Interviewer: Lux Darkbloom
Interview Subject: Sasha Mader 

Lux: Would you mind introducing yourself and telling me a little bit about your background? That can be any information you’d like to share, like if you have siblings, when you were born, where you grew up, hobbies, personal interests, that sort of thing. 

Sasha: Sure. My name is Sasha Mader. I am currently a third year PhD student in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism out of the College of Health. I am 45-years-old. I have a five-year-old son, and I’m married. We’ve been married for 10 years now. I’m originally from Virginia Beach, Virginia, and did my undergraduate degree there at the Old Dominion University, and then did my master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, and then was recruited into the program here at the University of Utah. I am mixed race. My mom is Filipina, and my father is Caucasian. And she married…they were married in the Philippines and came here. My father was in the Navy. And she learned how to speak English from him. My grandmother lived in the house with us–so, my mother’s mother. So there’s two languages spoken or home. And, you know, my mom worked, and my grandma cared for us. Both of my parents worked and…but neither had ever gone to college and so they were both…I would say we had, like, a great, you know, middle class upbringing, but always…my…I had an older sister, I have an older sister and, you know, we were always just taught that, you know, going to college was the next step. So, you know, not to go into so many details, but, yeah, I grew up an athlete, I grew up a surfer. I was a really successful student, all in all, and I just was determined to get to college. But I had…you know, it was like, “Here is your map. You’re going to go to school.” But there was no…the only two things that existed on the map or, like, where I was starting and where I was supposed to be. The ways to get there and navigate through all of those processes were just completely missing and so, yeah, I, I worked my entire way through my undergraduate degree. I started out at a community college. And, you know, I’m sure we’ll probably get more into this in this conversation, but I had to overcome lots of barriers and unnecessary ones. I had a lot of pitfalls in my educational journey I think just from lack of information or guidance. I was a commuting student. I missed out on a lot of those on campus opportunities to learn about anything outside of my actual coursework because I worked full-time, and I think that, you know, it took me quite some time to get my bachelor’s degree. After I transferred from community college to Old Dominion University, and, you know, I was taking two or three classes a semester, you know, changed my major a couple of times from, you know, just growing up and taking about eight years or so to actually get through that process. But yeah, so I grew up and then lived on the coast there. I met my partner, and he was in the Navy and Special Forces and so we actually moved back and forth from coast to coast a couple of times from Virginia Beach to San Diego, and then back again. And it was, you know, something that I just…what had happened was after I graduated from having my bachelor’s degree, I was so far in my career in hospitality, that my degree would never have afforded me a better income than my hospitality career. And so I really had felt quite, you know, disappointed in my effort at that point in time that I had, I had become the first person in my family to graduate from college, and then I had no way to apply that education to actually improve my life. I had already worked myself into a general manager position. I was already opening multiple restaurants and overseeing large districts and, you know, like a couple of different districts and became regional manager for a company and so it was…it was really hard to kind of make sense of that whole process. And yeah, and so here I sit all this years later, which is kind of a winding road through my partner’s…When he got out of the Navy, he was, he went to graduate school at Georgetown and was looking through the GI Bill statutes, trying to understand how he could close some of the financial gap there. And what he had discovered because he had enlisted in the Navy out of the state of Wisconsin, was that, if we moved to Wisconsin, not only would he have the financial coverage to attend graduate school at Georgetown that the GI Bill wouldn’t quite complete because of the cost of Georgetown, but that I could also get my master’s degree for free. And so it was something I had never even thought I could do, and it was kind of through the borrowed privilege of my partner that I was able even to access that. But I remember just being so excited to have this possibility that I was…I didn’t want to incur any more debt to get my master’s degree. And before I knew better, I had no idea that there were things like, you know, teaching assistantships or research assistantships that could have really helped close those gaps and so I just always thought that graduate school was an impossibility. And so through that I did apply to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and I was accepted there to their recreation management program. And then kind of just from there my academic career has taken off. And it’s been very validating as I’ve always thought that I had the capacity to attend graduate school and be successful in graduate school. Yeah, and also saddening because I’ve realized that there’s likely, you know, thousands of other kids in the same exact situation who have more than enough capacity to go far in their academic careers and just lack that clear map for their journey. 

Lux: Yeah, and that’s, like, a very common experience, too. Starting out, getting a degree, getting into the workforce, and then kind of just self-reflecting, “Is this where I want to land forever?” you know. But you mentioned that there are these barriers that first-gen students encounter and without support. It’s…it can be pretty harrowing, trying to navigate these…the many university systems and bureaucracies. Were there any programs for first-gen students when you were doing your bachelor’s or your master’s that you discovered or were even advertised? 

Sasha: If there were, I did not know of them. But I started at a community college in 1999. I’m 45-years-old so the media landscape was quite different. So, advertising or being able to put those things out was, I’m sure, much more difficult at that point in time. I do remember just every step of the way, feeling incredibly lost and that didn’t change as technology improved. In fact, in some ways that complicated it. But, you know, my first registration for college was on paper, right? Like there was a paper book, and it was a paper form, and you fill in the numbers of the classes that you’re supposed to take. I had a maybe a 15-minute conversation with an advisor. And that said, sure, like, “This is community college if you…there’s some general education classes you’re going to need to take no matter what. And so you should decide for those” essentially. And I didn’t understand how financial aid worked. I…that process was harrowing at that point in time. I mean, it was so overwhelming, especially having to apply in that way like with the…with kind of ancient technology. But again, that’s one of those things that the technology hasn’t improved. It’s the language of it that’s overwhelming for a 17-year-old or 18-year-old who, you know, I bring that stuff home. And my parents were like, “Well, yeah, we don’t really know how to help you with that,” right? And so I think that that was really difficult. It was relying on, you know, what little help you could get and ask for. And then, you know, it’s not like when you’re 18, that’s the only thing that you have going on in your life. And so some of those processes were hard. I was also, like I said, I worked full-time in the hospitality industry already as an 18-year-old. I was a full-time waitress and hostess, and I remember having to work so I could put gas in my car so I could get to said community college, right? There was a lot of…so when they would say, “Well, you can just come and talk to a person”–that simple challenge of like, “You can just…you need to come here to us.” Just the logistics of that would sometimes be overwhelming. Like I cannot take off another day of work. I literally can’t afford it.

I’m going to have to just take a guess as to what the best route is because it’s either that or me not being able to have the gas to get here. So that doesn’t make sense. And I just remember feeling like that a lot where my back was against the wall in decision making that, like I said, it just didn’t have to be that way in some ways. And I think that the financial aid process was crazy in the sense of, you know, you’re 18. I would venture to say that my public school education in high school had a brief–If I remember–a brief conversation about finance at any level in terms of compounding interest or subsidized loans versus unsubsidized loans. And, you know, what–I don’t know–16-year-old or 17-year-old’s really onboarding that information at a deep level. I’m not sure. And then, you know, there’s lots of talk. I remember very serious talk about “You understand when you sign these loan papers that you have to pay this money back.”

And I was like, “Yes, I get how loans work.” But I didn’t understand compounding interest, right? And I didn’t understand the difference between unsubsidized loans or subsidized loans. I also didn’t understand or expect the onslaught of predatorial loans and credit cards that were going to come my way. And without that type of financial education, I really do think that I blundered quite a bit financially, making poor decisions about what type of loans to take and from whom. And not understanding how those things would stack up over time so quickly. I remember when I married my partner, having to have that nervous conversation with him, that “Just so you know, I have a student loan debt of $65,000.” 

Lux: Yep. 

Sasha: And in having to have that sweaty moment of like, “Is this going to impact how he views me as a person?” Which now, of course, feels silly to think about. But in that moment, it was really scary. 

Lux: Yeah. Yeah, you’re very vulnerable. In so many ways. And like you mentioned with predatory lenders and all of the jargon that we…there’s no formal education component in, you know, K through 12, certainly not in university for financial literacy. I think some high schools are now offering financial literacy classes. But like you, I was in school in the 90s, and no such thing existed at the time. You were able to get access to these loan providers, without anyone protecting you from them exploiting your being an 18-year-old kid. 

Sasha: Right. And I think that there’s a big difference between understanding on paper that $100 borrowed is going to end up being $120 paid back, whatever have you, right? But then when you are the person that’s out there earning that money yourself, and when money becomes real–and I don’t know what stage of life that happens. And it’s likely when you have to start working for it, and you realize how expensive things are and how much…I mean, I remember doing chores and having…earning money, but never really understanding how expensive it was to have a car, to have car insurance, to have gas to want, to live on my own and have an apartment to, you know, to be able to afford to buy a car, to want to also have money to go out for dinner with my friends, right? I didn’t understand the mountain of that until I was in the position where people were saying, “Here you can have a credit card for $5,000 limit.” 

Lux: Yeah.

Sasha: “You can pay this back.” And then that becomes so incredibly attractive at that moment in time, right? Like, “Oh, this could make it–even if they could just make it easier for right now.” And I think that you live…if you exist in that space, I mean, my family was never wealthy, but we also always had enough. It was never, um, you know, my dad was pretty high. You know, he was an E9 in the Navy. So he was a master chief. And so he did well, right? And we had health insurance and health coverage. And my mom had worked in her same job for our whole lives when we moved to Virginia. And so she, over time, had ended up doing well. And like I said, I felt like we were strong at the time, a very strong, like, middle of the middle class family, right? But they didn’t have life savings, right? We were doing well in the moment. These weren’t things that were like, “We’re doing well. And they…and mom and dad have this lofty, um, retirement plan already set up, and Mom and Dad have already planned for your college.” Like none of that was true. Not only were they like, “You need to go to college.” They were very explicit, like, “And we cannot help you.”

Lux: Yeah. 

Sasha: Like “Financially, we will not be able to help you.” And financially they couldn’t. And I, you know, I bought my own first car…right? And so those things I feel like are the norm. And when someone, when you’re in that position and someone says, “Here’s $5,000,” right? Later, it’s kind of almost impossible for an 18-year-old not to rationalize herself into borrowing that money at, you know, 24% interest or whatever crazy interest rate it was. And so I just remember coming out of my community college experience and going into my four-year university experience already just in a massive amount of debt. And just kind of panicking. I mean, it never occurred to me to care that much about it. I think in the beginning I was a little bit excited about being able to dream of something I’d want to do. It became very practical about how do I get out of here fast enough so that this doesn’t keep piling up on me. And then I can just get a job and start actually paying these things down. But like I said, meanwhile, I was getting promoted at work.

I was working 40, 50 hours a week. I was managing. Then that became me, like, managing restaurants, managing corporate restaurants, which are 50, 60 hour work weeks. So like my work, my schoolwork absolutely took a backseat because I had to work, right? And so those things that…then it was like, you know, two classes a semester, one class a semester, two classes a semester, right? And then it became more and more like, “Get me out of here. Let me finish this degree…and then once I get this degree, I can also get out of the restaurant business. I can, I can finally be done with this. I can use this degree I’ve worked so hard for over eight years.” But then that was just not going to happen. I had already earned myself into an earning potential well beyond what a human services bachelor’s degree was going to earn me. And no one had ever explained that to me until I was literally in the last semester of school. And I had a professor who broke it down. “When you graduate with this degree, this is what your starting salary will be.” And I remember feeling sick because it was half of what I was already making. 

Lux: No way.

Sasha: Yeah, I was definitely ill. I was like, “I’ve worked for eight years to get this degree and it will afford me nothing. In fact, it’s only gotten me a massive amount of debt.” And I felt duped, and I felt…I was really disenchanted with the idea that college was going to improve my life. In fact, at that moment in time, it had done nothing but complicate it because of the amount of debt I had incurred. Now, education is something that, obviously, I deeply believe in. It’s something that…but in that moment, like now I wouldn’t exchange it for anything. But in that moment, I was 20–whatever I was…a 24-year-old or 25-year-old–just thinking, “Oh my God, why did I do that?” You know, “Now I have 60, $70,000 worth of debt. I’m never going to make more money because I have this degree. In fact, I’m gonna have to keep working in restaurants, and I’m going to need to keep getting promoted in these places so I can afford to pay this debt back.” And that was a hard pill to swallow at that point in time.

Lux: Yeah, and valid. It’s very reasonable. I mean, you would expect some scaffolding, you know? Like it’s everybody’s first time going through college, you know, straight out of high school…if that’s the path you get, you know? But, damn, your last semester is when that was explained.

Sasha: Yeah, I think that what I was the most mad about was just finding it out then. 

Lux: Yeah.

Sasha: And so what I had done…the professor with a degree in human services, right, [said], “You’re set up for…you’re really set up to get your master’s degree is what you’re set up to do. You need to go on to get your master’s degree in counseling.” Like a licensed clinical social worker. Or you end up being like an entry-level worker in a human resource department or an entry-level worker in the Department of Social Work, right? Like there are lots of job opportunities. But in terms of the pay, if you’ve already been a working professional that whole time. There was nothing that…so my professor, then [said], “…But if you get your master’s degree, here, this is what you could probably make,” right? “And then if you go on, this also is probably your first step. If you wanted to apply to medical school, you could become a psychiatrist, right? If you were going through counseling in the psychology branch of the field, then you could make this much,” right? And so I started just trying to figure out how at that moment in time, it was like, “Do I have the capacity to do this academically, one of those other two tracks?” And I’m like, “I believe I do.” And so I had talked to a Navy recruiter about what the military would pay for in terms of medical school if I could get accepted. I ended up changing my major before I graduated when I found that out. I’ve changed my major to pre-med and went on to take two more semesters of school at Old Dominion beyond what I needed to do for my bachelor’s degree, because I was like, “I need to apply to medical school. There’s no way that I can afford this.” And so I did. I ended up taking, you know, physics and organic chemistry and the classes that I would need to do that, doing well and in those places. But then realized that I would have to serve eight years in the Navy if I got into medical school. And I would have to do my three years at medical school and then serve eight years in the Navy to pay them back for that time. 

Lux: Wow. 

Sasha: And at that point in time, I was like, “Oh, my gosh, I’ll be 40 by the time this is done,” which is kind of laughable now because I’m 45 getting my PhD. At the same time, it was like, I felt very, I was also like, “I don’t want to do that.” So by the end of it, I took a whole bunch of extra classes I didn’t need to take, acquired more debt for my undergraduate degree that I didn’t need to take on. But that was because I was trying to find ways to make that degree actually work for me in some way. And I went into human services originally because I wanted to help people, you know, and then you realize I was like, “Oh, wow, like helping people is going to never help me, and I’m never going to be able to even pay back this debt, let alone live.” And so, yeah, I had just kind of written off school at that point in time. And I finished it and I got my degree and my family all came and it was just this wonderful thing. And I remember sitting even at my graduation celebration with my dad and my mom and my sister and my best friends and sitting at a table for dinner and thinking like, “I’m so glad to be this symbolic representative of something better, but absolutely nothing will have changed for how much money I owe.”

Lux: Yeah, and that has to just fill you with terror. Like, “How do I get to this next step without being able to…without having like this, you know, generational wealth?” to support your exploration, basically, like you’re having to fund yourself the whole time, which is so challenging. How did you balance working that many hours and school and having some semblance of a social life?

Sasha: I mean, I didn’t do it well, right? And so I do think that, you know, a lot of that debt was also from mistakes, right? Like I would register from class, I would realize very quickly I didn’t have the capacity to do the work. Oh, I didn’t withdraw on time. Oh, that means I don’t get my money back? Like, oh, that’s a lesson learned because I didn’t know that, right? And so it was just now I know that moving forward the next semester, right? So I started to…when I was waiting tables and bartending at the beginning of my college career, I would only take classes I could afford to pay for in cash once I started to see this bill mounting up. And so I think it’s, I mean, it’s just simply why it took me so long, right? I didn’t do it well, because I couldn’t, I couldn’t focus on 12 credit hours of schoolwork when I was working 50 hours a week. It just was never going to do well. So at first I tried to do that, failed kind of miserably, had to drop a bunch of classes and had to withdraw from classes, you know, and then was like, “Well, that was such a waste of money. So now I’m just going to take one or two,” right? So I didn’t graduate with my bachelor’s degree until 2014. I started at a community college in, like, 1999 or 2000. So it took me that long, and it was piece by piece, right? Like I got my associate’s degree. We had that celebration, and then it was like, okay, I’m going to get my bachelor’s degree and then wait, I’m going to pivot and try to go further because it’s the only way that all of this education makes sense…But I finally was like, whatever, just get me out of here. Cause I’m not going to go on. I’m not going to spend 10 years in the Navy so that I can, like, I’ll figure out a different way to pay off this debt, right? Like I will just work harder. I’ll just stay in the hospitality industry and just continue, you know, promoting. And by the time I left the hospitality industry, I mean, I was making almost six figures. It would have been silly for me to walk away to take a $40,000 a year job at human services, right? 

Lux: Yeah, that initial…I think that that’s something that nobody gets warned about. I vividly remember something similar where to get a job in my field, I was going to take a $10,000 pay cut, which was a lot for me at the time.

Sasha: Yeah. 

Lux: And yeah, every moment you’re just shifting, you’re constantly trying to balance these different priorities, whether it’s your schedule or your finances or your coursework itself. It’s just nonstop. And yeah, it’s really taxing. That takes a lot out of a person.

Sasha: Yeah, it was. Yeah, I mean, I was proud to have finished it…and I remember thinking that my parents were both so proud. They were so, so proud because their hard work, in their minds, had positioned me so that I could do that. And I remember feeling so sad because I couldn’t tell them what had happened. I couldn’t tell them about my debt because I didn’t want them to think that what they had worked so hard to do for themselves, for me, right? “We’re working so hard so that way you can have a better life. And we know that if you just go to college, you won’t have to work as hard as we’re working.” And I didn’t ever want to tell them that they were wrong. It wasn’t the truth. I, in fact, was going to have to work just as hard, but I was going to be able to consider myself a quote unquote educated person, right? And that did mean something. It did help me in salary negotiations, moving forward. And I learned, right? I learned all kinds of stuff. I learned organic chemistry for the love, like who knew? It did count. I don’t want to undermine that it didn’t count, but I just remember feeling like it was just a very mixed bag of emotions that I feel like did not have to be that way with some better advisement on the front end, some programming to connect me with other people, even just to ask questions. But, you know, I think…when I think about this, I really think about first-generation students who are commuting students. 

Lux: Yes. 

Sasha: Commuting students and first-generation, those two overlapping identities really complicate your ability to access these programs, these clubs, these community engagement moments where you can meet other people who are in your same situation. I was a commuter. I struggled to get to class on time. Then you have to find a parking spot. I’d be running across campus just trying to get in there. And as soon as my feet could cross the threshold out of the room, they needed to because I needed to go back, get in my car, sit in traffic so I could go to work. And there was no time for even if I had known, honestly, Lux, about any program or, you know, access to it, I didn’t have the time to spend away from work so I could learn about those things. You know, I wouldn’t have. It would have been really difficult for me, right, to be able to. And I don’t know the solution for that, you know, but I know, you know, over the summer, two years ago, I worked with Spur and mentored two students who were both undergraduate students and talking to them about some of these same struggles like they work, right? And they work, and they’re trying to get ahead, and they’re trying to learn research, and they’re trying to take jobs on campus, and they’re trying to do all of these things in this incredibly competitive workforce. They’re going to come out with a bachelor’s degree, and they’re going to be up against really tall challenges financially in their lives. And, yeah, I do my best to try to give them advice about, you know, to prepare them for what they’re about to encounter.

Lux: Yeah, because I think that, though there are services now, like you said, if you are…if your schedule is so packed that you don’t have the time to engage those services, does that mean you have to go without help, right?

Sasha: Right. 

Lux: It’s not very fair, even remotely. So a little earlier, you kind of touched on the perception that folks have of first-gen students. And from a lot of the research I’ve done, you know, and time spent in classrooms, it seems like there’s a real deficit model that’s been applied to first-gen students, rather than an asset model that recognizes all of these skill sets that first-gen students bring to the university with them, like having the vulnerability and also bravery to ask for help, or to ask a question, or to say, “I don’t know,” that’s something that…that’s a skill set that a lot of folks don’t have, along with just navigating bureaucracies without support from within the institution itself. What are, what would you say are some of the, what would you say are some of the things that you think you could do differently? along with just navigating bureaucracies without support from within the institution itself. What was your experience like? I mean, did you have faculty who knew that you were first-gen or that they themselves were? 

Sasha: I think that, for the most part, my faculty did not know I was first-gen. I never really had time to engage them outside of the classroom to have any sort of conversation with them. A couple of them…one faculty member encouraged me to apply for this program called the Diversity Institute. And I did, and I was selected, and it was probably one of the most educational, one of the most memorable pieces of my undergraduate education. And I’m still connected with some folks from that institute that I attended. It was about eight weeks long, and we went every Wednesday night. And it was something I took off of work to do and make sure I was off on Wednesday night so I could do it. And that really opened up my eyes to all of the different people that were encountering all of the different kinds of problems, right? Like, I might have had my own problems, but everyone was having different kinds of problems within the university structure–just within society, right, in general. And so I don’t think that I necessarily experienced it, but I do feel like I was sometimes dismissed as, “Well, you’ll just kind of have to figure this out.” Or there was an expectation that I already knew a thing. 

Lux: Yeah, absolutely.

Sasha: I was afraid to speak up sometimes and say…now, I will say as I got older, and the more I was in the workforce, I became a lot more confident in saying, “What does that mean?” And, like, as I matured. And because it took me so long to get my bachelor’s degree, by the time I was done, I was 30, right? So very, by the end of it, able to say, “What does that…like, explain that fully. Like, what does that entail, really, on the other end?” When I was 18, that experience was quite different. And I will say that in…what I do remember feeling when people did talk about it, and even now, is that sometimes you’re tokenized as the first-generation college student. 

Lux: Yes. 

Sasha: Kind of like the student, you know, like the kid who gets a scholarship to go to camp, right? Or a kid who’s, like, on scholarship. Like, “We just want to say thank you to the sponsors for sponsoring this poor kid,” right? And not thinking about how the poor kid feels to be put on the poster or put on the T-shirt–or what does that mean for their family? It’s not that my parents were…my parents were both successful. In their own right. And much more successful than their parents before them. And so I always felt like it almost detracted from their hard-working experiences for people to tout me as kind of a charity case. 

Lux: Yeah. 

Sasha: You know, the first gen. And so I’ve always been a little defensive of that viewpoint. And, yeah, I wouldn’t say I can recall something that, on the nose, felt like, you know, a misperception. But I do feel there were times where the inadvertent dismissals were just as harmful, right? Like, just as devastating. Just the, “Oh, here’s our first-generation college student,” right? And what is, you know, there’s a lot of implications that go along with that. Yeah, I mean, I have brown skin, right? I have a mother, who English is her second language. And so I feel like oftentimes, you know, I think these things have gotten better in society over time mostly. Although I’m concerned about where we are today. But I say that, you know, there were some times where I did feel like it was just assumed that I wasn’t as smart. 

Lux: Yeah, that’s devastating, too. And being dismissed, being invalidated, yeah, people assuming these things about you because you don’t have the answer to a problem you’ve never encountered before. And that’s like, whether you’re first-gen or continuing-gen, that’s so destructive for a student’s success. Yeah, that’s a huge barrier. You mentioned that there were a lot of unnecessary barriers that got between you and the completion of your degree. Could you talk about some of those? 

Sasha: Sure. I mean, I think that we’ve kind of covered them and maybe not so directly, but just simple things like being really clear about what this degree means in the workforce, right? To students who have no guidance with that, you know, being really clear about what jobs you can get with the degree that you’re seeking. What does that credential really mean? Like, what does a degree in biology really do for you at the bachelor’s level? And where can you go with that, and what can that earn, right? Because most first-generation college students, at least as far as from my personal experience with my friends and for myself, we dreamed in that. Like, we thought that we could, right? Like, I remember thinking that I wanted to help people, and I was going to I would love to work in…I wanted to work in, like, nonprofits and help people that needed help. And not that I still wouldn’t and still don’t, right? But it wasn’t practical. It wouldn’t have been a practical choice for me. And so I understand that, you know, as a mother and as an educator myself, that you want to strike this balance between encouraging that dream and those aspirations, but you also need to ground some reality into that, I feel like. I, as an instructor record at the University of Utah, I always include towards, you know, the end of class…I do the same thing that my instructor did for me that made me sweaty, which is like, “This is what this leads to. This is the cost of living in Salt Lake City right now, right? This is what an average person needs to make, is putting out for rent groceries, right? Using the calculator that’s provided by the state, this is what this looks like. And so this is what after taxes”–you know what I mean?–Like, “you would need to be bringing home. And this is what that salary needs to be.” And I mean, without a doubt, every time I look around the room, I see faces that reflect the way I felt when I heard that conversation the first time myself. And so I think that we need to do a better job of and not just for our first-generation college students, but for all of them, you know, to understand, but especially for our first-generation college students, right? I have a graduate degree. My husband has a graduate degree. I’m going on to get a terminal degree. Like my son will know, right? He’s going to encounter…But like my parents…never. They just knew, as sure as I know, that it’s not the case. They knew that it was the case–that me having a college degree was going to guarantee that, like, my financial stability in the world. 

Lux: Yeah.

Sasha: It did a lot of things, but at the bachelor’s degree level it did not guarantee my financial stability. Guaranteed a lot of things. It guaranteed my opportunity to go on to a graduate degree. Guaranteed my…it opened my eyes. It broadened my horizons. I learned things that no one could ever take for me. Right. Wonderful things it did. But like what they thought it was going to do was not the case necessarily. But, yeah, so just unnecessary things like just more information, more awareness and kind of understanding that, you know, their lives are different in some ways. And their lives are practical. Their decision making processes might be quite different. What they have to balance while they’re doing their education is quite different. And maybe not for all of them, but like I said, from my experience and from my friends growing up, like we all had full time jobs and were trying to go to school, right? There’s no way to do it. Otherwise, we were expected to work. I was expected to work when I was 14. I was going to have to work. I had to get a job permit, you know, and get my first job. And that was how it was. And so I just think that sometimes we–and I say “we” as a reminder to myself, too–in the academy can forget about. Those real practical struggles of some of the youth that are entering the higher education system.

Lux: Yeah, I think that’s definitely true that…Yeah, we as faculty, it’s very easy to get kind of wrapped up in all of the career academia. It’s hard not to. I mean, it’s your life’s work, right? And it is so important that we don’t lose sight of what it felt like to be sitting in those seats as a student. And the barriers that that we encountered, like maybe those barriers probably still exist in so many ways just across the board. And then there are further ones that are new. They’re compounded by, say, for example, choosing a major while simultaneously considering what is the impact of AI on that field or discipline. And how will that impact my ability to find a job?

Sasha: Right. 

Lux: So, yeah…

Sasha: There’s jobs for who actually? Jobs for who, and jobs for what, and what’s the quality of life of that job? 

Lux: Exactly. 

Sasha: Those jobs might be there, but for how long until they’re automated. And will you have benefits, and what type of benefits and what room for growth will there be for you? How do you want to contribute? I fully understand that we don’t know all the answers to those questions sometimes, but I think sometimes we neglect to even pose them as possibilities to students and to young people in general. Like you could really work for the next four years to get this degree, and the job that you think you’re getting could just not exist anymore. And how will you be financially at that point in time? And I will add that, like, you started the question with asking about a deficit model. And I think that, yeah, I mean, first-generation college student retention probably deeply relies on figuring that out, right? Like how to not make them feel like they are less than the other students who have the privilege of not having to work full-time. How do they have community and get to still be their authentic selves, like not strive to have to belong in this more privileged group, but how can they be celebrated for who they are and what they bring? I think this is such an important idea. And anecdotally, like the students that I’ve taught that are first-generation college students and who have life experience outside of school, meaning they have work experience or they have real life experience with hard things where multiple family members are living in one house because of the cost of living, right? Or sickness. And they have real adult grown up problems. Their insight into the work that we do is always incredible, right? They always have such a wonderful approach to the academic work. It’s different than, you know, they can…it’s like they are the conduits to bringing what we do in the classroom to real life. 

Lux: Yeah. 

Sasha: Without that feedback and sometimes that interaction within the classroom while you’re teaching, you lack the real life experience to add it to, except for your own as the instructor, and sometimes it’s best served from one of their peers. And so when you have that first-generation college student, you’re talking about a real life scenario and you have that student who is first- gen and is working and has this real life experience, and they have this example that they can bring to the table. It’s…those are the best learning outcomes for the whole class. 

Lux: Yeah.

Sasha: Someone their age that is like them that is talking about encountering this in the real world. And that I think is…those have been some of my most impactful moments in the classroom to see. And those stem from those youth who don’t have that direct line to higher education story. that a lot of the students do have.

Lux: Yeah. So, kind of on a related note, there is a…well, I think this initiative isn’t super new. Maybe it’s about a year old at the U. There’s this initiative to strongly encourage students to complete their degree, their undergrad, in four years. What do you think about that? 

Sasha: I…you know…what students? You know, I…it’s like, which students? Yes, if you’re living at home, and your parents can afford to pay for your car, and they’re paying for your school, and… sure, complete it, you know? I think that each individual–and I don’t know if this is based off of what generation of student you are, [or] even maybe what income your family has–but each individual student is different.

Lux: Yeah

Sasha: Some students need more time to mature into figuring out what they want to do. And some students know exactly what they want to do. They couldn’t be more driven toward a thing, right? And they’ve only have ever wanted to be this thing. And so that student–sure, finish your four years, get on out of here and go get to do that thing, right? But you have students that know they’re supposed to be here. They know they need to learn, but then we’re shoving them out the door before they’ve really figured out their direction, and I find that unfortunate. I kind of liken it to a PhD process where, you know, in your first year, they’re like, “Take all the classes! Explore, explore!” And then your second year, they’re like, “You have time!” And then their third year, they’re like, “You’re about to propose your dissertation.” You feel this like, “Oh, I’m learning. I’m exploring. I’m opening my mind. I’m re-evaluating the way that I assess and approach the world and approach thinking and, you know, my discipline. But now I have to immediately, like, dial that in, shove that into a funnel, and get to work on a single thing. And that’s hard, right? We’re doing this whole thing with 18-year-olds when their brains haven’t really even completely formed to say, “You need to decide the direction of your whole life, and you need to do it in exactly four years. And if you haven’t, then you haven’t, you know, persisted.” 

Lux: Yeah, like it’s some kind of failure?

Sasha: I don’t know. I mean, I think that’s administratively driven. I think that that’s driven by, you know, statistics and governments, and people want to know, like, “How much money are we giving this university? Well, how many students have you graduated and how long has it taken them?” And I just think there’s like, you know, that’s a whole nother rabbit hole, right? But I do think that, as educators…and when we think about students who are kind of approaching this world without a lot of background information, right? Like again, I’m a mom. Me and my partner have graduate degrees. We’re gonna be able to sit with our son and talk about all of these things in a completely different way than my parents could have with me. And that doesn’t mean my parents weren’t incredible or smart or capable or successful. It just means they didn’t go to graduate school, right? So how do we, you know, to have a student who comes to us at 18 who has that, you know, two parents, and they’re the first generation, it’s like we want this person with no, like previous touch point with the university system to figure it all out and have their whole life decided in four years. I think that’s unreasonable. Which—could you expect that maybe of my son? Maybe, but you know, who knows? He’s not quite ready to make those decisions. Maybe he needs to change his major once or twice before he figures that out. Maybe we’ll have the financial ability to allow him to do that, right? But maybe not, like either way he’s got…I’d venture to bet that he would have a higher likelihood of being able to do that without creating a lot of financial debt for himself and problems because he has a previous touch point with the higher education system to begin with versus the student who never has. And so I do feel like there is an injustice in expecting the same thing, but I don’t know how you negotiate that with also trying to protect them from having deficit model thinking applied to their status as first-generation students, right? Like our status as first generation students rather, but it’s like, how do you avoid that without saying that they need something special? I don’t know. 

Lux: Yeah, it seems like the change would…It’s like, within the administration, it would take some kind of pedagogical shift, you know, at least as far as I’m concerned. But to wrap up, I’ve got one last question for you. What advice would you give to somebody who’s, you know, say in high school, an 18-year-old person who’s right on the cusp of that decision? “Should I go to higher ed? Should I wait? Should I do a different path altogether? Or even current first-gen students? 

Sasha: I would say, you know, to follow your dreams and make sure that those dreams don’t become nightmares for yourself, you know, in the sense…like follow your dreams. Education is, in my opinion, one of the most important things that we have as a society for many different reasons, right? But part of that education, unfortunately, for first-generation students can become financially just overwhelming, right? So I would say to arm yourself with the education you need first and foremost, which is: How do you accomplish this without sinking yourself financially? And that’s asking them, I think, to know what they don’t know. And so I would hope that there are resources for them at our university and universities beyond that can help them with that because they deserve, like any other kid deserves, to follow their dreams. And if their dreams involve a certain type of academic training, then they deserve access to that, in my opinion. But I also think that we need to do a better job in ensuring that they’re armed with how to prevent that dream-chasing from just destroying the future that they’re trying to create financially. 

Lux: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a real tight rope.

Sasha: Yeah. And then it’s unfortunate things to have to be put in the same conversation, right? And I think that that’s, like, the hardest part of it. It’s that, you know, capitalism, right? 

Lux: Yeah. For real. 

Sasha: That conversation, it’s like capitalism. And the fact that we have youth, like myself, that just wanted to help people, like I wanted to help other people in my community and in our society, and I still do. To have to weigh that against how I might be able to financially survive is just, it just seems like we haven’t…like we just went in the wrong direction somehow, right? As just, as humanity. And it’s like how…yeah, I think that projects like this, work like this, can really help tell stories and narratives. I think narratives are so much more important than statistics. And I hope that there are more narratives that come of this that can support the idea that first-generation college students are incredibly capable of all the same things as third-generation college students or fifth-generation college students, right? They just need to simply be given the opportunity. And as a PhD student that is a first-generation college student, it…I feel like I’m the picture of that, right? I just needed the opportunity. I needed the opportunity to get here because I can do the work and I can accomplish and I can help people, right? I can teach people. I can be an educator, right? I can research, but I just needed the chance. And so I hope that this work, and I’m sure it will, will continue to help to shed light on the importance of that.

Lux: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for talking with me. 

Sasha: Yeah, you’re welcome.Thank you for doing the project. 

Lux: Of course, I just feel really honored to hear your story. And I know it’s a vulnerable thing to talk to a stranger, have this conversation, and I just feel really grateful. So thank you for talking with me. 

Sasha: Well, like I said, Lux, I’m really grateful that you’re lifting up the voices of these students. And I can tell from our short conversation that you’re just the right person to do it. So thanks so much. 

Lux: Thank you.