Rocio was inspired to be honest in her posts after a long conversation we had. But she in turn inspired me as well. In our blogs we have tried to create these role-models for people to look up to. Someone who might not always have all the answers but that is trying and has successes to talk about.
The truth is college at Harvard and from the impression I got from Rocio, Columbia, is really difficult, and often depressing. Yes there are groups to join, and people of our own race and means but within classes it is often different.
We are put in situations where we are at a disadvantage to our fellow classmates. There are things that come up that seem to be common sense for everyone that I have no clue about like corporate America (everyone at Harvard has an opinion about it) I have no clue what that concept entails. I hate that in my classes when we are talking about social inequalities they warn us not to oversimplify things for the people we are interviewing, and yet within our discussions they make those same people seem very stupid. What they don’t realize is that I am usually one of those people. Sometimes I say something about it, I never lie about where I came from but then people adopt a different attitude towards me. Grrr.
And academically, don’t get me started on papers. I hate writing papers with a passion. I hate having to read theory and think about it critically. I think about it like a textbook and my teachers always taught me to accept the data in my textbooks no one ever let me know that I could challenge what Plato said. Plato had already gone down in history and if all these people thought it important to study Plato’s works then he must be right. WRONG!!! The reason these people are important is because half the world believes they are right and so far ahead of their time, or the beginners of some movement while the other half thinks they are completely wrong and were a barrier for the development of the same movement.
Honestly, my classmates intimidate me for who they are but that I can overcome. What gets to me is that no matter how hard I work I am still behind them. I get frustrated because I know that if we were on a level playing field I could do something and make myself known. Don’t get me wrong I am not in utter and complete dispair. I am very aware of the fact that eventually things will even out, that my hard work will pay off (this I wonder sometimes). And I think about the words that were said to us when we attended the ECCSF, that in order for us to succeed in these elite environments, we have to aknowledge that to do as well as the others we hwill have to work more than twice as hard as everyone else, and most importantly we will have to be okay with it.
That is what I have a hard time with. I’m not okay with it. It makes me angry that the advantages they had payed off and that there are still students all over America who don’t have these advantages. That through programs like HFAI they will get into schools like Harvard and then they will struggle like I did. I don’t think they should have to. I think these schools should have some kind of safety/help net to help students like us that didn’t have all those advantages, that didn’t learn to challenge our teacher’s academic opinions, that don’t know all those tricks. They have something similar for international students, because they are in a completely new environment and they need to learn to adjust a little at a time. Well, we come from a completely different environment. Besides the academic aspect, we come from a different culture, for us as Mexicans, one in which the collective advancement rather than the individual is aknowledged as the true aim. Why should I have to give up part of who I am in order to be able to fit in and succeed in this environment. I don’t want to and I shouldn’t have to.
I could have prepared a more eloquent argument, one in which my points were carefully laid out and everything made sense. But honestly that’s not who I am. I am stubborn, explosive, and I hate planning things out….
Yes I will be okay, and yes I can do it but why must it be so much more difficult for us just because we were raised differently.
