This is a multimedia package page that I developed for a class in the UNC School of Media and Journalism, Introduction to Digital Storytelling (MEJO 121)

We Come Through: A First Generation College Student’s Story from Emily Pirozzolo on Vimeo.

Fearlessly Facing the Unknown

When asked about her transition to being a college student, Alexis Kirby, a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill, described it as confusing time.

“They assume that every person entering into the university comes from the same background in the sense that they think every student should be aware of simple things, like how to apply for classes or what abbreviations for classes mean,” she said.

Kirby is one of the many first-generation college students on UNC’s campus. First-gens are college students whose parents haven’t completed a traditional four-year bachelor’s degree.

First-gens make up a significant portion of undergraduate students in the U.S. and at UNC. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 33.5 percent of undergraduates had parents with a high school degree or less in the 2011-2012 school year. At UNC, 21 percent of the first years who entered in the fall of 2018 will be the first in their families to graduate from a four-year college or university.

Despite the prevalence of first-gen students, many have to navigate the social, financial and academic complexities of college by themselves. As a result, first-gen students are also four times more likely to leave higher education after their first year than their non-first-generation peers, according to The Pell Institute.

Navigating housing, meal plans, financial aid and proper study habits was difficult for Kirby when she first enrolled at UNC.

“It’s easy to feel like everyone else around you kind of has it figured out when they are telling you things like, ‘Well I know I want to live in a suite style because I could not handle a hall style dorm where my bathroom isn’t attached to my room.’ Well that was news to me,” Kirby said. “I had no idea that hall style dorms had a bathroom completely removed from where you would sleep at night.”

The FAFSA application was also difficult for Kirby to navigate. Many eligible first-generation students do not fill out the form on time: 20 percent of eligible students in 2017 did not complete FAFSA, with the majority of those students coming from families earning less than $50,000 annually.

Since first-gen students’ parents don’t have personal experience in applying for financial aid, they do not have the prior knowledge needed to navigate the complexities of the application. As a result, first-generation college graduates are 8 percent more likely to owe at least $10,000 in student loans, and 6 percent more likely to owe at least $20,000 than their peers.

“FAFSA is extremely frustrating to deal with. Almost every year I’ve turned it in late just because of, you know, a lack of knowledge on when the deadline is,” said Kirby. “My mom would forget that she needed to have certain information about her taxes and she didn’t have that prepared.”

Kirby has held a job for her entire undergraduate career, and according to the National Center for Education Statistics, she is not alone: of the undergraduate students who held part-time jobs during the 2011-2012 school year, 58 percent were first-gen students.

“The need to have a job may be more pertinent for students who are first-gen than others,” Kirby said. “There is a different level of independent nature of first-gen students compared to the other students that I have interacted with whose parents have gone to college.”

Kirby sought resources through the Carolina Firsts program at UNC, which is part of the Office of Undergraduate Retention. Kirby felt like she was being categorized when they questioned her eligibility for support.

“Whether your parents graduated high school or went to a community college and dropped out, you’re still in the same boat,” she said. “You’re still the first person from your immediate family to go to a traditional four-year school and graduate.

“We all have extremely different backgrounds and experiences, regardless of what tax bracket your parents are in or what color your skin is or what your interests are. None of that has anything to do with the definition of being a first-gen.”