When I first decided to quit my job at twenty-two – an age when most people are graduating or have already graduated from college – and enroll in community college in pursuit of my first college degree, my parents were unsupportive from the very start. This was community college after all. The thirteenth grade. The lowest common denominator of higher education. Where the deadbeats who can’t get into real college go. They had no interest in a son who was joining such an unexceptional group of people.
My mother, mortified at the fact that her son was a community college student, would eventually lie to our neighbors that I had already graduated. The night before my finals, she even went so far as to tell me that I would be better off dropping out and getting a job polishing shoes (I would go on to ace my finals in spite of her). As for my father, when I eagerly showed him the straight A’s I had received my first semester, he responded by telling me not to be so proud of myself. “It was only community college,” he reminded me.
Community college, of course, is not a prestigious institution that one can boast to another about. Growing up, none of us aspire to go to a two-year school. On the contrary, in our adolescence, we learn that the best and the brightest attend the Harvards and Yales of the world while the great, but not exceptionally great, high school students filter into a “lesser” range of schools. At the very opposite end of the spectrum, naturally, we then assume that the worst of the bunch attend community college, conveniently completing our mental picture of the school-to-caliber-of-student model and breeding credence to judging a person’s worth based on the brand-name of their school. This prejudice is especially prevalent in Asian culture.
I’ll never forget an experience illustrating this educational superficiality within my culture some years ago. My two friends and I had just joined a larger group of acquaintances for drinks, and naturally, having just met, we were getting to know each other asking such questions as “Where do you go to school?” One of my friends had graduated from Carnegie Mellon, the 22nd best college in the country according to US News, while the other had attended Yale, the 3rd best college in the country according to the same source. At the time, I was currently attending Stony Brook (a few years prior to being put on academic suspension and kicked out), and an Asian girl upon hearing this responded,
“Okay, so, let me get this straight. So, Yale (points to my friend)… Carnegie Mellon (points to my other friend)… Stony Brook (points to me)?”
As if she was saying, “How do you fit in here?” or “What went wrong with you?” There I was feeling humiliated over attending a school the London Times ranks in the top one percent of universities in the world, and there she was mocking me for attending a school the US News ranks as a top three percent university in the entire country. This was akin to a billionaire pointing to three other billionaires and saying, “Maserati… Lamborghini… Mercedes Benz? Really? Only a Mercedes Benz?” I wonder who was the bigger ignoramus in that instance. Her for taunting me? Or me for feeling insecure about where I attended college?
What many of us fail to realize, however, and what I failed to realize, is that nowhere else does the school-to-caliber-of-student model breakdown more than when it is applied to community college. Community college is not an institution filled with deadbeats. It is a reservoir of student potential. Walk into any two-year school in the country, and you will find some of the most unique, talented, hardworking students you have ever met, who, for whatever reason, have ended up at community college; each has his/her own story for being there.
Take, for example, N, a Japanese immigrant, who was a mechanical engineer servicing The Bullet Train in Tokyo, Japan before immigrating to the U.S. due to his dissatisfaction with his job. Pivoting from his engineering background, he is now committed to becoming an English teacher. Or consider J, whose intelligence is of a frightening caliber; she lost her full-ride scholarship to Washington & Lee College, one of the most selective liberal arts colleges in the world (17% acceptance rate), due to personal issues and is now attending community college full-time while simultaneously working full-time as a veterinarian’s assistant. Or how about A, an honors and scholarship student, who works as a full-time janitor to pay for his tuition? I once asked A why, as a computer science major, he didn’t use his technical skills to find a job he was more qualified for. “Actually, my janitor job pays really well, and without it, I wouldn’t be able to attend school,” he said. This is a slice of what one might find at a typical community college – people who are underprivileged, looking to start anew, and are working just as hard as those who have had a traditional path towards their dreams and career aspirations.
Although it’s true that not all community college students are similar to the examples above and that there will always be those same slackers and idlers associated with the image of community college, it’s a shame so many of us look down on two-year schools and apply this stereotype to all its students based on the school-to-caliber-of-student model. Community college is certainly not a place completely saturated with loafers and bums. There is an excess of community college students out there who don’t deserve such pity-laden discrimination.
As I wrote above, I’ve experienced this pity first-hand from my own family and from strangers. It certainly doesn’t take a genius to notice the awkward silence that looms when someone asks you where you attend school and you respond, “Insert-Name-Here Community College.” Likewise, it wouldn’t surprise me if any of you readers who I’ve interacted with offline have thought on one occasion, “What is this twenty-four year old doing in community college at his age?”
Fast forward to the present and nearly two-and-a-half years have passed since deciding to pursue a college degree again. Last December, I finally graduated from Westchester Community College. A month before that, just before Thanksgiving, I received a phone call from Columbia University. I had been accepted as a spring 2010 transfer. Currently, I’m three weeks into my Columbia career, and I’m officially on cloud nine. To be clear, I write this not as a way of rubbing it in the faces of those who pitied me, but rather, first, to hopefully raise your consciousness about judging one based on the brand-name of their school, especially community college students. And, second, to dedicate this to anybody out there who is taking a nontraditional path through college or life. I certainly understand your sense of embarrassment, low self-worth or inadequacy, or feelings of being lost or alone in your endeavor. I was a twenty-four year old community college student while some of my friends from high school were completing their master’s degrees. It was not a great feeling. Fight through it, regardless. Ignore the outside perceptions and judgments. Don’t believe the cynics. I cannot emphasize this enough – you can achieve anything you want to achieve if you want it badly enough.
