Third Journal Entry

For this journal entry I was prompted by the title of a book a recently saw while I was looking up some interesting readings for this course. The title was called Limbo: Caught between blue collar roots with white collar dreams. That title alone had my mind thinking in a million different directions about how that statement rings true in my own life as a student, and also I believe for  other students as well. Assuming that for the most part all new college students experience a huge range of emotions in the unfamiliar school setting like I did, I think most students from working class families are more prone to be nervous. Wondering if they are smart or “capable” enough (like what we saw the single mother in the movie played in class go through) for what they are about to endure with school, and wondering if they belong at all. The transition can be much harder for working class students surrounded by middle class and upper class societal peers, because of one major reason being that they do not feel socially and cognitively prepared for the setting they were placed into. Feeling as though you are not “smart enough” or do not know enough as your peers is something I actually went through when I chose to attend URI for my Masters in Public Administration (MPA).

Because of gaps in previous education, there might be fairly basic material that students don't know and skills they don't have. That was certainly the case for me. I received my undergraduate degree in communications from RIC, and yes I thought I received enough education in that area to get me through life, but my knowledge of political issues, histories, policies, budgets etc. was so spare that I had fearful incomprehension every single time I started a new class with my masters program.  I felt like I was the only person in the room that was going through this transition, because it seemed like everybody in my program had graduated from elite schools for their undergrad’s, or had a history of professional backgrounds that went side by side with what we were being taught in the public sector field of our state and other states.

Along with not being completely aware of the materials we were studying, I had completely different strategies than most of the other MPA students when it came to studying or writing papers for our classes. All throughout my time at RIC I was with kids who just like me, came from working class backgrounds, we studied the same, we dressed very similar, and surprisingly we all had comparable backgrounds (I also was in the same major as my brother and two cousins, plus my other brother and sister took classes in my building so it was like a family for me at RIC). We all had similar note taking strategies and highlighted in our notebooks what we thought was important for the tests, and one maybe out of every 20 students in a class had a lab top to take notes on. Yet, in the MPA program everybody had laptops to take their notes on, and those notes aren’t bulleted lists like I was used to the Professor organizing for me. They are of thoughts and ideas now, they are no longer something I can underline and memorize the day before to pass the exams, and they require me to think about the theory or idea that was being presented and talk about it on paper or even aloud to my fellow peers. This was completely different for me! I had such a difficult time because I wanted to just regurgitate what I thought the teacher had said and I would pass the test with flying colors. Well, I was wrong.

I also found some research recently while reading again for this course that some working-class students are hesitant to ask questions, fearful of seeming unintelligent. Yes, these reservations are not held solely by working class students, but I know I went through this when I knew I had come from a working class background and my other peers had not. Yet over the year I learned the skill of asking a question the right way without sounding like you are completely dumb, which I believe is a defensive skill. Phrasing my questions with a part of the discussion that I do understand, and asking how it relates to what we are talking about in the literal sense is an example of this which I would never do previous to entering this program. Asking a question when you are with “people who are like you” is like second nature, yet when you are around people who you feel are “smarter” than you, your learned behaviors and culturally influenced strategies on how you learn is something you use as defense mechanisms and strategies on how your deal with every situation.  Our class backgrounds really do affect so many aspects of our lives, and it’s how we personally can cope with it in order for us to succeed in what we want to do.