“What
is the value of going to college?” “Is
another four years of school really worth the time and money?” “Why don’t I just get a job after high school
and start living my life?” “But all my
friends and family are here.” “Some of my
friends think it is not masculine to go to college.” These are all thoughts and questions that
went through my and my friends’ minds during our senior year in high school, as
we were trying to figure out whether or not we should go to college. At that time in our lives our minds were
focused on the next big game and what we were going to do the next Friday
night. Coming from a small town in Maine
it seemed as though that is all that mattered in the whole world. In that environment everyone knows everything
about everyone in the town. Everyone knew who was dating whom, who broke up
with whom, and what notorious high school scandal was happening at that time.
At one time, my high school was
very large and was nestled in a town that once boasted one of the largest shoe
companies in the state of Maine. During
that time it was understood among all of the students in the high school that
when you graduated, you would trade in your high school diploma for a position
at the shoe shop. A lot of my friends’
parents worked at the shoe shop and had actually graduated from my high school.
In this town that was the norm, but that
all changed when the shoe shop closed its doors.
When the doors closed at the shoe
shop everything seemed to change. The
town shrunk by a considerable amount, which ultimately made the high school
shrink as well. Now the students in my
high school did not have a definitive answer of what they should do after they
graduated. This began to make myself and
a lot of my friends question what it was that we should do when we graduated. My family did not have much experience with
going to college, but always instilled in me that I would be going no mater
what. I had the fortune of having a
family that would support me through school and really pushed me into attending
college. A lot of my friends were not as
lucky and because of that it seemed that they made college out to be a less
masculine choice. Their choice instead
was to get a job right out of high school and that’s what many of them did. They stayed with their “high school
sweetheart” and kept the job that they had had all throughout high school.
This is why some of my friends and
I struggled with making the choice to go to college after we graduated. We were all experiencing many different
external forces, some good and some bad. These forces were influencing the decisions
that we would make for our future. The
friends that I had that were planning to stay in town were those that were the
stereotypical rural town boys. These
guys worked on their trucks and rode their four-wheelers as much as possible
yet were some of the smartest kids that I knew. For a lot of them school came naturally. They were brilliant students and only if they
had applied themselves would have been able to attend any college that they
would ever want. For some reason though
college was not appealing to them and during that time I really did not wonder
why that was the case. Looking back now
I can slightly understand why that would have been the case. They were experiencing negative external
forces that seemed to be holding back their potential.
As a graduate student in Higher
Education at the University of Maine, I now realize that these friends all
experienced external forces that included; negative stereotypes towards
attending college, low socioeconomic status pressures, pressure from
significant others, and the feeling that they needed to help support their
parents in some way, shape, or form. As Baxter Magolda (2009) suggests,
following external formulas is a way that students can make decisions about who
they are going to be, what they are going to accomplish in their lives, and in
order to develop their own identity students must experience a period of
crossroads in order to get to a self-authorship stage. Yet for these students they were following these
external formulas and at that point in their lives, not able to experience
crossroads to make the decision to attend college. This is not to say that these students did not
experience self-authorship in their own way. I am simply stating in their experience they
eventually went through a crossroads and began to display self-authorship, but
for them this was not in the college setting. Also, Brian D. Reed (2011)
suggests that students that are of low socioeconomic status have lower
educational aspirations and accept the fact that they will be a marginalized
group within society. These students
that may have less contact with positive higher education role models do not
want to aspire to attend a higher education institution. So the question remains, how do we as higher
education professionals convince students that have the potential to attend a higher
education institution, make the choice to go to college after they graduate?
In my high school we had teachers
and guidance counselors that would tell us that we needed to get out of this
town and ultimately out of the state of Maine. For some of my friends that was a very
appealing concept and they felt as though in order to do well they would need
to get out of here as fast as possible. I
think this is an interesting concept when advising students in what they should
do after they graduate. It makes
students feel as though in order to be successful they must leave the state
that they know and love. However, for
people that have deep roots to their family like myself, that seems like an
option that is not worth the time and the money. At that time these students want to attend a
college where they can be far enough away to not have to go home every weekend,
but close enough that they can if they really need to spend time with their family.
Also, as Arnett (2011) suggests
the students that would make the choice to stay in my hometown may not have the
opportunity to experience a phenomenon called emerging adulthood. Simply put, these students would ultimately
go from experiencing adolescence to experiencing a state of young
adulthood. That being said, they may
miss the opportunity of experiencing the identity development that students in
the college setting have in exploration, experimentation, and finally realizing
just who exactly they would be in their adult life.
Now there are many different TV
shows and movies that may place college life in a negative light. These include TV shows such as “Greek”
(Piller & Segan, 2009) and “Glory Daze” (Becker & LeSieur, 2010), and
movies such as “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (Reitman, Simmons &
Landis, 1978), “American Pie Presents Beta House” (Border & Waller, 2007),
and “Old School” (Medjuck, Goldberg, Reitman & Phillips, 2003). These TV
shows and movies provide insight into the crazy life that college may
inspire. It seems as though because of
these different media outlets, this may impact students in high school to make
the choice to not attend college because it seems like a waste of time. However, this could be farther from the point
of what the college experience can be for students from rural towns.
As a student from a rural town in
Maine I can say that the experience that I had in my undergraduate career was
both enlightening and fulfilling. I
gained insight into other cultures and backgrounds as well as learned a lot
about who I am as a person. I found long
lasting friends that I would not have found if I did not attend a higher
education institution. A movie that
really emulates the experience that one can find in college is “Monsters
University” (Rae & Scanlon, 2013).
Although this creative Disney and Pixar movie is fun for all ages, it
really touches upon how students at a higher education institution can find
lifelong friends and really find out who they really are during their time in
college. This is the kind of experience
that I wish my friends in high school who decided to go into the work force
right after high school had had.
As higher education and student affairs
professionals, I think that it is our job to encourage students that have the
academic potential in high school to pursue a degree from a higher education
institution. Not only for the academic
opportunities, but also for the life-long experience that they will gain from
being in an environment where they can establish their own identity. Students in our high schools need to be
encouraged to go to college and experience what Arnett (2011) suggests as
emerging adulthood. In order to do this
we as higher education professionals should create and maintain programs with
local high schools that provide positive insight about what the college
experience truly entails. These programs
could be summer bridge programs that bring high school students to our college
campuses and provide them with the opportunity to take classes towards their
college degree while they are still in high school.
Finally, with a younger brother
that is attending the same high school that I graduated from, I personally find
it important to make sure that he and his friends understand the benefits of
attending a higher education institution. I want them to realize that there is
a way to be able to pursue and obtain a college degree while still being able
to maintain those deep roots to a rural town, and the family that they may
leave behind. In order to break down the
negative stereotypes of college we as higher education professionals should
work personally with students from rural towns and provide them with the
knowledge of what college life really entails through a fun and fulfilling high
school developmental experience, so they too can have the opportunity to find
life-long friends and establish their own identity for the rest of their lives.
References:
Arnett,
J. J. (2011). Emerging adulthood: A
theory of development from the late teens through
the twenties. In M. Wilson (Ed.), ASHE reader on student development theory (2nd ed.,
pp 149-164). Boston, MA: Pearson Publishing.
Baxter
Magolda, M. B. (2009). The activity of meaning making: a holistic perspective
on college
student development. In M. Wilson
(Ed.), ASHE reader on student development
theory
(2nd ed., pp 37-53). Boston, MA:
Pearson Publishing.
Becker,
W. & LeSieur, M. (Producers).(2010). Glory
Daze. [Television Series]. Pasadena, CA:
TBS.
Border,
W. K. (Producer). Waller, A. (Director). (2007). American Pie Presents Beta House.
[Motion Picture]. Toronto, ON.
Universal Pictures.
Medjuck,
J., Goldberg, D., Phillips, T., & Reitman I. (Producers). Phillips, T. (Director).
(2003).
Old
School. [Motion
Picture]. Los Angeles, CA: The Montecito Picture Company.
Piller,
S. & Segan L. (Producers) (2007). Greek.
[Television Series]. Los Angeles, CA: Walt
Disney Studios Home
Entertainment.
Rae,
K. (Producer). Scanlon, D. (Director). (2013). Monsters University [Motion Picture] Burbank, CA, and Emeryville, CA: Walt Disney Pictures. Pixar
Animation Studios.
Reed, B. D. (2011).
Socio-economic and work identity intersection with masculinity and college
success. In J. Laker & T. Davis (Eds.), Masculinities in higher
education: Theoretical and practical considerations. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Reitman,
I. & Simmons, M. (Producers), Landis, J. (Director). (1978). National Lampoon’s
Animal
House [Motion
Picture]. Eugene, OR: Universal Pictures.
Joshua L. Stanhope is a first year graduate student in the Student Development in Higher
Education program at the University of Maine. He also serves as the graduate assistant for New
Student Programs at UMaine. You can connect with him on Twitter @jstanhope17
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