Hearing my Fears

We had our second orientation today and were accepted into the program with open arms and welcoming smiles. First we met our social mentor, professors, who we could talk too about our progress through the McNair Program and to have as another resource to ask questions and reflect on our experience. They told each of us their life stories; the choices they had made that had led them to graduate school, and who had helped them on the way. In each story I saw little aspects of myself when they felt alone, unsure, when they met great mentors, and made life changing choices. There is one mentor that had one similar experience that deeply affected me because it reminded me of myself. He said that his father had never attended college, he had a blue collar job working for IBM, but when he was asked in college what his parents did for a living he said that his father worked at IBM because it was a safe answer. Most of his peers had parents who graduated from college and he did not know how his friends would react if they knew his parents did not have a college education. I knew exactly how he felt. It was scary to hear someone speak of a fear so similar to my own the fear that people would find out that you are different, poorer, low status, and believe you are less qualified.
It is hard to explain my feelings because I am confused. I am both proud of my family but embarrassed. I am embarrassed when I have to admit that neither of my parents attended college because I feel that people judge me and believe that my family isn’t intelligent and secretly wondering how I had turned out so smart when my parents were not. This frustrates me very much because I do not believe that my parents are unintelligent. I feel the need to defend them from the assumptions of others. A college degree does not make you a wonderful person, money earned from a good job does not give you a life rich with happiness, and a higher education does not make you a better parent. I imagine that my parents could have chosen to attend college and human services or sports management but that with or without a degree they have made me who I am and I would not change my family for the world.
My parents are very smart and they have given all of their children a chance to attend college. An opportunity they had never been given themselves. The encouragement and support that they did not have when graduating from high school was the gift they gave to me. They wanted to make a better future for their children and they have. My two older brothers, twin sister, younger brother and I are all attending and graduating for college.
My parents are not college graduates that is true but that does not make them less intelligent people or less affectionate parents. My parents have taught me some of the most important lessons in my life. To appreciate and thank the people who help me and to help others; how to be strong, to love, to be accepting, kind, friendly, caring, to work hard and never give up, that life is not always fair but things happen for a reason, when god closes a door he opens a window, and that no matter what path I choose in life they will always stand behind me.