I graduated after an academic journey full of failures, low grades and attempts to balance life with university. This doesn’t mean that I will be a worse professional than my colleagues: a few days ago I graduated in economics from USP, the best university in Latin America, and my university path was certainly not linear.
I write with the aim of trying to be the spokesperson for those who simply don’t graduate in the ideal period, who fail one or more subjects and who have had to struggle to learn basic things like writing an email to a teacher.
My journey into higher education and even throughout my undergraduate studies has been a bit lonely. I’m not referring to the absence of friends or colleagues, as I’ve been lucky enough to always have incredible people around, but a different kind of loneliness.
Do you know what arises from the abyss between the life we live and the life our family lives? What makes our accomplishments not as celebrated or validated as we would like? Well, I felt this way when I shared with my family the content I was learning or the number of correct answers in entrance exams and they didn’t understand. I also felt this way when I shared my approval, my academic achievements, and even my degree. There were compliments and a certain happiness, but not like what I saw from the families of my colleagues. With me it was always a punctual and quickly exchanged happiness for practically any other topic. Gradually, I stopped sharing most of what I interpreted as results.
Different origin
From the first days of contact with the class it became very clear that my origin was very different from that of my colleagues. This was curious, because during my school career (elementary, high school, classical high school and technical course) it was in fact frequent that I met one or two people who I could define as “rich”. Most were like me: low income and difficulties very similar to mine. Once at public university, the composition of the scenario changed completely: one or two were like me, and the others came from completely opposite backgrounds to mine.
This contrast, especially at the beginning, influenced me a lot and, consequently, my performance. I heard my coworkers talk about the restaurants they went to that I knew I could never go to. I heard them talk about traveling abroad, a dream I haven’t realized yet. I remember a day when the bus that operated in my neighborhood did not run the route. For what reason? There had been a murder there. That day I found myself at university, at 10.30pm, without knowing how I would get out, and it hurt me to know that I was the only one who had that worry.
I confess that I had to fight the feeling of envy. In fact, it hurt a lot to feel the remnants of that feeling, and I punished myself for it. I didn’t want to become an unfair or bitter person, but it was difficult knowing that fundamentally all of our differences stemmed from simply being born into different realities.
At university it is customary to communicate with professors via email. However, this communication format is not usual for people with a background like mine, and I see it very well in the public school students I am currently in contact with. I see myself in them. I had a lot of difficulty knowing how to write emails to communicate with my teachers. I didn’t know how to write, what language to use or how to send it. I was lucky not to have been rudely warned by any of them, but I know people who weren’t as lucky, and that hurts. It makes us wonder if we deserve to be in that place.
It didn’t take long for me to notice and experience difficulty with other issues as well. In the first semester I struggled to pass all the subjects, but I couldn’t pass Calculus 1. It was funny, because many of my classmates who lived at parties or on trips passed, and then I realized: we simply didn’t have the same thing foundation. I’ll actually go further: I didn’t even know how to study the way they knew and had been trained their whole lives.
Journey full of challenges
Today I say it without shame and without any trace of embarrassment: the reproach in question was far from being the only or last one on my journey. Today I can look at the big picture and all these failures were not necessarily due to content difficulties, but rather to underlying difficulties and concerns external to the university.
It was quite difficult for me to live the standard university life: fighting to get the best grades, participating in all the social life, fighting to have the best internship, the best exchange and graduating with a record without poor grades or failures. I couldn’t do it. It simply wasn’t possible, because during my university studies I worked on a social education action, of which I am the founder.
On September 29th of this year I had the opportunity to graduate. I honestly feared that day would never come.
I graduated about two years later than I should have. I have had an academic journey full of failures, low grades and marked by challenges arising from reconciling the world outside the university with the academic world.
However, even though I write armed with the optimism of having recently graduated, I have no regrets. I wasn’t the best student or the most academic and if I could go back I wouldn’t even try to be. I simply couldn’t be someone else who does exactly what the majority already does.
You want to know? This doesn’t mean that I didn’t learn the content, that I didn’t appreciate the privilege I had when I joined USP, or that I will be a worse professional than my colleagues. After all, I have the same degree as them and I understand that high grades or graduating in the ideal period are not the only possible parameters for indicating a good student or a possible good professional. I did everything I could in my conditions and that’s what matters.
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Vozes da Educação is a weekly column written by young people from Safeguarda, a social volunteer program that helps Brazilian public school students enter university. The founder of the program, Vinícius De Andrade, and the students assisted by Safeguarda in all states of the federation take turns writing the texts. Follow the program’s profile on Instagram at @salvaguarda1
The text reflects the opinion of the author, not necessarily that of DW.
Source: Terra
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