First-Generation College Celebration

"In my first semester of college at the age of 55, I was in total fear of being at a school with lots of younger people. My stepson was with me that first day of school as my PCA, as I am in a wheelchair and felt even more out of place other than being old.

During the first couple days of school, I went to this place called TRIO at school and sat down to a lunch they were having for first generation students. A couple other students were also there for lunch that had joined the TRIO program.

One of the students that I sat near, was a girl from Costa Rica. We seemed to get along famously. I was in the Business Administration degree program, and she is in for the Nursing degree program.

About a month later, we both found out we were in the Student Government Association. By the end of that first semester, I ended up being the secretary. By the end of the second semester, our friendship had grown, we had not met each other's families, but knew a lot about them. We also became the President of the SGA and the student Trustee to the Board of Trustees for the college."

"During my first semester at college, at 17 years old, I remember the day when I was limping into my chemistry class and a classmate asked if I was okay. On this day, I was wearing a Denver Broncos sweatshirt, the same as practically any other day I attended college. Nobody else was in the classroom yet, he must've only been there for a few minutes studying for the upcoming exam. We were just about to take an exam, it was a little cold this morning, and we started talking about the exam coming up in a couple minutes. This led to a conversation about my recent injury and our future. He talked about how he was at a different college last year, and how he transferred to BCC because they didn't have his program of study.

This person has also taken a lot of classes that were not for his major, so he ended up dropping them. He went to an advisor before the semester, and they set him up with the wrong classes. To make sure that this doesn't happen to me (before I even knew that it could happen at all) I went onto the BCC website and looked at the recommended pathway to graduation for my program of study. When I met with an advisor to pick classes for this semester, I knew which classes I needed and which ones I didn't. I would say that since I looked online at what I needed to do to graduate with an associates degree in biology, I had an unfair advantage.

We both went to the same advisor in the summer to pick our classes, it is just that I had the knowledge of what classes I needed, and he did not, he went off of everything that the advisor told him to take for his program of study and sadly those classes will not transfer to the college he wants to go to. Yes, I did have the unfair advantage, but I also did research on what to take, and I discovered that on the BCC website all on my own. I learned a lot about him in this short period of time, and even though I knew to pick the right classes for my program of study, I am more cautious about it now. Him and I talk about this every so often and he was only able to take 7 credits this semester because he had to drop a lot of classes that did not fit in his program of study and that would not transfer to the school he wants to go to."