By Angelica Hartgers
Consider this: 74 percent of Texas A&M-San Antonio students are first in their family to attend college. That means there’s a handful of people in your classroom who understand what it means to be in your shoes.
I’ve experienced firsthand how considerate fellow students can be within our community.
Although my mom is attending community college and my father attended a technical college, I’m the first in my immediate family to have attended a university. I can’t ask my parents to proofread my research papers or to help me analyze a poem, but I can reach out to my schoolmates.
As students, we can continue to pull together as a campus community to support each other and offer a helping hand where we see fit. We need to strengthen this support and realize that we can be on both the giving and receiving end. When we help each other, we are helping ourselves and our campus.
Though we’re receiving an education at the same institution, we students come from diverse family backgrounds.
Many students live at home; able to rely on financial support and family members who are willing to read over term papers and offer the best help they can. But, there are just as many of us who come from families who, for a variety of reasons, are unprepared to help. For those students, classmates are helping to pave the way towards graduation.
While faculty set time aside to assist students with their academic needs, we can’t always expect them to take time away from their own workload in order to address some of the additional help we may need — help with the new Pharos copying system, trouble with logins, email, directions to a satellite campus, a staff member’s office location, course recommendations, difficulties with research, writing and so on.
Faculty members are giving us the tools to build stronger peer-led learning communities.
Take for instance the tutoring initiative announced this week by English professors Ann Bliss and Kate Gillen to organize a peer-led tutoring center, open 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m. in Room 352 of Main Campus Building. Students are encouraged to make appointments with undergraduate tutors for writing assistance. For more information, call 210-784-1329 or visit the office of student life and wellness.
There’s a long list of resources out there that prove how first-generation students are helping one another. The book “First in the Family: Your College Years” begins: “The relationships you forge in college make you stronger, smarter and wiser. Getting to know other students you will dig into the challenges of academic learning and increase your understanding of the diverse world that awaits you.”
University peers who make themselves available to assist other students strengthen our campus community and instill a sense of warmth and welcome in the University’s atmosphere.
Do you know a student that fits my description? A student who is there to assist and support others?
Next week, one helpful student will be profiled so that we can learn more about students and why they do what they do.
If you know of a student who goes out of his or her way to support fellow classmates, let us know by commenting below or email me at angelica.hartgers@jaguar.tamu.edu.
