Twenty-one and completely lost

Twenty-one and completely lost

I sit here only days before I will turn 21. This number is so significant in the U.S. because to a lot of people this is when you are really grown up. You can gamble and drink and you should be figuring out your life. For a lot of people their future is planned out from birth because their parents went to college and took every step they could to get to the place that they are now. But for me like many other first generation students our life is different. We are expected to life our families from poverty because our parents came here to find the “American Dream.” Although a lot of times it seems like finances are the problem but realistically there is so much more than that.

According to the Washington Post “First generation students are less likely to have had access to the type of challenging high school classes that increase the chance of success in college and less likely to have confidence in their academic abilities.” Not only this but we are constantly pressured to be doctors, lawyers or to pursue a career that will pay us more even if this means we aren’t happy. I remember my oldest sister say “I tried so hard in school, I was on the honor roll and I even used a fake social to go to a community college and I got my AA but I can’t use it. Now I’m stuck working minimum wage jobs just because I wasn’t born here.”  I could hear her voice crack as she takes a deep sigh. She holds tears back and says “But you know you’re lucky, you’re smart, outspoken and so passionate, you’re going to do amazing things.”

I immediately I remember when I was in middle school and I would take the bus with my

mother. She would always ask me what was going on in school. As a typically teenager I didn’t

think much of it and I was just focusing on getting out of my ugly awkward phase. Now being older I think back and remember her saying “Here you have to study now that you have the opportunity, you don’t want to clean houses for a living like I do. Puedes seguir tus sueños.”           

            As I think about growing up and about all the love I grew up around i can’t help but to think about all the struggles that came with it. The early mornings where my mother woke my and my other sister up at 4am to take 3 buses to a school in Santa Monica because she wanted us to have the best education. Cleaning  two to three houses in a day but still having time to pick us up from school and taking three buses back home and still making sure that we always had soemthing to eat. My father worked in construction from 7am to 8pm sometimes just to make sure we had our school uniforms.

            As I lay in bed the hour changes from 11pm to 12am to 1am to 2am and I just can’t seem to shake this feeling of guilt. Becuase at 21 my mother was in the U.S. not knowing the language, people or basically anything. But still against all odds her and my father gave my sibling everythng that they could. There is a sense of pride because of my family while at the same time a sense of guilt becuase i was given an opportunity that they were not. As the day reaches closer to me graduating from LMU I feel the pressure to show my parents that they did give me a better life and that I will have a career that pays me well. When in reality I lay in bed feeling like im soffocating somtimes even though I have opprotunites that they didnt have.