The purpose of this column is to support you. First-Gen Life will offer tips, stories and guidance to help first generation students not just survive, but thrive here at the University of California, Riverside (UCR).
Week four is when reality settles in. The excitement of syllabus week has faded, group chats have gone quiet and the rush of being the new one on campus starts to wear off. You’re no longer just arriving, you’re now continuing and that comes with a different kind of pressure. Especially for first-generation students, this is when the weight of balancing where you came from and where you are starts to feel real.
College is often marketed as a fresh start in a new world where you get to reinvent yourself and focus only on your future. However, for first-generation students, life doesn’t neatly divide itself into phases. You don’t step onto campus and leave everything behind, you just start carrying more unspoken pressure.
By week four, you’ve found your way around campus, learned how to speed-walk between classes and maybe even memorized your R’Card number. On the outside, you look like any other college student figuring it out. But internally, there’s a split. One foot steps onto campus, while the other is still at home.
While some students end their day with club meetings and late-night food runs, you might end yours differently. Maybe you’re translating a bill, helping a sibling with homework or working a shift back home. You don’t get to pause your other life just because you have a college schedule.
But, when something good happens, such as a professor learning your name, you feel yourself belonging a little more. Still, there’s a quiet voice that asks, is it okay to enjoy this when my family is working so hard back home? It’s not a lack of pride. It’s the complicated guilt of being the first to step into a space your family never got access to.
But here’s what most won’t say, existing in that tension is its own kind of success. Your college experience might not look like the movies, and that doesn’t make it any less real. It makes it layered, intentional and deeply rooted in where you come from.
You’re not falling behind. You’re building forward, carrying your family’s story into spaces it was never written into. You need to be aware that you are doing more than you realize and that deserves recognition, even if no one sees it but you.
