Editor’s note: Earlier this year, #DegreesNYC, a collective impact project co-led by Young Invincibles and Goddard Riverside Options Center, released our Blueprint for Collective Action on Postsecondary Access and Success in NYC. As part of this work, we talked with New York students who shared their experiences with the city’s higher education system, and where they believe the community can support their success. Below is a post from Samantha Verdugo, a student at Hunter College.
For some time, I felt as though the struggle of being a first-generation, low-income student in college was an experience that was unique to me because I hadn’t met other people on campus who talked about those struggles. That changed when I joined Peer Health Exchange during my first semester at Hunter. Through PHE, I became a mentor for high-school students and saw first-hand the impact near-peer mentorship can have for students who come from under-resourced high schools like mine. As a freshman, I lived with my mother and uncle and commuted to and from college, as the majority of Hunter students do. As my commitments on campus grew, my family did not understand why I had to stay late on campus to study, attend networking events, or go to club meetings. To them, extracurricular activities were just that — something “extra” that would get in the way of achieving my long-term goal of pursuing medicine. There were several instances where I felt frustrated, of course, but I soon realized that my family did not understand the work I was doing simply because they, unfortunately, didn’t have the opportunity to attend college themselves. It felt as though I was going through the college journey by myself, so I made it a point to seek out mentors and advisors at Hunter early on just like I did senior year of high school.
Even though I felt as though asking for help was a sign of weakness, partly because of cultural stigma, I went through with counseling because my intuition told me it would be the right move to make for my mental health and academic success. While I was able to benefit from on-campus counseling, not all students can or do. It’s crucial that we expand and strengthen mental-health and other wraparound services for all students. For example, students at Hunter would tremendously benefit from the physical expansion of the Wellness Center (the Wellness Center only occupies a single hallway of an entire floor), additional mental-health counselors and mentors who look like them and with whom they can identify with, and long-term mental-health counseling to avoid the re-traumatization that comes with jumping from counselor to counselor. Ultimately, it boils down to expanding funding for offices like the Wellness Center that facilitate and respect student experiences on campus.
Samantha Verdugo is a student at Hunter College in New York majoring in Human Rights and Biology. She is also the Diversity Director for Peer Health Exchange at the Hunter College Chapter.