First generation graduate students

This seminar is aimed at PIs and Professors! Inside are 5 tips to help the first generation students in your department succeed and become successful academics.
Twitter: / acollierastro
Research website: www.acollierastro.com/

[@aliannarodriguez1581]

Its incredibly important during your undergrad years to pick the brains of older undergrad students, grad students, and professors about pitfalls and unspoken expectations for education (and a career) in your field. Casual chatting with my lab TAs revealed that some grad schools were in the habit of cutting the promised stipend after the first year of grad school. The high stipend in the offer letter was just a lure to get you in the program. Other conversations revealed that some schools were well known for bringing in large numbers of grad students to teach, and then dumping most of them after the first two years. Information like this allowed me to later ask questions during my grad school hunt that probably saved me a lot of misery.

[@acollierastro]

Ten out of ten advice here.

[@custos3249]

Exactly, though that should be done _even before undergrad._ Best to kill a dream before you're 10s of thousands or more in debt only to learn your field only wants those willing to prostrate themselves and accept abuse often for no greater reason than to prove you "want it enough."

[@frankmc8355]

NGL, this never ever helped me even though I tried it, but I can't put a finger on why. It always felt like anyone I talked to had fundamental things figured out already that I didn't so that their advice didn't apply. I don't remember ever getting a piece of advice or information that I didn't immediately respond to with "okay, I guess you've figured it out but I still have no idea how to proceed."

[@LaPrincipessaNuova]

This might not be as great of advice depending on what school you go to. At my undergrad, I can’t remember ever talking to anyone who planned to go to grad school and knew any more than I did. And I’m sure some of the professors could have had some better advice if I’d known more specific questions to ask, but most of them either went to school so many decades earlier that it seemed unlikely to be useful or in another country with a very different education system. And my school didn’t have a serious graduate program, so the students in the graduate program were all either working professionals looking to get a degree to boost their salary or people with an undergrad degree in a different field looking to switch jobs. So all the grad programs were pretty much lesser versions of the undergrad programs for the same field. I got the info I could from the few professors who had relevant personal experience, but most info I got from undergrad students, grad students, and professors was about as useful as what I got from my friends in high school who told me admissions doesn’t look at your Freshman and Sophomore year grades. Of course it’s still a good idea to talk to people who might know more, but there’s a lot of people who think they know and it’s hard to separate the signal from the noise when you don’t know.

[@reformed1trick739]

I'm a research biologist who is a first generation college student coming from a poor family, a lot of this hits close to home. I always felt like I was at a huge disadvantage and had to work harder than my peers because I was constantly playing catch up for things they learned back in high-school. I remember in high-school when I started Algebra 1, my dad got me a $15 Casio calculator and said "I hope there's enough buttons on it, I can't help you with math anymore, you are beyond my abilities because I had to drop out of high-school to work." He was trying so hard to be a good dad and it broke my heart to see my dad in distress because he was aware that his child was at a disadvantage and there was nothing he could do about it.

[@PhilosopherFromMontreal]

❤ heartwarming tribute to your dad

[@chipperP]

He cared. That means a lot.

[@MaximumTheMokona]

I have tears in my eyes watching this because so many setbacks I've had that I just figured were due to me being dumb actually have a much simpler explanation.

[@martymchugh1604]

Your post script is on the mark. My parents have masters and MD respectively. In my second year of my physics Ph.D. I hit my first academic wall, QFT lectures based not on a noted text in the subject but instead the lecture notes of a very opinionated professor. Simultaneously I was underperforming in my research activities - managing and porting a several thousand line codebase. I had written "Hello, World!" exactly 12 months before in the only class on computation offered by the program. This resulted in a sit-down meeting with my advisor - the acting department head - and the professor in charge of grad students. During this meeting they told me, "poor grad students work 40 hours a week and probably don't graduate, average students work 50 hours a week, exceptional students work 60 or more." In the moment, I felt like a failure and could only politely nod at this advice. Later on, after passing my qualifying exams and getting into a real research group with real technical mentorship, I realized what nonsense that was. Almost nothing in fundamental research is actually time sensitive. And if you have obligations outside of academics, that level of effort is not only unhealthy but probably straight up impossible. I graduated just fine in the average 6 years for my field working less than 50 hours every week. I'm lazy and stubborn but I kept track. I went into industry and never looked back. Thank you for your video. Great advice on making changes to make all workplaces, not just academic ones, more inclusive and fair to people who didn't have the same opportunities I did. Edit: I forgot the most important point. You don't get paid a dime more for getting that plot out Saturday morning at 2 AM than you do for getting it next Monday at 4 PM.

[@acollierastro]

QFT is a bear! Your post is great advice.

[@dinobotpwnz]

Those professors had an unproductive way of trying to shame you into working more. But I think the next thing you said is only true in the relative sense. Almost no project in fundamental research is more time sensitive than another. But that just means which one you work on at the moment should be up to you. Letting a few months pass when they are all on hold (e.g. when Angela was writing her thesis) is indeed a limiting move. This is because the academic system reduces humans down to a single number like how many citations they accrue per year. Graduating with a PhD doesn't require a grad student to worry about her publication rate but getting on a faculty shortlist does.

[@dinobotpwnz]

@@wolfumz If your field is gravitational waves, you can only pursue it by staying in academia. Would you still make the claim that a 40 hour work week for you and all your students / postdocs is enough to be at the top?

[@G5rry]

I'm just some random guy on the Internet, but just wanted to mention how impressed I am with your accomplishments. I won't bore everyone with the details, but I knew nobody in my life who went to university and I supported myself financially. I tried for 5 years, but I ended up dropping out. I'm 49 years old now. It's one of the biggest regrets I have - and some guidance and encouragement would have gone a long way to preventing that.

[@chrislawuk]

I feel you there mate. I’m a similar story, but I’d wager the regret is exactly the same. It sucks. I do take some comfort that a lot can be learnt these days for free, but for “real” subjects nothing compares to a proper Uni experience - and nothing compares to actually having the qualification. I’m sorry it didn’t work out man. Sounds like you tried even harder than I did too.

[@ChrissiX]

I supported my fiancée during the last years of her undergraduate program in Physics (she started late, 1st gen and was a blonde-woman in physics ... so spent 180% of the time catching up and proving herself) enough so that she never had to work during the school year and she could take summer classes to catch up if she needed. Even then, Academia was not worth it for her ... she is a very successful programmer now ;)

[@indetigersscifireview4360]

I graduated from University with a Bachelor's degree in Engineering at age 57. I worked full-time while going to school part-time. 2 classes per semester for 8 years. Every semester including summer. I sometimes had to work 70 hours a week at my job and then go home and work 25 hours on school work. If I can do it so can you. I paid my way as I went for most of it but had help from the company I worked for on occasion as well. Three years later I passed the Professional Engineering exam and got my license. It's been almost six years now since getting my license and I'm happy that I did it.

[@Neonb88]

Very self-made, amazing

[@Atomhaz]

Seriously I probably wouldn’t have made it if I were in her shoes. Inspiring stuff.

[@toddsteinlage9030]

As I watched this, I kept thinking "you don't know what you don't know". I was so clueless in undergrad and grad school, and everyone else seemed to know what was going on (and I was too embarrassed to ask). Thanks for your videos, they're really great!

[@Saphia_]

That was me in high school. I'm the kind of person who doesn't know anything until they're taught. Like, I can "teach myself" but I don't know what to learn until someone tells me and I don't know where to find that someone because I don't know until I'm told, if any of that makes sense. Anyway, growing up, I was the best in my school (upto 10th grade) because once I knew what to learn, I could learn it and I could learn it well enough to teach it properly to my fellow classmates. [Side note: One of said classmates told me I helped her pass math classes back in school and that makes me feel so happy.] However, with highschool, came new school, new teachers, new classmates and more importantly, new classmates who knew stuff being taught and teachers who taught to the level of those students. It made me feel so low because I didn't know anything. Was I smart enough? Hell, did I even have the potential to study science? It took me more than a year and half to realize that I didn't have to rely only on my notes, one course book and my teachers to teach me. I found resources: extra books on the internet and video lectures here on KZbin which all put stuff into context for me. Finally I found answers to my stupid questions I was too afraid and embarrassed to ask teachers. And that, combined with the time COVID lockdowns gave to prepare for 12th grade final exams, I did and felt a lot better finally. I'm kind of in the same predicament now because I want to study astronomy but I haven't a clue regarding what to do and where to start and even what I need to know. Not to mention, I'm studying architecture now which is well, nowhere related to astronomy (or that much to science really. I mean it is science but it's not as science-y as say, civil engineering) and architecture makes it really difficult to give a lot of time to anything other than architecture, especially if you're slow like me. But the silver lining is that I now know there are resources and I'm slowly collecting them. Sorry for dumping my life story on you. I couldn't help myself after finding someone who has also been clueless, even if the cluelessness was in different stages of our lives.

[@danishkaurpannu691]

Thank you for making this video. People like you make academia a better place.

[@acollierastro]

So nice of you!

[@AM-tu1rc]

I had the fortune of going to a well-funded suburban HS with parents with Master's degrees in the same field that I'm now studying. This video was very informative regarding the struggles that others face, and I really hope that more people of privilege watch this video.

[@michael_r]

Yeah. This is eye opening for me. I’m aware there is disparity in education in America, but I didn’t quite understand how it manifested. It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be schools that didn’t offer physics or calculus in high school. My (public) high school experience was that a girl in my AP Physics class took a week off to go to England for her admissions interview at Oxford (she didn’t get in, so she had to go to her backup - Harvard). So…quite a different environment on the other side of the Appalachians.

[@MyChannel773]

⁠@@DaSteak12what are you talking about? she’s telling the story of how much harder it is to ‘make it’ from these poor, underfunded high schools. she’s not ‘complaining’, just sharing her story which is a microcosm of how wealth inequality affects things that those with privilege may not have even thought about. there was only one valedictorian at her high school. she was lucky enough to achieve that, which opened the door to her college career (something she is clearly grateful for). but there’s no way she was the only one who would’ve gone to college if given the chance, the point is that there’s ONE person who’s able to do that from her school year, where as in privileged schools, the norm is that *everyone* goes to college.

[@johnwallin7984]

You captured many of my experiences in undergraduate and graduate school - poverty, not understanding the expectations, dealing with toxic behavior, and not having your family understand. I now run a Ph.D. program, making it my mission to address these issues. Grad school doesn't need to follow the same abusive patterns with every generation. We can change.

[@music_YT2023]

I was one of two black students in my high school program (IB) and going into college as a first generation student was so difficult. While I went in-state (full ride), I didn't understand how some of my grants worked; like the book scholarship that would only refresh if I turned ALL of my books back in at the end of a semester. This severely handicapped me when I was trying to work through new material that heavily relied on previous coursework. I also had work-study (let me work on campus) in addition to a part-time job off campus. The work study could be anywhere on campus and often in fields that were completely unrelated to what I was studying. For an entire year, I was stationed in Family Studies, an offshoot of the business college, that was really just Home Ec/Baking with very easy A's for people whose families were paying for their chance to network in Sororities & Fraternities. It was so frustrating to be studying so hard to not fail my classes (because many of my scholarships required a minimum GPA to retain them), only to see these students putting forth no effort in classes that already requested so little of them. I only ever ended up in a lab as an undergraduate because of a Minorities Health program that taught students how to give presentations to large groups and paired students with open labs. It wasn't ever discussed in the actual classrooms or been presented by any of the academic advisors, so these opportunities would have never been known to me had this paid Summer program not been available to me at the time. Even then, I was too scared and did not understand the graduate application process to continue on with academia. I got my BS and bounced around from academic to industry labs for over a decade. I am only in graduate school now because my PI is an amazing mentor. While you were listing all the ways faculty could position themselves to be more welcoming to first-gen students, I was thinking wow, my PI already does these things in a numerous different ways, from networking to discussions of financing and short- and long-term goals. Even though I am much older now, she encouraged my interests and career goals, helped me in the application process and gave me such a glowing recommendation. Mentorship and having someone talk you through the process of undergrad and graduate expectations and pitfalls is absolutely life-changing.

[@acollierastro]

This is a great story! I’m so glad you found a supportive PI

[@lauraash6687]

I chose sociology/ teaching as a major because it was the only thing I could make As in after coming from a rural school like you described. I was valedictorian. I graduated high school a year early. I was supposed to be the one that went to college for molecular bio. I couldn’t swing it.

[@JohnTyree]

Not understanding how your scholarships work was a problem for me too. Organizing enough support to cover my undergrad only to find out that some of them were "tuition only" for some absurd reason and i would have to forfeit the "extra" and then pay out of pocket for books, room and board. I can't imagine who thought that was a reasonable way to fund a student but it really wasn't.

[@bentleykennedy-stone9184]

Fantastic video. I'm a white guy with a professor parent. When I first started my Ph.D., one of the old guard profs in my department said to me in an introductory meeting that I had a good "pedigree." That was a very strange thing to hear. It's not just first gen students who get shafted, it's anyone who doesn't match my description... Build student solidarity in your departments, do not let them fractionalize you. Talk about pay, talk about work, talk about treatment, and organize.

[@stevenklinden]

My adviser's policy, one which I endorse, is that grad students never paid when we went out for dinner.

[@stevenglowacki8576]

That's exactly what I was thinking. Where in the world are you invited out to dinner and be expected to pay, especially when you're a student and under the tutelage of someone else with a real job?

[@billysoup9483]

I've been going thorugh all your videos after finding you recently and I've really come to appreciate my PhD advisor a lot and if he wasn't 75 I'd swear he's seen your videos. When we go to dinners with other professors he always pays because he wants us to go, he pays our undergrads, he doesn't hold people hostage, the semester before my qualifying exam he gave me the rundown of what I needed to do and who to go talk to, he pays as much as he is allowed, i've never seen him say anything mean to any student/put someone down/yell, and gives the maximum raise whenever he can (our group makes like 400-600 more a month than the rest of the department). Honestly all of this has made me had such a good experience so far I really think some of these things need to be standard for most students, especially the pay.

[@joemezza3387]

Is this man accepting new students??

[@AnnaWillo]

This is so encouraging to hear as someone who went to school in rural indiana and is finally considering going to college in my 30s. I literally enrolled in a coursera calculus class this week just to get ready to apply for my bachelors because i never got beyond trig during my first attempt at an associates a decade ago.

[@lauraash6687]

Community college is under rated. I got an associates degree, and did Phi Theta Kappa. (Honor society for 2 year colleges). I was involved as I could manage. Got a full ride to 4 year because of Phi Theta Kappa. Gpa requirement was 3.5 I believe. (Completely possible for me at least. ) There are ways. Often these honor societies have study groups or resources available. Good luck. It’s never too late.

[@SwervinJirvin]

The best and worst part of grad school I wish someone had told me about is how much you have to be your own taskmaster. Setting your own hours and choosing when/how much you work is an amazing feeling when you do it right, but if you've never been forced to do it before you're inevitably going to make some blunders as you try different styles and see what works for you

[@notsojharedtroll23]

I guess my actual first job helps me with this. Thanks for the heads-up

[@LadyMoonweb]

As a first gen grad student I made plenty of mistakes at university. I spent so much time working so that I wouldn't fail that I simply didn't notice all the other (important) things going on. For example every weekend there was a 'mixer party'. I assumed it was something to do with drinking and ignored it. Turns out that was the place where you were supposed to meet people in the field, get to know them and share your talent so they know who you are. I had NO IDEA that was an important factor, blinded by making my current work outstanding instead. I saw my peers as my competition (and little more) too, because I mistakenly believed that was the game here. I feel so foolish about that now. Although, my parents implored me not to go to university, stating how it would ruin me when I failed and that I should follow certainties not dreams. Now I have a masters in game production and I *still* focus too hard on making my work outstanding. Oh, and I did not have the grades to even get into university at the time and had to pick some things up. I still think I got in on pure talent to be fair because I was not the typical candidate with anything in any kind of order.

[@spuriustadius5034]

Kudos to you. I left my Physics PHD program. Doing fine now working in industry, but I still regret giving up the PHD many years later. I think you're giving out really good advice that I wish I had received when it would have helped me. My parents, who were immigrants and whose education consisted of a few years of elementary school, wanted nothing but the best for me. I went to a good high school, excelled academically, and got accepted to a upper-tier university for undergrad. I learned a lot, but was repeatedly facing burn-out and exhaustion, grades were not great. I ended up working in a lab and then miraculously (sort of like you) made it to grad school. Looking back, my problems were that I failed to seek out and form relationships with mentors and had absolutely no idea about the "unwritten rules". Late in grad school, I started feeling burn out again, couldn't cope and then bailed on the program. Got a job which, honestly, I would have done anyway even with the PHD. You videos remind me of that pathos. Glad you made it through! I wish you well.

[@FractaLL2103]

If you don't mind saying on the internet, what type of work do you do in industry (field, job title)? I am nearly done my physics undergrad and I want out of academia and into industry but am struggling to get fish on the end of my line. Thanks :)

[@spuriustadius5034]

@@FractaLL2103 I was in experimental condensed matter, did a lot of instrumentation and measurement in grad school. I've been in a variety of different jobs: 3 in biotechnology (2x medical device, 1 research institute) and 4 in telecom equipment (optical fiber, large networks). Title has been mostly "Test Engineer", at "principal" level for the last 10 years (I am getting old now, left grad school in 2000). I am not particularly proud of my career. It's OK. On the plus side, I've always been employed and mostly found the work interesting. I don't have any solid advice other than to pay attention to your relationships, those outlast jobs!

[@robertvarner9519]

I am extremely impressed by your life story and achievements. You really beat the odds. Much respect! Hope your career goals work out.

[@euanthomas3423]

Angela's resilience, application and determination are exemplary. Her other videos also come across as completely authentic and are clearly reflective of first-hand, lived experience.

[@icedirt9658]

I’m a first gen grad student. In the sense that my parents didn’t go to graduate school. Both my parents have 4 year degrees. I’m about to watch this video and all I have to say is I felt so lost. There are freshmen in college who have a better grasp of what grad school is, how it works, how to navigate the programs, how to talk to professors, everything. Even now that I am almost done, this holds true. Students who have parents that did grad school have a window into academic culture that other grad students never see. And those students just…know? Things? That I don’t. And they often just get irritated at first gen grad students for their ignorance instead of helping them. I wish I had shopped around more when looking for grad programs. I wish I had considered trade school. I don’t fit into academia and especially at first, it was just incredibly toxic to me. For my mental and physical health, literally a toxic environment. And no one in my family understands; not even my two siblings who have masters degrees in non-stem fields, because their programs were just so different from mine. It was alienating, I felt alone, and lost, and confused. I almost have my master’s degree, and I don’t even know who I can or should ask for letters of recommendation for finding a better job. I still feel lost and confused and I don’t even know if this degree will prove to have been worth the pain and delay in starting to make money. And I do get the sense that some other graduate students, ones who didn’t have as much difficulty as I did, look down on me and laugh at me, feeling smug and believing me to be an idiot. That feeling has never gone away. Long story short: first gen college students have it hard. First gen grad students also have it hard. It’s just hard. Hard in ways that you don’t know until you are neck deep in it.

[@Skank_and_Gutterboy]

As a first-gen I know what you're talking about. I joined the Navy right out of high school, did a 6 year enlistment, then went into college after that. Going into college was rough. I had just gotten off a 6 month deployment to the Persian Gulf, it was a real culture-shock coming back to the states, and I just felt like I didn't belong anywhere. Starting in the engineering pipeline, everybody was 18 and I was 24, I was some far out old man in that place and nobody could relate to me. I was very socially isolated and the profs were no help.

[@cadosian078]

@@Skank_and_GutterboyI’m very sorry to hear that. You should’ve gotten better treatment as a veteran, but to be honest you probably have more real life skills than at least 95% of your fellow freshman so you have that at least.

[@FractaLL2103]

@@cadosian078 Unfortunately real life skills don't matter, the institutions care more that you were the founder of a club that you only created for the purpose of talking about how you founded a club.

[@jackiehedges320]

Congrats on your hard work and achievements, and thank you for making this video. It makes me feel a lot better. As a first-generation student working fulltime while attending university, I am also well aware of the sacrifices we have to make. To get into most of the good doctoral programs in neuroscience, you need to have volunteered in at least one or two labs for at least a year or two. It's very difficult to make your grad school application look really good when you're working in a bakery 40 hours per week. This semester I am doing a full course load, working my bakery job, volunteering 6 hours per week in a clinic, and volunteering 10 hours per week in a lab. It's fucking intense. All that being said, it is comforting to see how it worked out for you.

[@IgnisKhan]

I may be a borderline first-gen grad student -- my parents didn't have graduate degrees, but my dad was a pilot and my mom was a registered nurse, so they at least had _some_ STEM background even if we were relatively poor. But personally, in my own head I articulated many of the things you identify as a difference between "first gen" and "continuing gen" as just a simple class divide. It was in grad school I finally learned the real-life, self-reinforcing differences between socioeconomic classes. Just one example: Every fellow aerospace grad student I met (or so it seemed) came from a family with well-educated parents who were still on their first marriage, while I was born on my parents' second -- they were both on the rebound after their first divorce, and split when I was two. I spent ten years with a barely-above-the-poverty-line single mom, before getting introduced to a Bible-thumping step-family who sneered at me for believing in evolution. Relatedly, mental health also seems to follow a class divide -- people from stable homes with healthy family dynamics are more likely to have healthy minds. I was the only aero grad I knew of who ended up needing a psychiatrist. Turns out I have moderate Bipolar 2, ADHD, and ASD1, and it was only the stress of grad school that made the symptoms acute enough to diagnose. Then again, I definitely didn't hit my wall until grad school. I went to undergrad in my home town because they offered a good scholarship ... which meant I was studying math and computer science at a liberal arts college in Montana, and so was 100% able to phone everything in. (Also, even though ADHD makes it very hard to study, Bipolar 2 hypomania makes me preternaturally good at cramming for tests the night before. In grad school -- no joke -- I tried cramming for my Prelims starting two weeks before the actual tests. It, uh ... did not go well.) Also, this is only the second video of yours I've seen (the other being your latest on string theory), and I have to say I'm in awe. You've faced greater challenges than me, but still gone farther. If life was a D&D game, I'd be green with envy of your raw ability scores.

[@Skank_and_Gutterboy]

Yep. It was all school of hard knocks for me. My parents were blue-collar and among extended family, I was the 2nd to go to college. Where I went to school, the profs told us pathetically little about the system and getting a job, even when asked point-blank. Pisses me off, it's their job and looking back on it, most of them did their job poorly. I graduated in spite of them, not because of them. I got a job about 60 miles from where I went to school. I've had a few of them call me up and ask me to volunteer for stuff. They want a bunch of free work out of me and won't even pay my gas? I treated them just like they treated me as a student. We were expected to submit perfect work but whenever you needed something from them, they either blew it off or did it really half-assed. I think those guys were just really old and really tired. I got my master's at a different school and got a much better ride.

[@danielledavis6878]

I'm a first generation undergrad/grad student. I've had to build a village built of former/current professors, students, and graduates from a diverse set of fields. Their help has been crucial to my success. So much of what you're saying resonates with me.

[@tedjohnson64]

Extremely impressed you were able to accomplish so much, given the enormous hurdles you had! You’re like the Dolly Parton of science. Also, your presentation skills are top notch; this entire 48 min video was fascinating.

[@TheAnticorporatist]

I second that. You’re so smart and well educated that I guess I just kinda always assumed that you went to a great high school and came from an academic environment. I actually had the opposite problem in that I had 17 valedictorians in my graduating class and the salutatorian was inarguably the smartest kid in school, he just happened to get a B in some class at some time despite graduating with a 4.3 or something like that. But yeah, good on you. Thanks for your content :-)

[@realisticlevel2553]

I feel like this is one of those wholesome videos of a dad that went viral for teaching basic life skills to people who lacked a parental figure in their life, this is the same but for academia figures. Thank you for this.

[@gentlebob2869]

I was recommended your video about the postdoc exodus of 2022 and really liked your video format, especially how honest you were in your video. I took a look at your other videos and started watching this one. Wow. What a load of truths. I was in the middle of completing a mandatory graduate course on teamwork while watching this video and my experience just came together for me. I was thrown into this project with 4 other non-first gen students and I kept asking if they had a timeline for when they would complete their portions of the report. Two days before the deadline, two group-mates reach out and state that they haven't even started working on their portions and need help finishing their portions because of other obligations (a ski trip of all things!). I had already completed my portions and was diligent about making sure my work was completed well before the deadline so there would be time to revise and go to office hours if need be. I could not believe the audacity! Now I understand where that comes from and how being first-gen (first in family to get bachelors, now in grad school) gave me the tools I needed to succeed. I thought the other students were working just as hard but now, it feels like they are being pulled upwards by everyone else in their life. Hard realization to swallow when no one else was doing that for you. Thank you for putting your truth out there for us to see. It is meaningful.

[@acollierastro]

It's so strange how every first-gen student has the exact same story and yet continuing generation people are shocked haha.

[@Skank_and_Gutterboy]

As a first-gen myself, that makes a lot of sense. I've had the same experience on things.

[@DIGITALVHS]

Thank you for making this, Im only now finishing my undergrad in my mid 20s (and I still and not even done) after living in a small town with high drug use and neglectful parents. I've been without a home since 18 and I still struggle with the feeling that academia doesnt want me to be in it at every turn. I dont know i could ramble about this but this video makes me feel better as the quarter begins and i mentally prepare myself for the spector of grad school

[@AlexiaHartzell]

I'm a first-year, first-gen grad student. My mom was a teen mom with a GED, I was homeschooled K-12, went to community college when I was about 16, did a BS at a nearby commuter school, dropped out for a year midway, and now I am somehow in a top-20 graduate program? Every day feels surreal and absolutely terrifying. Half of the stuff I know about the "hidden curriculum" of academia is just what I've learned on Reddit. I appreciate you speaking about this so much.

[@carlosux]

dude you struck a hard chord with me i had forgotten about. the extra study session hit me like a brick. so true 😢

[@manudosde]

I am technically a first generation graduate because both my parents grew up in post-war Spain and never even went to high school, but hearing you tell your story was eye-opening. I grew up in a lower middle class household but I never faced the financial and academic struggles you had to deal with. My parents were able to support me during my degree, even though my father was a self-employed carpenter and my mother was a housewife, and I never had to get into debt to pay for my studies. It just goes to show how important state-funded education is. Anyway, I find your achievements extremely impressive and I'm very happy all your effort and perserverance were rewarded. Thank you for your videos, they are very inspiring even for someone from a completely different background like me.

[@MarkFunderburk]

This video made me realize that I am a first gen student. My dad had a masters degree but died when I was 13, and my mom was never involved in my education. I started university at 25 after working in retail and fast food for 7 years. No one told me I counted as first gen because I had no parental support, so I never sought out any of the programs in place for first gen students, because I didn't think I qualified. You are so spot on with calling out the secret information needed to make ot through. I am really impressed you were able to do so well academically, it was all I could do to scrape through my undergrad engineering degree. Over half of my classmates went to the state science and technology high School which had most classes being taught by PHDs and took all the calc, linear algebra and even number therory classes before coming to university. And of course those 100-200 level classes were tailored to them. There is no way I am going to grad school with the way things are now, but with engineering I have decent opportunities without it. And we at least get paid to do undergrad research, which I only landed because I happened to run into a professor my first week that was desperate for some undergrads to work in his lab. Luckily for me I was able to keep doing that research and was able to make enough to pay for my expenses and degree while "only" working 20-30 hours a week. I now work at the University as a design engineer for test equipment and experiments. I feel similar to a postdoc without the need to write papers. I probably make a little bit more than most postdocs but not nearly as much as I would in industry. Your postdoc Video has me rethinking staying here for much longer. See a lot of the same problems in the engineering side of academia, the one thing that's a little bit better for us is there's a bit more money floating around, of course having the label student attached to you really pulls you down terms of anyone caring about your work life balance or whether you're being paid within the same semester you did the work. I hear a lot of professors say stuff like if "I did it anyone can" typically referencing the fact that they moved from say some ex sovit-bloc country, conveniently leaving out the fact that both of their (still alive and in thier life) parents have advanced degrees. Of course I'm sure emigrating has its own challenges but thats not reason to ignor other people's disadvantages.

[@nickallbritton3796]

Again, another hit of fresh air from you. I'm from Evansville which you may know is southern Indiana and I've got family in Henderson Kentucky. Our problem wasn't really opioids as much as alcohol and meth. I've only had one positive role model all my life which is my sister and she's an accountant. I was also homeschooled for years before college, also. So when I moved to a new city by myself with huge social anxiety, bills to pay, no support, and trying to catch up academically and learn how to go to classes at the same time as working night shifts, it was impossible. Then the pandemic hit and I got hit with unemployment for a little bit, etc.. I wish I could say it's gotten better, but I'm still struggling financially and trying to reign in my mental health. I understand it's not their fault but when I've reached out to my professors for help or guidance, I usually get almost no empathy. I keep hearing about time management which is great and all but what time am I supposed to be managing? I can't give up but I don't really have anything more to give I've had to give up research opportunities: this past semester I was supposed to have a job as a research assistant with one of my professors, but he retracted the job because I was struggling to turn in assignments on time because my other jobs were taking too much time. I understand the decision, but that really broke my spirit. It's okay, though, now because I got a summer research position that pays better anyway, so things are looking up knock on wood. I feel like I'm either going to graduate or it's going to break me. We'll find out lol. It really does feel good knowing I'm not alone, though. So again, thanks for your videos

[@GH-oi2jf]

This was a great story. I'm impressed with how you were able to start from such humble beginnings and rise to the top of a field as difficult as physics. I went to school in a small district, but there were about a hundred in each class. The high school did have a chemistry and physics lab. We didn't have calculus, but my senior math teacher gave me a self-study beginning calculus course to help me get started before college. I guess I had more advantages than I realized at the time.

[@innovativeatavist159]

"First gen students are more used to failure." is the nicest way to say "Those spoiled rich kids can't handle adversity because they've basically never had any." that I've ever heard. I'm 27 and still trying to get my undergrad thanks to being first gen, getting sidetracked focusing on music a "career" (blech) and having a bunch of health issues. I am financially supported, in that my basic needs are met. That frees up a LOT of time, energy, and brainpower, but there's definitely no "Go out to dinner." money unless I make it myself. Despite that I'm still struggling because of a total lack of understanding of those unspoken rules and having to play catchup academically. I noticed I spent/am spending about twice as much time as many of my peers in order to keep up with College Algebra, Introductory Statistics, and Chem 1 & 2. The only reason I haven't had to do that for my life sciences is that I was already nerdy about those on my own time. EDIT- nvm Bio III is kicking me where it hurts. I can't imagine trying to pay rent at the same time. My GPA would plummet or I'd have a mental health crisis and drop out.

[@MostlyWrong-td6cx]

Fascinating to hear from a working-class american perspective. I never got my physics degree and have wondered if being "first gen" affected things. I've also worked fast-food and can't imagine working while studying, you're a hard worker ontop of being intelligent and deserve every success you have. Thanks for sharing.

[@essendossev362]

You talk about the most interesting topics in academia, and your videos are so well structured, organized, and informative. It just blows me away. I'm the child of immigrant parents from soviet Bulgaria who were both masters in math. I'm so grateful for the guidance I received from my high school when applying to university, because my parents had absolutely no clue how to navigate academia here. Even still, I regretted for a long time that I hadn't taken any AP classes in high school, because I hadn't even heard of them until I was already in my bachelors comparing notes with all the other students who had done them. I don't think my high school had even offered them, although maybe I would have had the option to take them from some other high school nearby had I asked for them - I still don't know. But I was very fortunate that my high school itself prepared me very well, and I was able to take 'enriched' level (not the same as AP) math from grades 9 & 10 with the most incredible, enthusiastic, passionate teacher (the school said there wasn't enough interest in enriched math for grades 11 & 12, which I find hard to believe since it was all the same folks taking them each of the previous years). I was also incredibly fortunate to be able to rely on financial support from my parents, but even still it didn't compare to most of my peers - my dad paid for my tuition, my grandma paid for my housing, and I worked 10 hours a week at various campus jobs to pay for food and have savings. Working campus jobs was something which only the relatively poorer students did at my uni - most had cushy coop jobs making 20-40k every other term. I know my situation sounds well off compared to most university students (many of whom have to take out loans to pay for uni), but comparatively to students at my university, most of them could afford to go out to eat at the campus plaza every day (think $20 a meal), while I had to bring packed lunches because that was more affordable (think $2 a meal). It wasn't until fourth year when I was dating someone who would pay for my lunch so I could join the group eating out that I realized how much I had been missing out on socially by not going out to lunch with folks. That's where the networking happens; where people casually talk about employers, offer tips for resumes, offer recommendations when applying; where conversations happen about what courses people are taking, and coordinating taking them together; where secrets are shared about which profs are good and which to avoid. For my masters, I attended a university that primarily serves immigrants. It was a nice change of pace not being the only person who packed my lunch. I actually got to sit around with other students in the grad lounge eating together and discussing our research topics (well, at least until covid started..). My supervisor always made sure I had funding, one way or another (I didn't qualify for many scholarships because my undergrad grades hadn't been so good at times, particularly when I was having mental health trouble, although I had finished my last couple of semesters taking some of the hardest math courses with an average in the 90s). I remember comparing with a group of other grad students one day after class when I was taking a grad course offered at one of the other universities in town (the wealthier university, of course), and there was a clear divide between the funding men and women were receiving. One dude was getting 40k a year in funding. All the rest of the dudes were getting 20k (I was lucky to be in that category). Most women were getting none, grateful that their parents were paying for it so they could afford to focus on their studies. The ones who weren't getting funding or who weren't getting financial help from parents... simply weren't there, couldn't make it work. I was relatively well off compared to most people, and I'm incredibly incredibly grateful for that. But there absolutely were limitations because of my experience as an immigrant, and I could clearly see the divide in privilege and the limitations of who was and wasn't represented. You don't hear the voices who never make it into the room...

[@harrison6082]

30:13 I know exactly what you mean 43:18 Yeah failure can be very painful, especially when you have your identity (or self worth) wrapped up in being smart & getting good grades 47:18 I agree. When I started working and being a full time student I got really good at time management and being efficient.

[@dinobotpwnz]

This is a very important video. And I love how it contains a reference to a book which also discusses the role economic factors play in producing outliers.

[@elizavetabelova6525]

I like your story and I’m happy you are in a much better place now. I am myself a first-gen student and also a foreigner, so I understand your struggles. However, I think your problem was not because you are a first-gen student but because you don’t socialize enough. All those tips about recommendation letters can be picked up from speaking to your older peers or professors. A parent who got his/her phd 30 years ago might not be very helpful in this regard. You come across as a shy and introverted person, I am the same, but I now try to engage in small talks more often because you can really learn some cool stuff from talking to other people. Moreover, a lot of things can be googled, including what a recitation course is. Update: just watched until your tips where you go over the things I mentioned in my comment.

[@sumitaghosh615]

Realizing the incredible privilege my school has afforded me - I’ve never had to pay for the dinners or hotels or flights myself, my advisor automatically pays for everything. I didn’t realize that some grad schools ask the students to pay for this stuff themselves. That sucks, thank you for talking about all of this.

[@sumitaghosh615]

Like, at my school whoever invites the speaker is responsible for paying for everyone at the networking dinner. Usually they even coordinate how people get to the dinner. The dinner costs for every guest is included in the speaker budget, along with paying the speaker and paying for their travel and hotel. Obviously this restricts how many speakers one can host and how many people can come to dinner, but still. It should be like this everywhere!

[@dustinhodges9987]

I’m from rural KY too. I know how hard it is being a first generation student. Congrats to you

[@madyui]

Never dwell on what could have been like around 23:00. Your future kids and/or students are going to benefit so much from your “failing upwards” experiences. Low socioeconomic rural life from birth until after high school, I was in a state champion maths and engineering team in late elementary school, but was told to aim lower when career planning in late high school :/ If you feed that “would’ve, could’ve, should’ve” wolf, you’ll only make it stronger. You’re killing it mate, I love your videos and your passion for science comes across as so genuine and so relatable for laypersons and sci-buffs alike. Good health and good hunting to you😊👍🏼

[@Sonex1542]

I'm at the end of my professional career. I am extremely impressed by you. Your self awareness, candor, intelligence, communications... I could go on and on. Anyone who you touch, work with/for, or who crosses your path will be a better person, and will gain from your efforts. This video should be mandatory for any higher education student. Love your videos, all of them.

[@ThePrimeMetric]

30:22 As someone applying to graduate schools this year, you have no idea how comforting this is.

[@AnkhArcRod]

I had a fellowship in a very prestigious university in the bay area. The stipend was 5880USD per quarter. That sounds phenomenal until you realize that after tax (though you do get a larger than 50% fraction back at the end of year) and high rent, I barely had enough money to eek together a life. I had no money of my own and no support from my parents either. I lost 15% of my weight in first quarter as I was trying to save up money to send it back home and it was a great struggle. Then I learnt of free lunches and snacks in grad school seminars, group meetings and life was much better then! The hungry grad student stereotype exists not for nothing! I must add here that I did come from an academic family but we were just poor because academics were not paid much in those times in my home country. You have done well for yourself and it is really commendable. Its fun to hear your passionate monologues on various topics. Also, I realize how great my advisor was as he paid for all my conference expenses almost universally. I do the same for my PhD students as a pay it forward gesture.

[@Phoboskomboa]

Your situation sounds very similar to mine. In my case, I dropped out of high school for various reasons and entered the work force until I was I think about 26. No one in my family had ever been to college except my older sister, but she was in Japan for most of my undergrad. So I was starting college with the disadvantage of virtually no high school or support structure, but the advantage of a few years of experience working construction and on assembly lines, which made the classes feel like a vacation. But I had such bad imposter syndrome and I was constantly terrified that people would find out I didn't belong there. I had so much anxiety about it that I never talked to the class advisors for fear they'd catch me and send me back to the real world. I knew it was irrational, but that didn't stop me from feeling it. I'm in a postdoc position now, and I still struggle with imposter syndrome. The thing is no one told me that that feeling was normal. I really thought it was just me. One day in grad school someone mentioned it, and it was like my world blew open. "Wait... other people feel like that too?" Honestly, just finding out that it was a common feeling was 90% of what I needed to be able to fight it. That's why now I make sure to give every student a talk about it and let them know it's very common in STEM, especially among first-generation students and also young women and minorities who far more often have their insecurities reinforced by unintentional and intentional biases.

[@GeekPhilosopher]

Wow. Valedictorian at a poor rural school, behind the curve as an undergraduate scholarship student...and now a physicist at Harvard. You obviously have a tremendous amount of grit. I once had aspirations of academic achievement, but I feel very small compared to you. To the victor goes the spoils. Congratulations, you have earned your success.

[@Jamie-kg8ig]

I'm a first gen undergrad psych student and this hits close to home for me. I grew up very poor, basically couldn't count on my parents for any help for college. My first few semesters of college were kind of a disaster, and when I moved across the country, and went back to college a few years later, it really wasn't easy. I was 23 at the time, and the FAFSA basically expects you to at least have your parents' tax returns. I don't talk to mine because they were really shitty and it felt super embarrassing to have to explain exactly why, on official academic and government paperwork. That point about failure is huge. I was in gifted and talented programs in middle school, but for a lot of reasons, my grades in high school tanked. Barely graduated. First attempt at college (for comp sci) was a little more successful, but not that much more. Bombed college algebra and that left a lasting impression on me. Eventually, I realized that a career in tech just wasn't for me after getting a real (ish) job in the industry and realizing I hated it. So I changed my major to psych. Another failure that was an opportunity for growth. Anyway now I'm doing a whole lot better in classes because I realized what I actually wanna do, and I'm just about to walk away with an acceptable grade in a stats class after having not taken any math classes for 5 years (most of which was out of college) and it feels like I really earned it this time. Also that point about time management. By accident, last semester I realized that plugging in due dates into my personal calendar was a great idea. And unless I was working full time where I had to do something like that, I doubt I'd have figured out that trick when I did. I never thought I could do grad school until I had an encouraging professor and a mentor (plus the fact that you need grad school for psych, minimum) and now that the semester is just about over, I'm gonna start seriously looking at it.

[@christopherfranks478]

Came from NW Tennessee. This is spot on for my experience. Great idea to help inform profs that not everyone comes into uni with calcs all wrapped up.

[@neestovekin8251]

Those are really great actionable tips -- I hope your video makes the rounds, sooner rather than later!

[@colchiandragon7396]

Great talk! I was also a first-generation student who went through to a Ph. D. My experiences align pretty well with hers. I would, however, expand on one area. To wit, the cultural difference between first-generation students and continuing-generation students. These two groups have such different lived experiences, that they are almost incapable of experiencing empathy for each other. This is particularly true of the continuing-generation students, who have almost no ability to understand the struggle faced by the first-generation students in any meaningful way.

[@freebobafett]

That was a very inspiring story, whether you meant it to be or not. The fact that you became a physicist with all the extra academic work you had to do as an undergrad, and all your other disadvantages, while also working full time, is amazing. You're like the Loretta Lynn of physicists.

[@culwin]

I don't know about grad school, but I graduated in 2004 and even then as an undergrad, I was glad I had the internet to help me. Just simple things like being able to see reviews of professors from other students, so you knew what classes you wanted to take. And being able to google topics. I can't imagine trying to navigate college pre-internet.

[@Tarkonian]

I've been watching your videos since I found them, and I really appreciate this one. It's not easy being the first one through academia and I hope my family does better than I ever did when they go for it.

[@bobboonstra3484]

Very impressed by your story, your accomplishments, and your advice. I never thought about it, but I was the first in my family to go to college, HS valedictorian, behind in early undergrad years, etc. Got into MIT for a PhD program (Computer Science / Artificial Intelligence), but quit after a year b/c I just didn't navigate the process. Kudos to you for making it.

[@xenonglow4047]

This channel is incredible and I'm so glad I discovered it.

[@Worsteverything]

I’m so glad that information like this is more available now. I’m going through my B.S. in Neuroscience right now, and looking at the future without seeing a path ahead has been so scary. Thank you for sharing your experiences and the statistics behind first gen students academic success.

[@Marstead]

Hey there, I discovered your channel from a YT Recommendation, I just wanted to say thank you for posting this kind of content. This video and the postdoc exodus video in particular are excellent and it is really hard to find this kind of take in Academia. I personally grew up in extreme poverty, was one of those folks in the situation where I couldn't even get financial aid because of my parents' financial situation, I ended up just going straight into a "real world" job and never even experienced undergrad. In my 20s I met my now-wife, at the time a physics grad student at the Ohio State University. My wife is a staff scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory now, but when we first started dating it was a real "worlds colliding" experience to be this poor person with zero cultural information on really really basic stuff like "the structure of Academia", suddenly exposed to my wife and all of her friends and colleagues who seemed to exist in a completely different reality. It was a huge challenge just to communicate about things like toxic work culture to these young (mostly) men with fucked-up generational ideas about how romantic it is to work 70+ hours a week in grad school. Like you mention in the Postdoc Exodus video I was one of those partners challenged suddenly with the need to move around the country multiple times to follow my wife to her jobs. Thankfully because I didn't have a college education I didn't have the kind of roots a lot of physicist couples have, so our "two-body problem" was much more easily solved -- I just quit my job, became a homemaker, and followed my wife to her next jobs. Anyway, I've shared this video with as many of my wife's physicist colleagues as I can find, you frame this specifically about University PIs but I think it is helpful advice for anyone who is Academia-adjacent who might be involved with new undergrad students, grad students, postdocs, and even high school mentoring relationships. Like I said my wife's a staff scientist now but even in her role she is in a position of considering postdocs, grad students at other universities, and high school mentees, and this kind of advice from your perspective is absolutely invaluable. Anyway, keep up the great work! Workers of the world unite!

[@AKASHDUTTA-pb6dy]

This is one of the most eloquent, helpful and cheering comments I've ever seen on KZbin!

[@Atomhaz]

My experience for recitation is exactly what you said. I went to a state university though, so it may be different at a more fancy school. The dude teaching the recitation was like the most neck beard person you could imagine. I don’t know why I added that part. I just figured people might want to read the colorful details of my life so there you go. He would have one really hard problem on the board that we had to solve but then after that it was just “ask me any homework questions or just leave early”. Most opted to leave early.

[@stevereith6571]

Hi Dr. Angela but I hope I can post this about dropping out from undergrad. I had a rough time in school from neglect and abuse from K-12 and was unprepared to go into any college environment. I tried repeatedly in community college but broke down mentally, dropped out, and then tried again. The most I was able to get was an AAS then transfer to the UNI but dropped out due to mental illness and urinary disease. The Dean of engineering told me to leave and just get a job. I was hired as a tech person in a few places but got high-paying jobs in several big corporations as I showed my ability. I was dropped from the corp world as my mental issues forced them to remove me from the teams. Your videos mean something to me about overcoming severe issues and success! Thanks for your bright and funny vids

[@davidwatkins8016]

This woman is brilliant! To have successfully waded through the treacherous waters of academia to achieve what she has is pretty amazing. I experienced to a very minor degree these problems in the much less competitive environment of the 70's. It was by chance that I fell into a research seminar with a wonderful crew of grad students and a great professor late in my undergraduate career which exposed me to the nature of research in academia. I was fascinated by the work. However, I also saw some of the political aspects of grad school which were quite daunting and frightened me away from a career in academia. So on the advice of a high school friend who had been driven to become a physician since high school, I took the MCAT and did well having taken most of the med school pre-requisites because they interested me and fit into my major requirements. So I finished up a few prerequisites after graduation, worked in a hospital lab for a year, applied to med school, got in, and graduated. I only list his history to show how RANDOM this process of early career choice and development can be even for someone with all the advantages of early good schooling and a supportive (though clueless) upbringing. It shouldn't be this hard. We shouldn't be placing our kids in a sink or swim academic environment without mandatory counseling by mentors with the time and interest to guide them through the uncharted morass of the academy. I saw perfectly gifted individuals wash out of med school because they were dropped in water over their heads without the tools or support to succeed, and it's very sad to see things are not much better. Our children and our society deserve better.

[@DavidLindes]

So, I was trying to remember the name of Gell-Mann Amnesia earlier, because it was relevant to a discussion somewhere, and so I was looking through your videos, and realized there were a couple I hadn't watched, including this one. So now I've just watched this, and I want to just say: I love all the stuff you had to say here. I hope these ideas spread... because while I never went to uni myself, from what I can tell of it from the outside having occasionally looked in, you've identified a whole bunch of very real problems. Thanks!

[@Atomhaz]

I only have an undergrad engineering degree. I had to work full time and even though it was “white collar” IT it sometimes was 12 hour days. It really did change the college experience for me. I still consider myself incredibly lucky and blessed but I def understand your pain.

[@whatasam439]

Hi! I'm a current high school senior in Eastern KY. Its nice to see someone so academically successful despite growing up here.

[@Well_Earned_Siesta]

Fellow 1st-gen. Resonate so much with this video!

[@ellis7796]

Im starting a phd this year as a first gen student and this was so incredibly helpful. Thank you so much!!

[@Hugobros3]

It's expensive to be poor

[@cyborg555]

I just discovered your channel today and I'm really enjoying it. I just went back to this first video to see where it all started. I'm a first-generation college graduate but I never went on to grad school. Like you, I had a substandard high school education because I went to a special education school because of my physical disability. Even though I went part-time to a regular high school (not special ed) some of the courses I wanted were not available to me because they were in an inaccessible part of the building and they wouldn't/couldn't move the classes to a different classroom. I never had high school calculus so I had you do a review course of advanced algebra in college before taking calculus because I knew I couldn't compete with kids who had high school calculus. So that part of your story really resonated with me. Fortunately, I had very supportive parents and I had a free tuition grant from Vocational Rehabilitation so I didn't have the economic challenges you had. I'm looking forward to watching the rest of your videos. One bit of feedback… Your audio is very low. I have to crank up my volume all the way even with headphones on.

[@pavelandreev4727]

Angela, you are awesome! I don't really know the US academic system but from what I gather it is not great and definitely in favor of the more wealthy. But the motivation that you show and describe is just so much more valuable than money. I am currently a student (though I am a bit older) and I had the opportunity to tour the few evening schools for adults in my country for a project we were working on. I met the best teachers and students there! Most of them had dropped for reasons related to poverty but the motivation they have now to learn is unparalleled! The dedication, the teamwork, the joy of learning they have is just awe inspiring! All this is to say, that when you give disadvantaged people the chance and the possibility to advance they will not disappoint you, on the contrary, they will show you how it's done!

[@richardsmith881]

Amazing storytelling! Your intro to academia sounds incredibly hard, but somehow you succeded. And now youre using your experiences to try to make college more transparent for those who have similar goals but also have as few resources as you did going into uni. I am enjoying your videos a lot! (FYI, I received my BS in Physics at UCLA in 1980. In my freshman year, tuition for a quarter, not semesters, was $625)

[@Briannorton163]

Excellent video young lady. I had much of the same experience as you; as a first generation student, who managed somehow to find a way into grad school studying electrical enginnering. As a grad student you have to not be afraid to ask questions. Which I did not do. Kudos to you for hanging in there and having the discipline to make it work. God bless you.

[@ultravioletiris6241]

Great presentation. Thank you for sharing 👏🏿

[@matthewsinger]

I graduated from the university of idaho. Qualifying exams were determined by department, and even within my department, the structure was set by my committee with my input. Thus my exam experience wasn't even the same as my colleagues in a different lab.

[@alexmarsh8464]

That $800 story is so real. The office workers at UNC Econ are pretty good, but I’ve had some really bad experiences with other departments/schools.

[@seabecks]

I feel a lot of this, even as a third generation college student doing undergrad. I hope ppl in a position to make changes see this. ❤

[@jyk000]

I wanted to start off by saying your story is incredible and inspiring. I grew up extremely well-off internationally, and had parents who had resources and experience that helped me get into a top undergrad physics program so I was by no means in the same boat as a physics ug. However, since neither of my parents had ever thought to apply for a PhD program because of how impoverished our home country was when they were my age, I had no idea what research was or the importance of TA-ing or anything outside of attending class and kicking ass. I ended up doubling in CS as well, and when it came to senior year and realized I had zero prospects for Physics PhD programs (despite being a top student grades-wise) and would have to go into industry as a software engineer. Similarly, I spent my first year in industry (during covid) feeling like I wasn’t done with Physics and applied for a Master’s program in CS to get at least some foot in the door to continue my physics education and potentially enter a PhD program in a few years, and that’s where I am now. Luckily, I was able to reach out to some professors who had liked me (but I hadn’t actively connected and networked with with the intention to get letters from) and got a crash course in the grad school application process. I’m now a year into a great part-time CS master’s program while working as a full-time software engineer and starting research this upcoming semester in a physics-tangential field (weighing two groups, one in Quantum Computing and another in Computer Vision). Anyways, this is a long-winded way to say, I appreciated this video because it made me feel heard. Despite coming from a place of extreme privilege, I was still effectively a first-gen grad student, and your video inspires me and gives me hope that I’ll find my way back to Physics one day. Your string theory video popped up on my recs randomly one day and I really wish these videos had been around 5 years ago when I was an undergrad, so I know some other kid in my shoes somewhere is 100% benefiting from this. PS Another issue with attending international high school and an “elite” undergraduate program in america is that many students have entered their undergrad with AP credits. So, despite having taken IB HL Math in Asia and knowing Calc 1-3, I was forced to take Calc 2 my first semester, which was a prereq for all physics classes, which meant i was a full year behind my equally qualified peers. (Also, it took about a year to understand what Calc “1” or “3” was because, surprise, those are only really used in america).

[@katelikesrectangles]

another amazing listen, thank you so much

[@charlee7818]

I'm a junior college student, and I was really excited when I found out that the money I get for having been in foster care will make getting more education than anyone I've ever known actually financially accessible, and I've been told by some counselors and professors that with my "potential" I should get "at least" a masters degree, but the more I find out about higher education the more I feel like it just isn't something I can do, even with the financial aid. I'm lucky enough to still be able to live with my grandparents, but they're well beyond retirement age and I'll need to start making better money to help them a lot sooner than I could get a master's in physics. Because of that I had changed my major to English since I like it well enough but honestly I think all the time about how much easier our lives would be if I had just started a welding program or something instead of going to college when I started. I'm already so tired of being a tutor and a fast food worker and taking classes at the same time. The fact that there are people like you, who didn't even have the support that I had, who still pursue it despite ALL these barriers is just crazy to me. People ask why there aren't more first generation college students getting phds, more poc and poor college students pursuing phds, but if THIS is how things are, I don't understand how there can be any at all.

[@nada3131]

Incredible that you worked full time while doing a physics degree in undergrad (and got good enough grades to go to grad school!?). I wish no one had to do that, but I commend you on your perseverance and grit.

[@Fishtory]

I can sympathizer 100%. Thank you for bringing this up! Honestly i resorted to growing ... plants.... to be able to dual major while my classes were under limited academic scholarships

[@okofreak01]

Omg I never thought of this as a systemic problem! Props to you for actually being the first one in your family to go into academia.

[@201950201950]

I was listening to your video it brought back so many sad memories. I had to share this with my daughter. She has a much better chance of making it than me. I couldn't even earn my bachelor's degree. I worked a lot and I felt lost. Justin Long's character in the movie "Accepted "There is a scene where students are rushing to class and he is caught in the huge tide of people it overwhelms him. It felt just like that. I was always trailing. I couldn't keep up. I think that this will help her out. Thanks for your video

[@e0478]

What an incredible story. Way to go.

[@fernandososterbortolotto7315]

Good video. This is my second post in your comment section. Thanks for offering your sincere thoughts on academia and more introspectively, the struggle with how to study in each level of education. And in between that you also pointed how first time graduates might have a better time management skill, when dealing with the procrastination issue in studies. Good job!

[@davem4316]

I think the whole Internet is proud of you for what you achieved. A lot of people watch content from people like you because people like you made it further in a direction they wanted to go than they did. That's true of lots of celebrity culture, like watching the rich live because you wanted that kind of life for yourself. Experiencing success at something only para socially. The majority of people for the last 150 years grow up internalizing some form of desire to be book smart themselves. It's instilled from an early age. The system we have doesn't have room for the ambition of the many it has responsibility for. I went to a stem highschool. I wanted to be in academia when I was a teenager. I had a 0.07 gpa at one point, which is probably the coolest score I ever achieved. I dropped out as soon as that didn't require someone else's signature. It's probably better you got to advance than someone like me. I seem to have been physically created for the painful unskilled manual labor I have done like your McDonald's job since my separation from the Borg training pod, and if it wasn't for old age and mortality I don't see how it would ever be preferable to put a shovel or a mop or manure or coal on your shoulders instead of wanting to do it myself for eternity simply to spare the more capable the drudgery of the work that requires the least ability. If we did live in a society that pushed people like me into big science instead of people like you, I have no doubt the people like me would have incinerated this entire planet with a very energetic device a long time ago, so it's probably for the best the space Lazer robot dreams of my infantile mind were composted in favor of creatures with prettier mental imagery they dare convey. At least I could pretend the abject failure of worthless idiots like myself who should rightfully be utterly annihilated from the multiverse in as many matter-antimatter pair collisions as it takes to prevent any version of me from ever being capable of having ever existed in any set of stable constants that could support anthropic awareness of any reality that could exist (no excuse for bad grades)... at least since people like me were not advancing through the system, maybe some of the places you got opportunities to advance were available and there you are. If you had avoided reading this comment all the way to this line, you'd be somewhere better by now. Anyway the science fandom is almost all people who wanted to get where you went. I think you worked hard enough to deserve it, and I agree with my patron deity that I didn't put in the work to earn my death ray.

[@cooperfinnigan9577]

Just wanted to say a few things: I started my PhD (in Australia) in condensed matter theory like literally 2 weeks ago as the first person in my family to go to university, and the amount of things in here that were so unbelievably relatable was pretty fucking high. A lot of your content is really helpful and enjoyable to ECRs and grad students I think. Thanks heaps!

[@DanPFS]

So I appreciate that this video is a few years old, and sure some of this stuff is quite US-centric, but boy was my experience very similar here in Australia. This stuff is never talked about enough.

[@nixon5452]

Thanks for the advice.. Wish I'd seen this FIVE YEARS AGO

[@icedirt9658]

Same

[@mmlvx]

That table at 23:20 tells quite a story. 1% of the US population has a PhD. 22% of PhDs had at least one parent with a PhD. On one hand, it's natural for children to go into the family business, whatever it happens to be. But I don't think this is how the education system is supposed to work.

[@elizavetabelova6525]

I don’t share a negative notion about this statistics. If 22% of professors have at least one parent with a PhD, it means that 78% of professors don’t have a parent with a PhD degree, which means the majority of professors don’t have a parent with the same level of education. This is quite uplifting in my opinion.

[@thepapschmearmd]

Its crazier for physicians. We make up 0.29% of the US population and 20% of physicians have a parent who is a physician.

[@rosebecerra8252]

Yeah that’s why im always so proud of my dad for being the first in our family to have a PhD. He’s one of few ppl in US who has a PhD I mean 1% is crazy! But also because I grew up with him having a PhD being normal, it’s something I’ve always considered doing as well. It just seems feasible because ik he’s done it and if he can do it, I certainly can as well.

[@Andy-vz8mx]

After two and a half years of applying, I just got accepted to a PhD program in physics. I will be the first member of my entire extended family to attend grad school to study anything other than education. My undergrad institution is a small liberal arts college with no grad students and basically no research going on. I don't know what I don't know, and I asked many of my undergrad professors what to expect, but it's still impossible for me to know how things work. One the one hand, it's good to know that I am not alone, and there are (some) others like me. One the other hand I am terrified.

[@honeybhingful]

Finally caught up in watching all your videos, Dr. Angela! I saved this one for last because I'm considering graduate school next year. (I have a slew of other matters to take care of. Let's just say the lockdown really hadn't left my body, even if the world already started not to care anymore.) I wasn't a very good undergrad. It took me six years just to finish my degree in pre-med. Although I'm not a grad student at the moment, I'm very thankful you made this video. It gives me confidence to focus on unspoken academic expectations, which I don't think my professors then were equipped to handle, as well as my lax attitude back then of just passing through college. We don't have a strong research culture in my country [The Philippines], so you could say almost everyone who takes up masters or PhD here are first-generation. In my family, my mother completed her Masters for 8 years, at the age of almost 60 just before pandemic. My cousin is taking his second attempt for Masters, while his wife recently dropped out. If ever I do apply for grad school, I'm technically considered "continuing-generation". But your video essay makes me hopeful about my future. Looking forward to that antimatter spacecraft explainer! I might go back to it by 2025 😄

[@emilyrln]

This was really eye-opening!

[@chasemaston5546]

Thank you so much for this video, I'm reapplying for grad school this year and have no family members that have done it. I still feel like I learn a ton about the process every time I talk to my friends in grad school. Also go Appalachian academics!

[@samsun216]

You're a really good person. Thanks!

[@eggrat6]

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I'm a first gen undergrad in my late 20s. Now that I'm getting ready to apply to grad school, I've been overwhelmed with feeling like I'm clueless and like pursuing a doctorate isn't an opportunity meant for people like me, poor and without the safety net of their family. It really helps to hear the stories of others who have overcome that.

[@FractaLL2103]

Not my call, but why a Phd? Im nearly finished my undergrad and have considered a masters only because I am getting no bites for jobs and wanna beef up the resume because I dont know what else to do. I have considered that going to school for the sake of it is not the worst thing you could do with your life, but is it the best?

[@eggrat6]

@@FractaLL2103 I want to teach college. I would be qualified with a master's degree at community colleges, but the pay is much lower, and I'm afraid I wouldn't be a competitive applicant and get stuck being an adjunct. A doctorate would also qualify me to teach at more institutions. I think going to school for the sake of it is fantastic, but only if you can afford it. I would not be pursuing a graduate degree if it wasn't necessary for my career path, even though I love being a student. As far as not getting responses... I know it's cliche, but unless you are going down a trajectory like mine, I think networking and relevant experience are way more important than education. That's the trend that has stood out to me from the people I know who have struggled the most to find jobs after graduating. Have you reached out to your school's resources to get advice? If you have a career center, they might be able to help you or connect you with programs that offer things like alumni advising.

[@baomao7243]

Glad you powered through. Both a sprint and also a marathon. 👍 I definitely didn’t have your slog … but i remember deep into Ph.D. EE, i remember feeling VERY alone. Nobody i knew had gotten a Ph.D. In the days leading up to my Ph.D. defense I remember feeling like a lone pilot with just a single bomb flying a night binning mission deep into hostile territory. I remember feeling alone and far out over the ocean with “nowhere to eject.” I felt “I either hit the target…or I am dead,” and “i’ve gone so far there is no turning back now.” Glad i hit the target, But for like 5 yrs afterward i almost felt it gave me PTSD.

[@Erowens98]

Im not a first generation. My dad has a PhD, however i have had much the same experience as you. Due to the combined factor of me not being close to my dad, me going to college when I was 24, and us being an immigrant family (USA to Finland). I found the hardest part was no support from my peers. I never had a "study buddy". I was always alone, having to figure everything out myself rather than working through the homework problems with a group. I was treated differently by other student, never part of the group.

[@chrisdolan9515]

Best advice of all is to offer a measure of grace. It works wonders in all areas of life.

[@andrewhone3346]

Great talk, and your impressive trajectory is commendable. A lot of the specific issues for 1st generation students are very particular to the US context, but the general advice on things that can be done to improve the 1st gen experience is very broadly relevant to PhD training everywhere.

[@IngVasiu]

Angela, your journey to academia is really inspiring. I feel the part of coming from a poor family and region. I also have been a 1st gen student in Estonia but I never noticed that it could influence my studies.

[@7seasaw]

Jackson E and M was the end of me--the chapter with the spherical harmonics