Class Dismissed
*Names changed for privacy
The title of this Medium story is the same title of my senior thesis paper at Cal when I graduated a decade ago. I was feeling nostalgic recently and found it buried in my Gmail.
Today, sitting in my cozy California King bed with Eight Sleep mattress that delicately controls hot and cool temperature from my phone and monitors resting heart rate as I sleep, I’m reminded of one of the most uncomfortable times in my life — college.
Earlier, between work and taking my kids to an early learning class, I was texting a mentor of mine. She’s a wonderful woman and board member of a life-changing education nonprofit. We caught up about a college student, we’ll call him Brad*. I learned of Brad a few months ago, when he ghosted my call. As a busy person and mom of two little children I was somewhat annoyed. But quickly my annoyance shifted to sadness.
I was calling Brad to offer any job, school or career advice since I had been in a similar position not long ago. Due to mental health challenges and failing grades, Brad was kicked out of college and struggling to find his way. Similar to my story, he’s a low-income, student of color attempting at making a dream life and change social injustice through bettering himself. He’s at my alma mater, but unlike me he’s a coding star and has worked on software-enhanced canes for blind individuals.
As someone who works in one of the most privileged and bougie of industries (tech), as a college graduate that is married and healthy, I have gratitude daily and tremendous empathy for students like Brad who are intelligent and full of potential, but are ashamed and demoralized by the stigmas of society — stigmas that define success by money or prestige by college or company name on a resume.
For my senior thesis I wrote about Brad, in kind though not explicitly. My thirty-five pager was evidence that I could get away with watching TV for a whole semester and pass, or embody the saying “C’s get degrees.” My major was American Studies, which is a fancy way of saying Interdisciplinary Studies, which is a fancy way of saying “design your own plate” at the buffet of life choices and subjects. I decided to mix Business with Sociology and call it Social Entrepreneurship, undoubtedly nodding to my love for community service and hustle in high school. I also was intentional about taking any and all business classes in the Human Resources vein, so as to avoid any more Economics and Calculus classes required for the highly competitive Business Major, that I failed stupendously.
In the thesis required to graduate, I wrote pages and pages about the idea of the misfit and how our society’s conception of an outsider is not only skewed but so subjective. I wrote and took scenes from Glee, the musical dramedy series about high school students that sing covers of new and old popular music. At first, I thought it was a clever way to just sit on YouTube all day and watch clips of Lea Michele belting out Adele songs while looking like I was doing homework.
In the end, it was my own projections of insecurity and loss. It was an assignment turned mirror into my own doubts and lack of confidence as I moved through a world in which I’d soon be earning an income and making real and big life choices of my own, choices much bigger than picking what to major in.
Again, I’m reminded of our main character Brad, who I hope to try and call this week. He’s in a tough spot, and I know more than I’d like to share because I was there. He’s clinging on to hope and friendship and any semblance of strength to get through school and feel like he’s not a failure. What he doesn’t realize though, that I might try to tell him, is that he’s already an inspiration. He’s already unintentionally subverting a system of education and privilege and convention that has put our world in an uneven balance of have and have nots.
He’s learning more in this experience than he could in any class, any lecture.
If you’d like to join me in sending him some money for food while he continues to work his ass off like I’m sure he is, kindly send it to me at @ Dani-Dugan on Venmo. I’ll send him a loving note and let him know we are all rooting for him.
