Hey everyone. I gotta get something off my chest. I'm a first-gen college student, and my family is super supportive, but they just don't get it. Like, at all. 
I'm working on a 5-page comparative analysis for my literature class. It's on two different translations of a poem from another language. My mom calls me last night, and she's like, "What are you doing?" I say, "Working on an essay." She goes, "Oh, just writing? For how long? You've been at the library for 4 hours."
I tried to explain that it's not like writing an email. I have to read the poems 20 times. I have to look up the historical context of each translation. I have to find scholarly articles that talk about the translation choices. I have to outline my argument, draft it, get feedback from the writing center, and then revise it. It's a whole process.
She just sighed and said, "Well, just finish it so you can come home for dinner this weekend." It's not her fault. She worked 60-hour weeks in a factory my whole life. To her, "work" is something physical that you clock in and out of. The mental exhaustion of wrestling with ideas and crafting a perfect thesis? That's invisible to her.
Sometimes I feel like I'm living in two different worlds. At school, my friends and professors talk about "critical thinking" and "academic discourse." At home, it's about bills and who's sick and what's for dinner. I'm proud of where I come from, but man, it gets lonely trying to explain my life here to them.
Anyone else from a first-gen background feel this invisible gap? How do you bridge it without making your family feel like you think you're "better" than them? Just feeling a bit torn tonight.
I'm working on a 5-page comparative analysis for my literature class. It's on two different translations of a poem from another language. My mom calls me last night, and she's like, "What are you doing?" I say, "Working on an essay." She goes, "Oh, just writing? For how long? You've been at the library for 4 hours."
I tried to explain that it's not like writing an email. I have to read the poems 20 times. I have to look up the historical context of each translation. I have to find scholarly articles that talk about the translation choices. I have to outline my argument, draft it, get feedback from the writing center, and then revise it. It's a whole process.
She just sighed and said, "Well, just finish it so you can come home for dinner this weekend." It's not her fault. She worked 60-hour weeks in a factory my whole life. To her, "work" is something physical that you clock in and out of. The mental exhaustion of wrestling with ideas and crafting a perfect thesis? That's invisible to her.
Sometimes I feel like I'm living in two different worlds. At school, my friends and professors talk about "critical thinking" and "academic discourse." At home, it's about bills and who's sick and what's for dinner. I'm proud of where I come from, but man, it gets lonely trying to explain my life here to them.
Anyone else from a first-gen background feel this invisible gap? How do you bridge it without making your family feel like you think you're "better" than them? Just feeling a bit torn tonight.