Alice Minium
When you tell someone you go to community college, their face darkens a bit like they suspect of you Secretly Doing No Work and Having No Grand Plans. They awkwardly attempt to hide the judgment in their eyes with an averted gaze and a disinterested, “…Oh. I meant real college.” Little do they know, at their local community college is many a genius in disguise.
Yes, it is “lame” I still live at home. It is lame I go to a school with no football team and a school that actually has promotional TV commercials.
Do you know what’s more “lame” than that? Student loan debt, and bad grades. I don’t get to live in a dorm or have the “college experience,” but my experience has been profound nonetheless — and that experience has taught me many people, myself included, are not ready right away for the college experience, and that is perfectly okay. I don’t have crazy college weekends, but I have straight As and a safe place to come home to without distraction. I don’t have “that independence” of living on your own, but I have been able to have a job while in school to build up my savings. I don’t have to borrow money from my future self for each coming semester, or take out any loans at all, and that makes me feel secure. That makes me feel like I can study what I love and work in a field that excites me instead of absorbing the hereditary pressure to get a career, any career, marry rich, get a mortgage, stay out of debt. Those pressures are all very real and I’m not exempt from them, but I have been lucky enough to be in a situation where I can stave them off for a little while. That makes me feel gratitude, not shame.
Nobody has bumper stickers on their cars that say “Proud Parent of a Community College Student,” because the very words are synonymous with letdown. But my experience is that is definitely not so.
If anything, the majority of people I’ve met who go to community college (mostly who are older, that is) work much harder, and are much less entitled, than their four-year university counterparts.
Most of these people have full-time jobs and families, and they pursue schooling not as a diversion or as One Step Closer to Daddy’s Love but because they want to improve their lives. That genuine desire to learn commands respect not scorn.
Knowing these people has taught me:
1. To be thankful college was expected of me by my parents, cause it’s not by everyone.
2. The amount you work in life is not proportionate to the amount of reward you reap. In fact, it’s often the opposite — the most hardworking people are often in the worst situations.
3. You share more values with this myriad crew than with the predominately white suburban club of 20-somethings beginning university. You are more alike than you are different.
& 4. The world is big. Really big. Bigger than your hometown, bigger than your high school, bigger than your prospective field. It does not matter you check in all the boxes of Growing Up in exactly the right socially preordained order, it matters so much more that you make the most of what you have. You are fortunate, and you appreciate education so much more once you realize that fact. You value it — you choose it, instead of taking it for granted.
It is meaningful. It is your own.
I sit here filling out my Letter of Intent to Transfer to Christopher Newport University — the end of my stint with community college is now in sight, at long last. I am relieved to be moving on, yet I cannot say in entirety TNCC has done me wrong — they are as inefficient as the DMV on Planet Neptune, but they have taught me much and more (even the convenience and efficiency of university administration is an example of privilege — some places are designed to help you succeed, and some almost make you wonder the opposite). Though my crossing to the other side is still a year away, I am thrilled I am no longer stuck at TNCC.
Despite popular belief and our 11% graduation rate, a few of us students do get out. And let us have respect for the ones who haven’t “gotten out” yet — for we are waiting. All part of the plan, my friends. All part of the plan. We slither under the radar, ready to spring into full unanticipated glory of ourselves, and shame on you, naysayers, for not seeing it coming.
Redeeming Pandora 