With A Little Help From My Friends

With A Little Help from My Friends

Isabel is the cutest lady I had met by far, every morning she’d greet me with the most beautiful and candid smile.

So how do I feel this morning. Well that I’m not quite sure. I had already felt overwhelmed by the invading silence that these three days had brought me. It felt unreal and new at the same time. I had been surviving and getting by with some granola bars and fruit cups I brought from home. I didn’t ever anticipate to be sleeping and breathing the same odor of fresh cut grass and the nice flowers surrounding the main campus. But most in for most, I was also living just a few minutes away from the beach usually a sign of status quo because when we’d go with my family anywhere to the beach; their lived only white folks and usually it meant  that you have money and live quite comfortably.

In appearance it all looks too good to be true as  for this brown girl to be walking through the clean aisles and corridors of the campus as if this were some sort of palace or empire.  I thought to myself “Wow! I have made it I am now where I’ve always wanted to be, college.” Lucky enough my roommate never showed up and my suite mates were only that, just suite mates whom I saw in the morning or at night and briefly verbalized a monotonous Good Morning or Good Night. I guess they were really there as witnesses to observe my discomfort and judge my resistance in assimilating. Sometimes when I was lucky the monotonous Good Morning or Good Night was followed after a question, I guess in attempt to know more about one another but nothing more occurred through the small encounters. We didn’t become bffs or nothing of that sort.

Things picked once school officially started. Well okay not quite, the only individual who provided comfort was Lei, another transfer student who I met on Orientation, her and this sweet lady I’d see every morning around 6 or 7 am  when I’d wake up to heat up my mug of tea at the Mckay lounge. Isabel became my morning energizer. She’d pumped chunks of hope into my everyday or may I say she added more energy to my system than the tea I’d drink in attempt to decrease my anxiety, doubts, and fears. Isabel didn’t exactly know how I was feeling because in front of her i’d pretend everything was great. She’d reminded me of mother and the warm sensation of being home. I mean she was truly the first person I could relate to.

As the semester advanced my anxiety increased without me realizing it wasn’t normal at times I had small pains visiting my arms--it was tension and stress encapsulated there. Later the tension extended to my neck as well. These were the symptoms of my first generation college experience or perhaps the physical symptoms of anxiety as an actual psychological issue that I was to tend to but,  had very little knowledge  about. According to Kelly Allison from Xavier University of Louisiana, research shows that First Generation College Students had stress levels that are just below the threshold for an anxiety diagnosis.  No one had yet to tell me what to do in case I experienced this pathetic anxiety. Every time I saw Isabel, she’d greet me and asked if I was doing well. What was I tell her beside “ Ehh, hay la llevo” (I’m hanging in there) I wanted to avoid any hints of insecurity as I would with family. If anything I wanted to make it seem that this college stuff isn’t as hard as it seems. But as Allison mention in her research, “ The everyday experiences of academic pressure coupled with a lack of social capital among first-generation students are often significant obstacles to their academic success.” The semester ended and to my misfortune my close relationship with Isabel ended because the next semester  I was scheduled to move into Hannon. After this first year, many other relationships blossomed in the storms of my academic life. From time to time I still miss her gentle voice and candid smile.