The mentoring gap

It started out like any other typical Saturday night. 

My husband and I went out to dinner. We ate (too many) chips with salsa before our meal came. We talked. We laughed. We enjoyed the outdoor Florida nighttime air. 

Our meals came, and as we ate I couldn't help but overhear the conversation at the table right next to us. (I promise I wasn't being weird and nosy, but, you know, when you're just eating and not talking outside and there's no music, you can't help but hear what's going on around you.) 

From what I heard, it was clearly a mom, a dad, and a young man home for the summer from college. They were just having a nice family dinner, just like I was. But something was very different about their family dinner than any I'd ever encountered. 

After spending so many years immersed with low-income and first generation students, I'd forgotten this other world. 

During the course of a simple Saturday dinner, this young man was given a wealth of advice and support from his parents regarding college and his future.

The purpose of the dinner was not to lecture him. It wasn't to discuss his future. It just sort of happened, naturally, in between laughs and talk of other things.

By the time I was halfway through eating my mac-and-chorizo the dad had already related what medical school was like and how he got through it, and the mom was reminding her son why he had earlier decided he didn't want to be a lawyer. Both parents then gave him some advice and leads for his internship plans for this summer and next summer. 

In short, they had a very positive mentoring session. 

It was also obvious that this was a high income family. They talked about the young man's high school - the best private school in my area. The dad was a doctor. These were wealthy people, and this was an example of what a casual saturday night could look like in a high income family.

I saw these relationships all the time when I was a private SAT/ACT tutor. It wasn't just about parents who cared - I had parents who cared. And I would imagine wealth doesn't automatically make you a caring parent.

This was something different. It was parents who cared and who'd been there. They had this vast well of knowledge to draw from and pass along to their kid. A cycle of wealth. A cycle of success.

I spent most of my time thinking about how to create these similar relationship exchanges to help break the cycles of poverty that are all around us. 

I got in the car that night and said to my husband, almost teary-eyed, "how do you compete with that?"

And by "you" I meant of course all the students who don't have those kinds of Saturday-night mentoring sessions with their strongest role models - their parents. 

But here's the thing, I think you can compete. These types of conversations are vital to success, but it's okay if you don't happen to have them in your family.

That is where I believe other crucial support systems come in. Teachers, mentors, professors, school staff, college staff, non-profit staff, etc. That is why I'm constantly emphasizing those relationships and conversations in my speeches. 

We need the formal stuff, the systems, the processes, the programs, all that - but we also need to remember the importance of those informal one-on-one conversations. The moments where you can talk about what you want to do with your life, what's going on in your life, and have someone who cares about you and who has some experience help you figure things out. 

And not just once, but often, consistently. 

We all need this. I still need it! I was just on the phone with an important mentor in my life last week asking for advice. 

I wrote my book so that I could give community college students the tools to ensure that no matter where they come from they can build that community of success. 

There is a mentoring gap. But it's not too late to fill it. 

And I for one am thankful to all the unsung heroes out there who are having conversations like the one I heard that Saturday night, with students who, while they may not be their sons or daughters, are treated like they are anyway. 

What to remember when you feel like you don't belong

I'm sitting in a hotel restaurant eating breakfast with a few dozen strangers. All in business attire. And all about 20+ years older than me. To be honest, I often I feel like I can relate more with the hotel staff than the patrons.

I've experienced this many times as a young author and speaker, but this morning this feeling of not belonging has reminded of something important that I think is so relevant to where you are today:

When you don't fit in it usually means you're a trailblazer. 

I watched a documentary on Civil Rights on the airplane ride here and I was struck by the first-hand account of one woman's experience as the first black woman to walk across her high school's stage a few years after segregation was ruled unlawful. 

She was the only young black woman in her classes. She was ostracized and she hated school. Even when she graduated, she reports simply being happy she'd never have to go back. 

Whether she realized it or not, she was a trailblazer; but no one ever tells you being a trailblazer can be a lonely path. In fact, it's easy to fit in when you're doing things just like everyone else. 

It's much harder when you're trying to do something new, something different, something to change things.

I was thinking about this phenomenon and you yesterday when I read a great article in The Atlantic about a young Latino man who is the first in his family to go to college; it explains how he struggled to fit into a college where it seemed everyone else but him came from the upper classes. 

I had this same experience when I received a scholarship to finish my education at a private liberal arts college, and I've heard a similar story countless times from the trailblazing community college students who go on to some of the best colleges in the country, as well as those community college students who are trailblazing college for the first time in their family.

Being first is hard. Being first can be lonely. 

But I want to remind you today that being first is also beautiful. 

It's one of the best gifts you can give those who have sacrificed before you and those whose hopes you will fulfill who come after you - those for whom it will be easier because of you. 

So on behalf of everyone who's been lonely before you and all those whose lives will be changed because of you I want to say thank you. 

Keep going. Make friends with the strangers who aren't like you and teach them about you. Help them understand where you come from, and try to learn where they're coming from.

Continue to improve yourself through your education, and when you graduate and gain the power that comes with that, do your best to inspire more trailblazers so that being low-income, a minority, or the first in your family to attend college will no longer feel like a foreign experience. 

My dream, is for that to be the new normal. 

How first generation students achieve the American Dream

As our economy shifts and changes rapidly, more and more people than ever before are needing to go to college in order to sustain the kind of lifestyle that once could be created with a high school diploma. Not anymore. 

More and more students who are the first in their family to attend college will be starting a higher education for the first time. Being the first to go down that path is not easy, but those that do sometimes don't realize how important their steps are. If you are the first in your family to attend college, I hope you know what a big deal that is. You should be so proud. 

I recently interviewed Jesus Moran for the piece below on Fox News Latino. His story is one of hope, one that shows the American Dream is still alive, and one that reminds us all that barriers do exist, but that the right support can help others like him bust through those walls and make new paths:

"Jesus Moran's parents struggled when they arrived to the United States from El Salvador.

His father lost his job in construction during a wave of layoffs and now works at a car wash. His mother has been a housekeeper for 14 years for the same family. So when it came to their children, they wanted them to achieve more...." Read More.