Dalina Phomphengchane

Jasmine Hilton
Thu, 30 Apr 2020 02:31:33 +0000
Hilton-SP2020

Dalina Phomphengchane, a second-year in strategic communication, took her experiences as a first-generation college student and became a founding member of Buckeyes First, a student organization created to provide first-generation students with resources and community. As someone who navigated the college application process and financial aid on her own, Phomphengchane recognizes the challenge of that experience firsthand.

“Being first-gen to me means being ‘first.’ It’s kind of like being first in a race or being first in a competition. You’re the first in your family to take that step into higher education and paving the way for future members of your family.”

“In my family, education was always a huge priority because my parents valued higher education as a gateway to better opportunities.”

“My school was a small, private Christian school. My family wasn’t Christian. It’s just that my parents are immigrants from a small country called Laos, and over there, private school education is better. So, they sent me there because it was a private school.”

“You had to pay tuition, and we didn’t have a comfortable financial background. We would struggle to meet the monthly payments for tuition every month.”

“I think it was either my freshman year or my eighth-grade year. My school wouldn’t give you your class schedule if you didn’t pay your tuition on time. I didn’t know my parents didn’t pay, so I got there and they’re like, ‘Oh, you can’t have your schedule. It’s on hold.’ and I was just like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what to do.’ I was completely worried that I couldn’t start school on time because my parents didn’t pay for it.”

“At the time, because I was young, I was angry at my parents. Looking back on it now that I’m older, I shouldn’t have done that. I should have been more understanding because we didn’t have money.”

“It was a special case for me to be a lower-income student placed in a private school area, where mostly everybody around you was not lower income. My parents worked super long hours to make sure I had what I needed or what I wanted in order to fit in and assimilate with the culture that was going on around where I’m from.”

“I felt very alone because everybody else wasn’t first-gen. Everybody knew what they were doing and their parents knew what they were doing, and my parents didn’t know anything about the application process at all. It was an unknown territory for all of us.”

“A lot of it was just like how to apply for college or what colleges to even look at because I couldn’t ask my parents anything about it. FAFSA was the biggest part. I had to do that all by myself.”

“A lot of times, people with privilege don’t know how lucky they are or how normal it is for them to know what they’re doing, and how unnormal it seems for us to know what they’re doing. I feel like a lot of people with privilege take their schooling for granted. They don’t have to worry about their grades slipping that they might lose their scholarship. They don’t have to worry about future debts or making sure they have their tuition payment on time. They can not show up to class, but then if we don’t show up to class, that’s money lost. That’s another skill we’ve lost or an opportunity for us to be better for ourselves.”

“My experience is not trying to make anyone feel bad for coming from a better place. I just want them to know that there are people struggling.”

“If resources aren’t given to us, I feel like there’s going to be a sense of hopelessness that we’re never going to be able to move out from the spot that we’re in.”

“I always imagine a future where my kids don’t struggle as much as my family did, or I don’t have to work as hard as my parents did to provide for my kids.”