in the second to the highest level, so not going to college wasn’t something my guidance counselors and teachers would accept. I reluctantly went off to a small liberal arts college that had both a commuter and live-in population.
My four year college experience can be divided exactly in half by the groups of people I associated it. During the first two years, I finally had my high school rebellion and partied a lot. The people I hung out with were not that engaged with participating in many campus activities that didn’t involve drugs or alcohol. I started helping out at our monthly open-mic poetry event, which transitioned me out of the one group into the group of students that participated in student government and ran other events on campus. I ran for student government president and won, which was a big change from my wallflower high school persona. With both of these friend groups, I felt like I had found my people while I was in them.
I somewhat understand the work pressures that our students face, as I had to work various jobs all throughout my four years of college, plus work during the summers. I was responsible for paying for part of my tuition and my books every semester, plus any spending money I needed. Many of my students are also responsible for rent or household finances, while I was able to live at home rent free during the summers, so I didn’t have that much pressure in comparison. I had to keep my grades high in order to keep my scholarship. I felt keenly aware that my parents had sacrificed a lot (I remember doing FASFA forms with my dad and how shocked I was by his low salary) to send me to college, so I can connect that with how some of my students might feel as well. Neither of my parents really talked about the academic part of their college experiences that much or gave me advice about that, so I was really lucky to find professors in college that mentored me and gave me advice about courses or majors. I sometimes think about that when students come to ask me about their courses or majors.
I’m a second-generation college student. My mother started college when I was eight years old and began taking me with her to her microbiology and philosophy classes. I loved “going to college” and began carrying a briefcase, dressing up, and taking notes. That first experience allowed me to see myself as a college student, and my parents always promoted the idea that I would go to college.
I started my Bachelor’s degree at Buffalo State College. I made friends quickly and became involved in my department. In my second year, I moved into a house with friends I met while taking classes and we developed a very tight-knit community. The friends I made on campus were instrumental in my academic success, increasing my sense of belonging, and confidence.
Like many of our first-generation students, I commuted and worked while attending college. Finding time to spend on campus and volunteering in my department were my keys to finding a community. After I made a few friends, my social and professional circle expanded exponentially. This is one of the most important recommendations I can make to college students. They need to get to know their campus and connect with people while they are there- not to just rush in and out of class.
College was never a question for me; it was an expectation. The question wasn’t if, but where. I was an average student, somewhat directionless, very naive and not at all ready. In hindsight, college marked one of the most crucial periods of personal growth for me, offering countless new experiences and perspectives on life. I certainly didn’t devote enough time to my studies, often relying on all-nighters to finish projects. I was very fortunate that I did not have anything else to worry about. I wish I knew what I know now, if I did, I would have taken more advantage of the opportunities I was given.
My transition to college was exciting and freeing. I felt connected to the community and campus right from the beginning. Orientation was a week long exercise of moving into the dorm, meeting your roommate and hall-mates with many social engagements and exploration of campus before school began.
My college experience was very different from that of our students. Living on campus, away from home, with few responsibilities, I had the freedom to explore anything that interested me without worrying about what came next. I definitely could have benefited from more direction, focus, and maturity. This is a luxury that many of our students are not allowed, they have to grow up much more quickly. I believe a balance between these two experiences would provide the best of both worlds.
In the space below, we invite you to share your own story of becoming a college student. In what ways was your college experience similar to that of our first-generation students? How was it different?
My transition to college existed in two stages, the first being when I went to a large, public university not so far from where I grew up, and the second when I transferred after a year to a small, private school a country’s breadth away, after realizing that first university wasn’t putting me on a career path I wished for myself.
Though I felt community in both schools, in no small part a function of campus life, something I think back to frequently is the less-than-healthy dynamic I fostered between career aspirations and school life. I signed up for a degree that I thought practical, but which was comprised of classes I didn’t particularly care for. What’s more, I was doing jobs and internships that were much more interesting to me, but which didn’t closely relate to my program of study. The combination of these two factors led me to prioritize the work I was doing outside of class, leading to not great grades. In the end, I didn’t follow the trajectory set out by me for the jobs or the studies. Perhaps there’s no lesson there except for the fact that college students aren’t in a great position to decide on the rest of their lives, but how they must do so anyway. But I also think back to how much more I might have enjoyed school if I had just followed something I was genuinely interested in (especially after realizing how much I enjoy school while completing graduate work).