Social Class Voices: Student Stories from the University of Michigan Bicentennial

The Places I’ve Been and the Places I’ll Never Go

When I graduated third in my high school class, my sister gave me a copy of Dr. Seuss’s book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go. Everyone in my family signed it and wrote me a message. I was the youngest sibling, but the first to be accepted into a four-year university and the first in my immediate family to attend college. From their point of view, it looked like I would be able to go anyplace I dreamed. From my high school’s point of view, being one of a hand full of students to be admitted into a college like the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, it looked like I would be able to go beyond all my dreams. From my point of view fresh out of high school, the world seemed like a big place, full of opportunities. If you had asked me what my favorite line by Dr. Seuss was from that perspective, I would have said:

In high school it was easy for me to think individualistically. I was born into a white, working-class family that lived in a mixed social class neighborhood. It was easy to buy into the “everyone is middle class” ideology of America. I earned good grades, I graduated, and I was accepted into all three of the colleges I applied to. There was no reason for me to think I would not continue to achieve.

College has opened my eyes to many different things— academically and socially. It wasn’t until getting onto a college campus that I realized I was a first-generation college student (first in my family to attend college) or that there was a term for it. Through my classes I learned I was working class and that intersections of race, class, and gender, among other things, play powerful roles in how I experience the world. Hearing stories from other students I realized not everybody had grown up eating Ramen noodles or drinking pop (some people call it soda!). Some students could buy winter jackets and snow boots costing more than a month’s rent and had their parents’ credit cards always available to use. I didn’t even know about the tricks to building credit. Honestly, I still don’t understand the premise of building credit, but I know I’m not off to a great start.

There’s a first for everything, they say. Surely there is, but that fact does not make it any easier to do that first thing. I am a first-generation college student and I’ve spent college studying what else they say who they are. I am getting a bachelor in arts in sociology with a sub-plan in law, justice and social change, and a minor in statistics. Studying they is a playful way of saying I practice viewing society at a larger level, trying to understand what is normal and how we want people to conform to larger social systems that have the power to make, define, and impact members of society. America’s individualistic ideology crumbled pretty quickly after my first sociology class. Unintentionally, the social institution I have focused on most is social class.

Attending college as a working-class student, who studies social class, feels like both living in a snow globe and holding that snow globe watching me inside. If the snow globe is social class, I will always be living in it. This system has been set up before me and I am permanently affected by the class I was born in. As the first to attend college in my family, I am on an upwardly mobile path (supposedly), but not without hardship, conflict, and afflictions toward my working-class roots and family. To be a rising scholar of this personal aspect is both eye-opening and disassociating. This allows me to look back critically on my life before attending college and since starting. I have an understanding now of what is inside and outside the snow globe.

There were moments in my K–12 education when I realized things were different in my family compared to others, but I did not have the words to name those experiences and feelings. My parents worked long hours and tried to hide money problems from my two siblings and me, or at least as the youngest one, that’s how I experienced it. In their defense, explaining capitalism to your children isn’t easy. My sister, 12 years older than me, can’t seem to let me forget the time she had run out of her own money babysitting me when I was four years old.

My parents owned a restaurant when I was growing up. Dad had been a cook there for a long time and eventually became the owner, and mom was a waitress. That’s where they met. It’s weird how we could be living two versions of the same reality. For me, the restaurant was a playground. I would spend hours there organizing the jelly and creamers, telling customers things I shouldn’t, and sometimes sneak eggs home thinking they would hatch into chickens. For my parents, it was a stress of trying to make ends meet. Eventually, they lost the restaurant and had to go work elsewhere.

Dad has been cooking his whole life. Mom has mostly been in the food service industry as well, occasionally holding other jobs. Neither of them went to college and both easily averaged working over 50 or 60 hours a week. I didn’t understand what social class was, or where my family’s positioning was, but when in fifth grade I noticed a different structure in my family compared to my best friend’s family. Her mom didn’t have a job and would make dinners for them to eat together as a family. I sometimes joke that my older brother and sister raised me. I remember summers spent with my brother, six years older than me, playing video games. We were responsible for making dinner for ourselves. The worst time was when we made instant mashed potatoes that came out the consistency of play doe. You’d think that kids whose parents cooked and served food would have some natural talent.

The hard part about realizing you’re from a working-class family is seeing how this is part of a larger system keeping people in their class. I’ve listened to mom and dad blame themselves for not being able to do more and it breaks my heart. Being working class means there’s no backup, no safety net when something happens. A car breaking down, a medical emergency, or dips in the economy can set you back in a blink of an eye. We lost our house in 2008 when the housing market crashed. My parents told us we were moving, but they didn’t tell us why. It wasn’t until I learned about the economic crash in college that those difficult family times made sense. Even when we had insurance that covered medical problems, the days off from work were hard to recover from. There have been times when we haven’t had health insurance at all.

I’ve seen my siblings struggle to overcome the social disadvantages we were born to. My sister tried a couple of times to enroll in local schools to become a medical professional, but she’s also working in the service industry and the hours are not flexible, nor are the wages significant. My brother didn’t like high school and is now cooking like dad. I knew how and when to apply to college because I had teachers in high school who really believed in me. I don’t know if my siblings had that support. But I don’t think everyone should have to get a college degree to make enough money for things they need or want, especially when the cost of getting a degree is not affordable for everyone.

My parents and siblings did not have the language to make me aware of social class oppression let alone different class statuses. Being from a certain social class doesn’t just mean the amount of money available for family use. My class has shaped how I think about money, how I spend it, what I value, and where I want to be in the future.

My social class has shaped my college experiences in subtle ways. My first friends were students I worked with on campus. They were relatable and approachable in ways other students weren’t: we all had to work. The friends I made later were mostly similar to me in this way too, but often I discovered that after we were friends. Some friendships did not last because of class differences. One person in my dorm hall freshman year complained her mom would not buy her a pair of $80 boots because she already had six other pairs. There was no way for me to connect with fellow students like that; we weren’t thinking or worrying about the same things.

And it’s not that I haven’t made cross-class friendships. I’ve had roommates whose parents pay for their rent and groceries, go on spring break trips, and don’t stress about making enough money after graduation for themselves and their family. I understand and don’t resent them. If my parents could support me, I know they would. I know when I visit home, mom throws my clothes in the washer and has a large Tupperware bowl of my favorite family recipe (chicken and rice). This is her way of giving what she can. And if I had to choose between mom’s chicken and rice and being born wealthy, I’d choose the rice—every time.

I’ll be the first one that is supposed to achieve the Dream in my family. I think about this a lot: what am I supposed to want? How am I supposed to think about success? What am I supposed to value? There’s tension in wanting to be an academic from a working-class background, where reading, thinking, and challenging ideas are considered luxuries by members of my family who experience the physical demands and time constraints of working with their hands. There is a tension in pursuing a PhD when you cherish working-class values absorbed over the years, learning to appreciate simple moments and experiences. I don’t want to forget where I come from. My time at the University of Michigan has allowed me to develop academically, but it has also made me very class conscious. I don’t value the same things many students do and I’m not sure I ever will. I can’t rely on my family to help me succeed, but I don’t want to leave them behind either.

The American Dream is about working hard, earning more, and succeeding. But this doesn’t come true for many people. I’ve watched my parents work hard, and I still watch my 70-year-old grandma struggle. Her hands are swollen and stiff with arthritis from working in a factory with inside temperatures of 100 degrees in summers. Dad’s knees ache working 10–12 hours a day since he was a kid, doing hard farm work and chores for his family. Mom has worked long days, nights, and years too, and still cooked dinners and cleaned the house. To this day, I don’t know where she finds the time.

For the first two years at Michigan, I was too excited and academically stimulated to feel conflicted. I had always been good in school and my parents knew I would go to college even if that wasn’t the path of my older siblings. I once cried in seventh grade because mom accidently threw away a progress report I was supposed to have signed and taken back. She wrote my teacher a note explaining it had been her mistake and she knew my grades were good. These memories of emotional investment in my education made me feel college was the right path when I started in the fall of 2013. Michigan was a new, expanded world to explore and a place to challenge myself and my assumptions. I embraced that.

But as a first-generation, working-class college student I often felt I was dreaming too big or too late. In high school I did not know enough about colleges to understand the elitism, that where you went to college had implications for how your degree would be viewed or matter. My limited exposure to how to apply to college came from teachers and counselors in high school who knew I had potential. Everything else I figured out on my own.

I only applied to three colleges: Grand Valley State here in Michigan, the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I knew Dearborn’s campus would be easiest because it was less selective, closer to home, and less expensive. I had only been to Ann Arbor’s campus once on a 2010 field trip during high school. I remember being in Michigan’s Undergraduate Science building with huge windows and artwork on the walls. It contrasted my only experience on Dearborn’s campus: playing a volleyball game in a gym where the walls were painted dark blue. There were no windows. I decided Ann Arbor would be my top choice. The large windows and light seemed to symbolize windows of opportunities: moving out, being independent, and attending one of the best schools in the state of Michigan. This last-minute dream of going to Ann Arbor’s campus came true on Christmas Eve 2012 while lying in bed. An e-mail said I was admitted. I cried myself to sleep, because I didn’t think I would be accepted.

Now at the end of my college career, I am still dreaming big. I want to continue my education, pursue a PhD in sociology, and have an academic career. I know that if I want to be a professor, where I get my PhD matters. I applied to six of the best sociology programs. But again, I’m a late dreamer. I scrambled to put together my application materials while also managing research for my senior thesis, fall 2016 semester finals, and two part-time jobs. I was rejected from all six of the schools. I’m not that surprised since I was warned about high rejection rates of top programs, but I can’t help but calculate the financial and emotional costs. My ego will recover from feeling unqualified, but it will take a few months of credit card payments to recover from the $400 I invested to receive those rejection letters.

Higher education is often more accessible and easier to navigate by certain types of students, especially those who are white and wealthy, and come from college-educated families. Many college degrees are about status rather than knowledge or innovation. Not without problems and challenges, I still want to be a part of higher education. My conflict arises from wanting to be a part of this problematic, competitive institution, but my choice to continue in higher education is also political. I have strong beliefs in the power of education because it is the avenue through which I have learned about systems of inequality that I seek to help change. Through writing a senior honors thesis for sociology, I have been able to interview other low-income, first-gen Michigan students and hear their experiences. I appreciate sociology because it doesn’t avoid difficult questions about inequality. Sociology doesn’t make me feel like I am competing with other students or that my success depends on their failure. I am thankful for that experience. This is juxtaposed with other majors where I’ve heard about “weeder” courses designed to “weed out” students. Education should serve everyone.

The conflict of being educated in a capitalist society is seeing flaws in the way we structure society and the economy that primarily benefits some at the cost of others, but feeling too small to fix the flaws. I share my education with my parents and siblings so they can understand what racism, sexism, and classism are and their role in contributing to and internalizing them. The education my family has been able to access did not provide them with a good understanding of these things and challenging their beliefs hasn’t been easy for them or me. I have been privileged as a white student. My race has allowed me to fit in on a largely white campus and other students usually don’t assume I have a working-class history. As a working-class student, I have struggled with being a full-time student with multiple jobs surrounded by many students who have their parents’ credit cards. Both privileges and challenges I have faced make me committed to anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-classism. This means I have a commitment to continue educating myself, even informally and outside the educational system.

It has been a constant effort to do well in my classes, maintain a close relationship with my family, and support myself financially. I’ve had to work 20–30 hours a week to afford living in Ann Arbor while completing my degree. Attending to my health and well-being was an added challenge since the university doesn’t accept my Medicaid insurance at its Health Services. I sometimes had to miss classes to pick up extra shifts at my campus jobs and often help my parents with computer-based projects for the restaurant they now own. I do that for free because I know they need the help. My dreams and achievements seem limited and shaped by numerous worries. I also have a lot to lose as first in my family to attend college. My brother and sister are caught working like my parents, making enough to get by, but never enough to get ahead. My parents still work and do all they can to help their kids.

Four years ago, college was an unmarked area for me, but I decided to take a chance. I have gained a lot from the experience. My future is uncertain and I have a lot to win and lose. I am going to re-apply to graduate school and hopefully become first in my family with a PhD. I’ll be first “doctor,” even though I’ll have to explain to my parents that it’s not the same thing as a medical doctor.

So what’s the new Dr. Seuss quote resonating the most with me these days?