“You Can Work At Mcdonald’S For The Rest Of Your Life And

Earning an education could cost you for your entire life, especially if you do not apply for the various types of financial aid. After earning their degree, several students do not earn enough money with the field they have chosen to pay off their debt, making the degree seem pointless. Families that pay for their children’s tuition often wonder, like Linda Lee, if their child is getting what they pay for. Parents pay for the tuition because they do not want their children to miss out on the “college experience.” However, when their child fails to make the right decisions or simply acts their age, it leaves the family wondering if they have made a

From a very early age, I always assumed it was a part of my future to pursue an education. The American educational system engraves the importance of school at a very young age. Elementary school children are motivated through rewards when they try their hardest to reach their goals. Students are exposed to statistics and facts outlining the consequences of not getting a college degree as soon as they reach middle school. High school counselors and staff make it their priority to ensure that students apply to college. Students are conditioned to believe that education is the building block to a successful future. My cultural upbringing did not support my choice to pursue an education, however, I refused to conform to my family’s behavioral expectations because certain norms must be challenged due to progressive time periods and conflicting values.

Being born of 2 immigrant parents, who work menial jobs and have no education has always had its weight on me. Neither one of my parents are high school graduates and no one in my family has obtained a collegiate education. I have been able to experience first hand how difficult a life with no education is. I recall other students sharing how their parents provided aid with their homework and read to them, knowing I did not get to experience that made me gloomy. I had no other choice but to learn everything on my own and then attempt to teach my parents. This peculiar lifestyle has pushed me harder in academics and has given me a genuine appreciation for the value of an education.

. In the article “Public College Boosting Aid to Wealthy as Poor Are Left Behind,” by Marian Wand, the author shares a story of little girl, Shauniqua Epps, she is 19 years old. Epps family lives in subsidized housing in South Philadelphia. Epps’ father died when she was in the third grade, her mother lives on social security which provides $698 a month. She has a good GPA and is also good in sports. She applied for three colleges for higher education, but none of the colleges provided financial aid to her. She did not go to any of the colleges because she could not afford the tuition. No one in family can support her because Epps’ mother does not have enough knowledge to encourage her. This proves that the students from low socio-economic background were not encouraged by their

When I was a freshman in high school, my parents sat me down in the living room and told me that if I wanted to go to college, I’d have to pay for it myself. Our financial difficulties were large enough to merit the statement. My step-dad was hardly able to work anymore because of health problems from a career in manufacturing. My mom also suffered in the over-saturated market for dental hygienists in Mesa—she was recently fired from a corporate office for refusing to sell unnecessary treatments to patients, and could only find a job in an office run by an abusive dentist who screamed at his employees and who even threw a computer at an assistant at one point. My mom needed to leave the office, but nobody knew if she would find work anywhere

Growing up a Caucasian, upper-middle-class child in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I remember feeling perplexed every time I visited my neighborhood grocery store. While the groceries in one part of the store served a demographic population similar to my own, the other items catered to the low-income, predominately African-American population located in the adjacent neighborhood. My grocery store mirrored the demographic make-up of my city, yet was not reflected in my educational trajectory. My parents, like many financially secure families in my area, sent me to a private college-preparatory school to escape the deficiencies of the public school system in East Baton Rouge Parish. While white

Everyone knows there's a lot of responsibility that comes with being a first generation student that plans to go and get a college education/degree whose family comes from a foreign country. People do not understand why I feel I have so much of a responsibility on my shoulders. However I now understand why there is so much responsibility that comes with being a first generation student that plans to go and get a college education/degree with family from a foreign country, thanks to my grandmother’s wise words. She said “ being a first generation student that plans to go and get a college education/degree with family from a foreign country isn’t about your success, it's about the success you bring to the family name, the pride you bring to the family/country and moreover the success you bring will represent your parents hard work has truly paid off”, at the time she said this I was only 12 years old so I didn't quite understand what she meant but it has stuck in my mind ever since. Now that I’m more mature I understand what she meant. I believe that my success or failure is no longer just benefiting or hurting me, if I fail that means I fail my family and my people and that is why going to college is so important to me. In this paper I’m going to write about what high standards mean to me, my goals, activities I’m involved in

Often times we seek motivation from those that are more successful than us. We put them on a pedestal and aspire to one day be a role model for younger generations after us. What we fail to acknowledge however is the time and hard work they put in before us. We overlook their journey and therefore miss details that could play a major impact on our path to success. Details such as their upbringing, social class, and education are things we should take a closer peek at when comparing their lives to ours. In her book Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, Annette Lareau follows Caucasian and African American subjects from poor, working, and middle class families to understand the influence of socioeconomic class and race on adolescents raised in various households. After studying her subjects over the course of several years in their homes, schools, and extracurricular activities, she comes to conclude the greater influence socioeconomic class has on the skills acquired by children during their childhood.

After listening to my father's experiences as a child from a family with no college graduates, I have always placed my academic success above everything else. My grandparents worked from morning to night to have food on the table. They made countless sacrifices to provide a better lifestyle for their two boys. My father moved from Mobile, Alabama to Hammond, Louisiana his senior year of high school due to my grandfather's job. Although he resented his parents for a while, he quickly realized it had to be done. Paw Paw was forced to drop out of high school when he was in the tenth grade to help provide for family, which consisted of fourteen children and his single mother. Therefore, he couldn't take the risk of losing his job due to his lack

Kathleen Blanco, the 54th governor of the U.S. state of Louisiana, once pointed out that “ Every educated person is not rich, but almost every education person has a job and a way out of poverty. So education is a fundamental solution to poverty.” It is almost gratuitous to say that everyone desires a higher education. And why not? It is perhaps the best way to avoid a life of poverty; a life in which one must struggle to meet the basic necessities of life. Unfortunately, not everyone has the opportunity to receive a higher education, especially students living in poverty, who are often forced to live on a day-to-day basis, let alone even think about school. Poverty deprives these students the quality education they are entitled to, thus inhibiting their potential for future success. This predicament has contributed to a widening racial wealth gap that is not only a threat to the individual’s themselves and the economy, but also a significant threat to upward mobility, which is defined as the ability of an individual to climb up the socioeconomic ladder. One particular factor that has and continues to contribute to this widening racial wealth gap is the lack of a college education among these low-income students. More importantly, this lack of college education is the direct result of a poor-quality K-12 education, especially in poverty-stricken neighborhoods. To mitigate the prevalent racial wealth gap, each

She essentially claims that fifty years after the arduous success of the Civil Rights Movement, social class has widened the gap propelled by racial division that had slowly began to correct itself in the American society. Garland also presents statistical information generated by prominent universities throughout the United States, and reflects such data through the example of two socio-economically and racially different families and the extent to which their earnings can enlighten the path of their children, representing the low and high ends of the income spectrum. As one of her final points, she analyses possible solutions revolving around the process of closing the gap preventing low-income children from merging with high-income children and the opportunities that the latter are privileged with, mentioning the lack of political activism and social consciousness towards the magnitude of such conflict affecting both parents and children’s expectations of learning and

Education is the key to success and without it you will not have a future. That is embedded in my brain. As a teenager you listen to your parents nag on you all the time about school and just think it’s easier said than done. But for me I lived through paradigm, my mom went back to school while raising us and working two jobs. She graduated from ASU with a 4.0 GPA and was honored and on the news because of all she’s done and went through in her lifetime. I have a difficult enough time doing my homework and going to basketball training. My mother went to school full-time, had two jobs, cooked for us, cleaned, paid bills, went to our games and still managed to get a 4.0. She always tells us if I can do it you can. Nothing in life comes easy you have to work for it, then you will be a success, if it is just given to you then you will never recognize the value of it.

To begin with, school has always been like an annoying chore for me, just as it was for my father. For one thing, I can’t stand waking up early, I find the arbitrary rules ridiculous, and I don’t recognize a point in homework when the class already spends hours in school doing already doing the work. In fact, even when I was a child school was just as awful. Certainly the chances are that if it wasn’t for my mother, I wouldn’t bother trying to earn a spot in a college and maybe even bothering to finish high school. Frequently my mother is one of the constant reminders that keeps me going. My mother has tried to be like an alarm clock for me, always making sure I wake up. Whereas there’s my father who’s life after he dropped out of school showed

Up to last December, I had no academic goals, leave alone any plan for my future. It was not that I chose to neglect privileges, I did not care because higher education was never a theme of discussion for my family. In fact, my parents and I rarely have a conversation.

Education has always been a primary concern for my parents. They taught me that if I need to succeed in life, I have to be educated. Following their guide, I have always valued and tried to get the most of any educational opportunity I have had in my life. Being a child in a business family, I have always been interested in focusing my career in the business field. My Mother and Father both own their own companies, they are constantly talking about business, and this has inspired me to pursue a life of business. My parents have owned their companies for over twenty years, and when they retire, they want me to continue running the family business. For this reason, I decided to pursue my studies in the field of Business and Leadership at