Written by Rachel Lorentz
An essay from The Senior Situation
When I was seven or eight years old, my favorite movie was Legally Blonde. I would bring the VHS tape back and forth with me between Texas and Oklahoma as I traveled between my mom’s and grandparents’. I grew up half on my grandparents’ cattle and watermelon farm and half in an automotive repair shop.
Nobody in my life had gone to college and graduated; nobody had really even moved away from the Texas/Oklahoma border. As funny as it is to admit, Elle Woods was the first person, especially woman, that I saw graduate from higher education. She made me want to go to Harvard and become a lawyer. As a child, I spent most of my time with my mom and brother, both of whom struggled through school with learning disabilities that were never properly addressed. I remember the anxiety surrounding academics in my house when my brother would do his homework, and I often felt guilty and out of place for liking my schoolwork and wanting something different.
When the time came to go to college, and I had made it through the admissions process in one piece, I found the university experience to be a lot more bittersweet than I had expected. My time at UPS hasn’t been the most traditional. I had to take a year off and work at my family’s muffler shop, and at more than one point, it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to graduate. Sometimes, I wanted to give up because I felt so alone figuring out how to register for classes, talk to professors, and eventually switch majors without guidance from those closest to me. Other times I wanted to give up because I felt like, day after day, I was choosing to be different and apart. Over the years, I figured out that the physical distance between my family and I proved less of an obstacle than a growing cultural difference that got wider as I allowed my college experience to shape my identity. Even as a senior, nobody back home really knows the extent of what I’m doing in school. Discussing university life or classes with my mom is nearly impossible when she has no reference point. I’ve lived in Tacoma for almost five years now, and I feel as if I’ve grown into a different person with a different home.
Sometimes, when these painful realities felt too tough to handle, I would find myself dreaming of graduation and the moment that my two very different worlds would collide. Imagining my grandpa with his alligator-skin dress boots and cowboy hat, sitting on Peyton field taking in the luscious green scenery of the Pacific Northwest, over 2,000 miles from home, where his granddaughter moved, by herself, to take ownership of her education and future. As a first generation student and a member of the class of 2020, getting that email on April fourth stating that commencement would be moved to May of 2021 was devastating. With all that is happening in the spring of 2020, it is looking certain I won’t get my Elle Woods moment, and neither will my classmates. Many things have had to be canceled or postponed due to COVID-19, but graduation getting moved has been the hardest to come to terms with. My grandparents aren’t going to get to see this magical place or the sidewalks that I wore thin by running from class to class. My worlds aren’t going to collide in the way that I had imagined, and it makes me sad to think about how many of my classmates are going through something similar. The celebration has to wait, and I think we all understand that. But I’m thankful for my position during these hard times, and I’m lucky to be able to be in school and continue school throughout this pandemic. We have so much to be thankful for during this time, and it’s important to keep things in perspective, but I also think it’s important to allow space to mourn what has been lost.