Author: Amanda Lara Sosa

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The risks young immigrants face when coming into the U.S.

When I came to the United States in December of 2014 with my older brother, I knew a little bit of English, but not enough to carry a conversation with a native speaker. I only knew the basics of the language that were taught to me in school. In January of 2015 my dad took me and my brother to get enrolled in school and continue our education in the Rochester City School District (RCSD) in Rochester, NY, where we came to live.  We had the records of our official grades from Cuba for all the past school years and we gave them to the woman that was attending us, a Spanish speaker. She looked over our school records and after a couple of minutes she told my father that both me and my brother were going to be starting 6th grade. I was in 10th grade and my brother was in 12th grade when we left Cuba. We were all speechless for a minute until my dad spoke up and said: “Why? That cannot happen,” then the woman replied simply saying: “They do not speak English, your kids will need some time to learn” (This whole conversation was in Spanish, she never spoke to us in English). After she said that, my dad demanded that we take an exam to prove our English level to her (we were supposed to have taken one before she decided what grade to put us in). Me and my brother took the exam and when she saw our results she said something along the lines of: “Oh, their English is not as bad as I though.” After that, she had to put us in our corresponding grades.

Me and my brother were lucky that our dad spoke up and said that it was not right to put us in 6th grade. If he hadn’t, neither of us would be in college right now. Unfortunately, not many new immigrants actually speak up and say that something is wrong because they tend to follow the rules of what other people say is better for them when in reality, no one knows what your family is capable of better than yourself. In my high school, for example, it was not uncommon to see a student in 9th or 10th grade that was 21 years old. This puts the young immigrant students at a disadvantage compared to other students of their age. Their risk of dropping out of school is much higher because they might not just have school to worry about, many work and have adult responsibilities to take care of at home.

There are also the teenage immigrants that come from their country already holding a high school degree with hopes of getting into college in the United States. Unfortunately, things are not easier for them. When they come here they are faced with the reality that their degree does not count in the U.S.. Then, they only end up having three risky choices: redoing high school, giving up going to college and finding a job that does not require a college education, or going back to their home country and going to college there to maybe in the future being able to come back to the U.S. again. One of my best friends in college right now took the risk of choosing the first option of going back to high school in the U.S. with hopes of transforming this risk into a reward for the future. She came from Mexico the same year I came from Cuba, 2014, and by that time she was already 18 years old and had just finished high school when I was just starting 10th grade. She will soon be turning 23, and she is just going to finish her first year of college. By the time she graduates from SUNY Geneseo she will be 25 years old, which will be the age I will be after one year of receiving my Master’s Degree and hopefully having my first full time job.

My friend says that she does not regret having to redo high school because that prepared her to be in college right now, but I know that she sometimes feels out of place being surrounded by people who might act childish to her, but she is starting to get used to it. This can be related to the short narratives from upperclassmen that were shown to the upcoming freshman that were going to participate in Urstein’s experiment in Stanford University in The Power of Realistic Expectations where the upperclassmen detailed how they felt out of place at first but gained a sense of belonging over time. All of these young immigrants including myself and my brother come into the United States of America with dreams of having a greater and brighter future, but instead, we are hit with the reality that to get the rewards we dream of, we will have to face many risks and obstacles from the beginning of our journey, all the way to the end.

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My viewpoint as a first generation, low-income and minority student

While reviewing The Power of Realistic Expectations last class, I decided to make my stance as part of the group of students the article talks about: first generation, low income and minority students. I am not technically a first generation student because my parents did attend college, but in my home country, Cuba. My dad went to university and received a bachelor’s degree whereas my mom went to what could be called Community College according to U.S. standards. Given that in order to be considered a first generation student in the United States my parents would have to have earned a bachelor’s degree within U.S. territory, I am a first generation college student in this country. I am also categorized as a low income student because my single parenthood household income falls below the state average of a family of three. A minority student is another characteristic that distinguishes me from others because I am Hispanic. My first post contains more information about my background for further details.

Transitioning from high school to college or university is not easy for all students, but it is in fact harder for first generation, low-income and minority students than for other groups as stated by Ian Chipman in his article. Coming into college as a member of these underrepresented groups has made me become one of the many students in these groups who face feelings of belonging socially and intellectually in the college setting. The fact that Geneseo is a prominently white college does not make things easier. I currently live in the 4th floor of Seneca Hall and there is not much diversity. Out of the 18 students currently residing in my floor, 16 are white, leaving me and my African American RA as the diversity. I have also noticed that this is the case in the majority of my classes. I believe that Geneseo could do better in integrating more diverse students to the school because Geneseo is a great school for everyone, despite their racial background. What I am trying to say is that many minority students might feel unwelcome or out of place if they do not see other faces with similar characteristics to theirs. I confess to feeling this way last semester because I was not accustomed to seeing so many people different to me since I was coming from a high school with 96 percent minority students. 

Although I always tell myself to go and hang out with people from different backgrounds like my floor mates, I tend to be shy and let my feelings of insecurity overcome me. That is why I always fall back to my friends who are none other than Hispanics for the most part, with whom I feel more comfortable. The language barrier is another factor that stops me and many other underrepresented individuals as well from breaking the insecurity barrier that is keeping us away from letting ourselves effectively interact with other groups of people. I still do not feel confident enough with my English level to act the same way I would with a Spanish speaking individual. I am aware that sometimes I have to get out of my comfort zone and most of the times that I do it is because it involves class or something that requires me to actively communicate. It is not common for me to form a conversation with a stranger or someone that I have not had a normal conversation with before. This happens to me in both languages because I am a relatively shy and quiet person, but I do admit that it happens a lot more often in English than in Spanish.

I have also been struggling academically, not to the point where I am on academic probation like the students Rob Urstein was experimenting with, but to the point where my 13 year old self who would cry if she did not receive 100 in everything  would not be proud of. Well, today I would tell the me of 6 years ago that back then I did not know all the struggles that I would be going through later on and that life is not easy. At that age I would not even have dreamed of being in the United States, so I should be proud of myself for just being here. I also had no idea of what college was eventually going to be like because my parents did not attend college in this country, therefore college as well as high school in the U.S. was, is a completely new experience to me. But no matter how hard it is I plan on making it worth it.

My transition into college has not been the best as the one of the students in the experiment. However, that does not mean that every first generation, low-income and minority student goes through the same struggles I or the nearly 10,000 incoming freshmen of Stanford University that participated in the experiment have been or went through because regardless of having similar backgrounds, we are all different.

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Questions and concerns for the future

A couple of days ago I was eating lunch while sitting by the entrance of the College Bookstore and the Women’s bathroom in the Union when I saw that there was a line of seniors waiting to get their documents, their graduation ropes, or their senior picture taken. They looked like a normal crowd of people waiting in a line: loud and somewhat impatient. However, I could not stop wondering if they felt any different to other crowds. These seniors were preparing themselves to accomplish a big and important step in their lives, which is graduating from college.
 
I was very curious to know if they were thinking about all they have done and accomplished in the past 4 years at SUNY Geneseo or if they were thinking about their near future. Did they meet all the expectations they might have set for themselves before coming to Geneseo? Are they satisfied with all their work in this past years? Do they feel ready to face the reality of their lives after they finish college, whether they go directly to graduate school, into the workforce, to an internship, or take a gap year? Did choosing Geneseo contribute towards helping them achieve their ultimate goals in life? What would be these class of 2018’s risks and rewards?
 
The risks in joining a college or university are not easily talked about in general because they correspond differently to a specific person or group of people. Some seniors might be risking being away from home and spending less time with their families, and as a result they become homesick more often. For others, it might be paying the college’s tuition because even if they take out loans they will have to pay them back after they graduate. Another risk could be not being able to contribute financially to their family that could be struggling because of not being capable to work full time while being at school.
 
However, many of the rewards of going into college like SUNY Geneseo can be found in the Geneseo Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education (GLOBE). Studying a specific subject that they like and want to dedicate their lives to in the future while acquiring knowledge in other subjects at the same time are also contributing factors stated throughout this document, and especially with Geneseo being a Liberal Arts College. This point is proven when GLOBE states that: “Geneseo prepares students for twenty-first century challenges through the development of intellectual and practical skills that transcend disciplinary boundaries and are applicable throughout their lives.” Also, for most students, getting to experience a different lifestyle that might benefit them in terms of becoming a more independent person is another positive outcome. The social aspect of college could be counted as well, including making new friends and new connections that could become beneficial in their future by creating academic partnerships with them earlier on.
 
I was burdened by all these questions and concerns at that moment because those were the questions I believe I would be asking myself when my time to graduate from SUNY Geneseo comes. Therefore, I wonder if I would be able to turn all these questions and concerns into positive outcomes that will make me accomplish all the rewards GLOBE claims Geneseo students will leave with. Until then, I have to remember to live my present in order to dream for my future.
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The “rules” of writing essays

Many higher education students might agree with me that most perspectives set in high schools are considerably different to those set in colleges and universities. This applies to many aspects, varying from academic standards to social life. As many schools, SUNY Geneseo’s GLOBE (Geneseo Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education) states: “Geneseo’s mission underscores an institutional commitment to ‘transformational learning experiences’ and ‘a rich co-curricular life’.“ In the academic standards of colleges like Geneseo, writing sticks out as a very distinct and growing process that sometimes triggers the mind of the students.
 
In high school, we mainly write essays to fulfill our assignments, to pass the English Regents exams in New York, or to get a good grade in the writing part of the SAT/ACT or AP exams. All of these have some set of rules that we must follow in order to reach full credit. In my high school, for example, my English teachers would use a strategy to make the students remember the steps to take towards academic writing. It was called TEEL, which stands for Topic sentence, Explanation, Evidence, and Link. That was how they taught us to remember how we were supposed to write our essays. We had to follow that structure all the time; write the topic sentence in the last sentence of the introduction, find all the evidence we were asked for and explain it each time, and at the end link back to your topic sentence in the conclusion. If the directions said that we have to choose a side in an argument, it did not matter which side we would choose, as long as we used all the TEEL steps correctly. We were never required to give our full honest opinion about the topic we were asked to write about. We were only writing to fulfill the needs of New York State standards and to show them that high school students are capable of writing the way they want them to, not that they are capable of thinking and actually standing up to an argument that they might feel strong opinions about.
 
The essays and papers we have to write in college are significantly different from the ones in high school in many senses. In college, we are asked to write our honest thoughts about the topic in hand, and our papers might sometimes require to be longer, making them more thoughtful for us. This all depends in the class you are in and the‌ professor you have because here the teachers do not have to follow such a strictly made curriculum like high school teachers do. That is why each professor in college has a syllabus that they make specifically for the class they are teaching and it is something that the college students do have to follow if they want to pass their class. However, it varies from class to class and they are allowed more liberty than in high school. Since in high school we were not allowed to use “I.” It is quite a shock to some students that in college we might be allowed to use “I” depending on the assignment and the professors.
 
This semester I have INTD 203, a class for education students, and the writings that I have to do in this class vary from easy to hard. I have to do two response papers throughout the course of the semester and these papers according to my professor, Dr. David Granger: “should be your own thoughtful, personal response to some idea, issue, or person addressed either in the class readings and/or class discussions. The topic should be something that interests you in some way; and I want to know what you honestly think about it, not what you imagine I want you to say about it.” After I read this on the syllabus for the class, I realized just how different college’s standards of writing are from high school’s. Even though this assignment is supposed to be only two to three pages, it makes the students really focus on the argument they want to state in their paper since it is something we choose, giving us more freedom to express our emotions towards something we are really passionate about. In this same class I have to do another assignment that is weighed more in my overall grade and requires twenty to thirty pages of work. It is a research paper of an elementary, middle, or high school of our choice focusing on a diversity and equity issue the school we choose went through in the past or is currently going through. This paper will be a challenge for me since I have never done such a big research in an important and relevant issue today. This is something that colleges want their students to leave with, knowing that it was something that they accomplished while they were there. SUNY Geneseo is no exception; my school signals this point in its integrative inquiry of its Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education when it says that students will have: “to ask meaningful questions connecting personal experiences to academic study and co-curricular life; to synthesize multiple bodies of knowledge to address real-world problems and issues.” Not only my INTD 203 class, but my INTD 105 class with Dr. McCoy lets its students truly connect with the class and the topics we decide to write about, like this post that I am writing right now.
 
Coming to college and seeing all the liberty we have in academic writing and realizing that there are no such “rules” to writing essays might make many students uncomfortable because they have been accustomed their whole lives to write based on those sets of rules they were taught while they were younger. But, if we work hard and every time we write we remember to write from our hearts and consider what our honest opinion about the topic in hand is, the process will become easier. GLOBE also explains this in its learning outcomes on Critical Thinking: “Students will demonstrate to formulate questions or frame issues in ways that permit examination or investigation; to explicate and evaluate the assumptions underlying the claims of self and others; to establish and pursue systematic and valid methods for collecting and evaluating relevant evidence; to draw soundly reasoned and appropriately limited conclusions on the basis of evidence; to relate conclusions to a larger body of knowledge.” College’s and university’s goals for students is to get them thinking about what is right and wrong in the society we live in today and to not be afraid to stand up to what they think is right, despite everybody else’s opinions.
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Deciding the right choice to make

Making an important decision in life is something that everyone has to go through at some point in their lives. It could be something like choosing a school, choosing the right major to study, choosing a long time occupation, moving to a new country/place, getting married or even having a child. In Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild, Gan, the main character, has to make a very difficult choice that for some people might not seem like a choice at all, but for me, he is choosing what to do, even if his ultimate decision is obvious to some of us.  Gan’s desicion relies on whether or not he wants to carry  T’Gatoi’s children, the Tlic.

He had been practically okay with this because he had known all his life that he would be the one to carry T’Gatoi’s Tlic. However, things changed when he saw everything that could go wrong if he got impregnated with the Tlics when he had to witness Lomas being ripped open, as he tells his brother in page 19: “I had … never seen a person cut open before.” After he experienced this, he was left with a lot of insecurities that made him doubt if he really wanted to end up like Lomas, in the worst case scenario. He knew his brother Qui did not want to do it because he had experienced something similar to him at a younger age, but his sister Hoa had always wanted it and T’Gatoi would choose her if he refused to accept it. Like he states in page 21: “No. Shed’d take Xuan Hoa. Hoa … wants it”, then he thought: “She wouldn’t if she had stayed to watch Lomas.” When he realized this, he immediately felt like it was his obligation to protect his sister from what he now knew was not like the diagrams he was shown when he was younger.

I faced the most important decision in my life so far when I was only 15 years old. I had to choose between staying with my mom in my home country, Cuba, or come to the United States of America to live with my almost stranger dad. Luckily, I was confronting this situation with my brother, who’s 2 years older than me. I had verely any memories of my dad since he and my mom got divorced when I was 4 years old and I rarely saw him back then. In Cuba, it was and still is very difficult to move out if the country. It was kind of a miracle that me and my brother, both underage, received the opportunity to do it because my dad who had got out because of a medical mission to Venezuela, migrated to the U.S. from there and then never came back, claimed us. Many people might say that we really had no choice, and I thought that too back then. But now that I think about it, I really did have a choice. I could have stayed with my mother, who raised me my whole life or I could actually have a bright future ahead of me in a new country. There was also the fact that I knew nothing in English and it was going to be an even greater challenge to learn a completely new language from scratch, but at the same time being bilingual is a great advantage to have in life. Those were the risks and rewards of my decision.

The decisions we make in life will not always be made lightly, like when Goa says: “Qui goaded me into deciding to do something. It didn’t turn out very well” on page 24 referring to the fight he and his brother had. There will be a lot of confrontations and a lot of doubts about what the right choice to make is, but we should answer this question in our minds first: Do we want to do it for ourselves or does it involve someone else we care about? In this case, Gan did it for both reasons because he wanted to protect his sister and at the same time he wanted to keep T’Gatoi for himself because deep within himself he knew that he loved them both. In my case, I came to the United States for myself and for my future, even though it hurt me to leave my mom, my family and my friends behind. Sometimes to make the right choice we have to risk a lot.

Finding the right answer to our problems is not easy, but taking into consideration what is at stake can lighten up a big portion of its waight and make it a little bit easier for us to decide.