First-Gen Staff: Angela Rossi-Steele, ITS (former Chair, Staff Advisory Board)

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[Photo credit: Tristan Carkeet]

I grew up in the east bay town of Antioch, CA where we moved to when I was six years old. At the time, it was considered an up and coming bedroom community with good public schools. My parents were working-class first and second-generation Americans whose highest level of education was finishing high school. My mother spent most of her working career as a baker. She was up and out the door each morning before anyone else was awake and came home well after my younger brother and I had returned from school.

What motivated me to go to college: From a very young age, I knew coming from a low-income background caused the majority of stress in my home. I learned that a higher education would make a positive shift in my long term outcome from growing up in this environment. There was never a question of whether I was going to attend college or not. The question was “how”. I always loved attending school. It was my safe place where I excelled and felt valued. I was lucky to have amazing teachers throughout K-12 who inspired and guided me academically and personally to find the path to getting to college. Many of these teachers I am still in contact with today. I was also greatly motivated to make sure my brother had a strong support system knowing that I would be leaving home without him. As I was graduating from college, he was graduating from high school. Several weeks after, he had moved in with me, enrolled in college, and is now a firefighter/paramedic and member of the Santa Cruz community.

What the biggest challenge I encountered was as a first-generation student and how I overcame it: The biggest challenge I encountered as a first-generation student was balancing work and school. I had a job within a week of arriving at college. Not having a job was not an option as it was the only way I was going to be able to afford to live and stay enrolled. I worked the maximum number of hours allowed and was given an increased amount of responsibility over the four years I held the position. I had two part-time jobs while attending high school, but the academic load was significantly higher in college. The key to balancing this challenge was time and resource management and just having a “get it done” attitude because ultimately, there was no other alternative option. I found mentors to guide me academically, personally, and professionally to balance the heavy load I was balancing each day.

How my background has helped me: Learning to be independent has always been a key component in my success. I’ve never had the expectation that “someone will tell me” what I need to know in school, work, or life. I consider myself a “research/policy/information wonk”. I want to know what the guidelines, instructions, general information, etc are so I can make decisions on how to move around in life. First generations students are usually extremely resilient. I arrived at college feeling that my writing skills were going to put me at a disadvantage in many ways. Finding a tutor early on was a high priority to push through having a positive experience in future intensive writing courses.

What I would tell my first-year self: I would tell myself not to worry so much and ask for help. Ask for support, ask for mentorship, ask for money…just “do the ask”. If you don’t ask, you don’t know what you might be missing out on. The worse reply you can get is a “no”, which means you haven’t lost anything. It might assist rephrasing your ask to get a “yes”. Also, be loyal to yourself. If something isn’t right in your life, make a change even if you find it risky. You have to be your biggest cheerleader. Taking risks is difficult when things feel safe, but you never know what might be at the end of the “road not taken” if you don’t try.

The best thing about my college experience was: There were many wonderful things about the college experience. Meeting new classmates and friends from around the world opened my eyes to new experiences, ideas, and outlooks on life. The freshman Core course at Oakes College influenced my view of society significantly. I learned about the impact of history, culture, and politics on how we’ve moved forward and regressed as a population. I will always treasure my final senior computer science course with Manfred Warmuth. His first lecture on how yeast works in the process of making bread while comparing it to computational theories was brilliant!

How being a first-generation student influences me (and/or my work) now:  Attending college was a transformative experience for me. As a first-generation college student, I did not have the support system that many of my classmates and friends had. I had to be more independent, resilient, and in some ways, had to work a lot harder both personally and academically. Having the honor to work with college students every day reminds me that a student needs to be viewed holistically and that they should be supported, engaged, and educated as humans first…they are more than a name on a roster or a filled chair in a classroom. The most important part of my senior year in high school was scholarship night where I received several community awards. Several years ago, I started a scholarship at my high school on behalf of my graduating class. It is my hope that by awarding several scholarships each year that I can champion well-rounded students who will make a positive impact and contribution to our society and who will also “pay it forward” when the times comes in their lives.