16: Thriving as a Low-Income, First-Gen, or Underrepresented Student in Grad School

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Hi everyone, happy Sunday. This Sunday is actually not as happy for me because I am doing a re recording. Somehow I started recording, and usually what I do is I'll test the mic first, and then hear it to make sure that the voice sounds okay. Then I start my recording. But this time I made the big mistake of just recording right then and there without testing the mic. I assumed- I didn't change any of the settings, so I assumed everything was good. I did a full 30 minute recording. And then I went back to do the editing to publish this episode, and to my dread, I realized that things didn't quite sound the way that I wanted them to sound. Everything was super staticky, and you could hardly hear my voice. There's no way to edit that out. Now, as a result, I am re recording. In fact, what I'm going to do is, I'm gonna tell you a little bit of what the episode is going to focus on today, and then I'm going to take a break in between just to make sure that my sound is fine. Then I'll keep going.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Alright, so today is an episode on thriving as a low income, first gen, or underrepresented student in grad school. This is similar to the conversation that I was having last week about self care and stress management. Some of the conversation- it overlaps in some way. I'll try not to overlap too much. But I wanted to say that this topic is motivated by an event that I've co-organized for two years now. Two years ago, I decided I wanted to apply for a grant on campus. This grant provides funding to units that want to provide some sort of resource to the larger UCSB community. And I decided I want to put on a series of events. I want them to be panels and workshops and mixers, all about thriving in grad school as a low income, first gen student. I wanted undergrads to meet grad students, and grad students to provide advice to them. So I applied for the grant. We got funded. Instead of putting on four events, we got funded to put on two events in one. It was both a panel and a mixer, and we had six grad students in a panel and then a mixer with about 10to 12 tables, with one grad student per table and undergrads- multiple undergrads per table. The first year went well; we had about 80 people. Then this past year, our numbers nearly doubled. So even better. It just goes to show you that people want to learn strategies to thrive- to thrive in higher education as an undergrad and grad student. That's why I wanted to talk more about this today.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

And what I'm going to do is, I am going to be sharing some of the questions. These are discussion questions that we gave during the mixer. I'm going to be answering them myself for you, and if you want, I recommend that you take a notepad and a pen and write down these questions so that you can ask them to the academics, the fementors, mentors in your life so that way you get more advice. So like I said, I'm gonna take a quick break. I'm gonna test out my sound. Then I'll be back before you know it in a few seconds to get started on the questions. All right. I'll see you in a bit.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

All right, I'm back. Everything sounds good. So far, so good. Let's see. I'm gonna start by providing definitions to three key words that I think are important for you to know if you don't know them already. And I'm gonna be mentioning them as I answer my discussion questions. The first key word is imposter syndrome. This is a term that refers to high achieving individuals who perceive that they are a fraud, or that they cannot meet expectations regardless of their experience, skills or other qualities. Imposter syndrome is especially prevalent among first gen, low income and underrepresented students, but anybody can experience it.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The next term is microaggressions. This refers to the brief and commonplace, the daily verbal, nonverbal, behavioral or environmental insults- intentional or unintentional- which communicate hostile, derogatory or negative messages to target persons based on their marginalized group membership.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The third, and final key term I'm gonna highlight today is family achievement guilt. This refers to the guilt students may feel for having more educational opportunities and college success than their family members. Consequently, students may feel that they have to minimize their academic success when they're around their family members. Just keep these terms in mind, because I'm gonna go straight to the first two with my first question.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I have four discussion questions. I'm going to be answering three out of the four, because the fourth one has more to do with what I was talking about last week with regard to self care and stress management. So for that, I feel like I've already answered that last week, so we'll put a hold on that one. First, I'm gonna read aloud the four questions, and then I'm gonna get into answering them.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The first one is, if you want to write this down, how do you deal with impostor syndrome and/or microaggressions? Question number two, how do you find advocates or mentors as a first gen college student? Question number three, what continues to motivate you to pursue your educational goals? And question number four, the one I'm not going to answer, what strategies do you use for self care, stress management and community building? This I answered last week, so that's why I'm not going to talk about it today.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

All right, so the first one, how do you deal with impostor syndrome and/or microaggressions? We'll start with impostor syndrome. Imposter syndrome affects me every day. It affects me even with recording this podcast, because- and it took me a while to even gather the courage to record myself because I kept thinking, who am I? Why would someone want to listen to me? What do I have to say that's of value? The more I processed that, the more I realized, wait, hold up, hold up. You've been mentoring students since 2010. I became a graduate student mentor in 2010. Helping them for 10 years, helping people get into graduate school. Helping people like myself, and I, myself, got myself into graduate school and graduated. Helping other low income, first gen, underrepresented students do this for so long, successfully. And I'm still doubting myself? Come on now.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So how do I battle it? When I feel like, oh, I'm not good enough to do this recording. My podcast isn't that great. I don't have information that's that important, or that useful. I started to think about all of my achievements and how far I've come, and how my voice is worthy. How the work that I do is worthy. Or, you know what some people do? I don't do this that much, but I've heard of other women of color who do this. They say that they try to behave with the courage of - I'm gonna totally tear this up, because I can never remember saying properly- but like the courage of a very basic white guy, who probably doesn't even have a lot of work experience, but has that self confidence to think that they own the world. Well, yeah, some people do that. They're like, I'm gonna have the self confidence of this basic white guy- very mediocre white guy- to do the things that I need to do. Not necessarily what I do. I don't have to think about that to think that I'm worthwhile. I do often refer back to my achievements and how far I've come to feel worthwhile, and to do the things- to gain the courage to do the things that I want to do, to not hold myself back. Oftentimes, that's what impostor syndrome does. You feel like you're not good enough. You feel like you're a fraud. You feel like someone's gonna catch you, or realize that you don't know anything. So you don't put yourself out there.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

All right. The second part of this question is how do you deal with microaggressions? This is harder for me, only because I've never really known exactly how to handle microaggressions in that moment. I usually do one of two things. More often the first one, every once in a while the last one. The first one is often I stay quiet. I try not to respond. I try not to personalize it, because usually it's an incident where someone who has a certain power dynamic over me or maybe they're above me in a hierarchy, or maybe I don't want to burn this bridge professionally. So I find that it's easier for me to just remain quiet. I don't always do this, though, even when there is that power dynamic. I think it just depends on how much power that person has over me, and how much courage I'm feeling that day, or maybe how much anger I'm feeling over what they said.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I can talk to you about one instance, in particular. Remember, microaggressions- they can be racialized, they can be gendered, they can be maternal, they can be classed. In any way that you can be oppressed, othered, marginalized, then there are microaggressions for that. So for me, I had this one professor who wanted to meet up with me to network, and he had no idea that I was a mom. In fact, a lot of people had no idea because I was a young mom, or I am a young mom. And he said something along the lines- he was complaining about a colleague- and saying, oh, I can't believe she got tenure. How dare she. I mean, she was hardly around, hardly published anything. All she did was spend time with her kids. I can't believe, how dare they give her tenure. And I felt really insulted in that moment. It was one of those cases where I refused to be silent. I told him something along the lines- and I don't remember exactly what I said, but probably something along the lines of- what you said right now is really insulting because I am a mom, too. I hope to one day get tenure, and I plan to have more than one child. I would only hope that the other people in my department, especially men, that they would support me, and that they would congratulate me and celebrate me when I get tenure. Not be talking about me in a condescending manner behind my back. I don't think I said those words verbatim, but I said something along those lines where I expressed how insulted I was. Of course, right away, he was like, no, no, you are taking this wrong. I'm very supportive of parenting students. And I cut the conversation is short, and the meeting ended.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

But again, this person was not on my committee. This person was not my advisor. This is just someone I wanted to network with, did not have as much power over me. So I felt more comfortable calling this person out. Then of course, later that day, he emailed me with a long, long memo explaining how supportive he's been of parenting students. And he's very sorry, if he offended me in any way; that was not his intent. But whatever. The point is, that was a maternal microaggression for me, and I felt the need to call him out. So it's been one of two things, either I remain quiet, and then I later on vent to my friends or a therapist. Or I call them out, call them in and use that as a learning lesson for that individual. It's up to you how much energy you have on that day, or ever, you know, what you decide to do. But definitely take care of yourself and find a coping mechanism, whether that's therapy, a friend, or making it a teachable moment in hopes that that person will change. That's how I've handled them.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

All right, question number two. How do you find advocates or mentors as a first gen college student? This is hard for me because- or this has been hard for me, because I self -identify as an introvert. When I was an undergrad, I didn't really go to office hours. I felt intimidated by my professors. They seemed so intelligent and so different for me culturally and in so many different ways that I didn't reach out enough. So for me to find advocates and mentors, over time I found that my best, my biggest advocates and mentors - femtors- have been the other women that I've surrounded myself with. I surrounded myself with really fierce, powerful women of color, mothers of color, that motivate me every day. I follow them on social media. I love their posts. They inspire me. And so for me, it's been surrounding myself with people that I want to be like, with people that make me want to be better. Then also referring to them, referring to my friends and my community for referrals. Who are they working with? Who has femtored, mentored them? That's what's helped me. And I must admit, I still continue to struggle with finding femtors. I'm more comfortable with my group of peers. But among my group of peers, I've seen who they've worked with and who they've surrounded themselves with, and that's helped me to gain the courage to reach out. So definitely rely on your friends, on your community to find advocates, because you can't do this on your own.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

All right. The next question is what continues to motivate you to pursue your educational goals? For this, I'm going to go back to thinking about my undergrad and my grad school days to let you know, hopefully, what I can remember about what motivated me then. In undergrad, my biggest motivator was my passion for theater. I did theater from elementary school through my junior year of undergrad. Mostly acting, and I also just in stage managing. I found theater to be this incredibly powerful venue for me. It promoted empowerment, social change. It was just this space where anything could happen. That was just so healing for me to have that space. And I knew that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. So what motivated me to go to graduate school was like, I want to keep doing this. I want to keep studying this. I want to keep practicing this, and what better way than to go off and get a PhD in theater. That was my biggest motivation was just passion, having a passion for a practice and a type of study, and that's what kept me going.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Then, in grad school, you know, you change- as time goes on, you change, you develop. I noticed that my passion for theater was dissipating. It was slowly kind of going away. I think part of it had to do with some of the toxicity of graduate school. The fact that I was discouraged from practicing theater. It was all about studying critical theory, all about researching and publishing, that that initial connection that I had to the practice and to the community was lost. I felt disconnected from the theatre community, disconnected from my community of Latinx students. So because of that, I lost that passion. Don't get me wrong. I still to this day, absolutely love theater. I get butterflies in my stomach. I get the jitters. I overanalyze shows. I absolutely adore theater. I think that one day when my kids get older, I will likely go back to practicing theater. This is just not the right time for me. But in graduate school, that motivation that I initially had in undergrad was lost. And I found a different kind of motivator.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

For me, it was working with students. So mentoring, femtoring was a big motivator. It was surrounding myself with support systems, and like- minded people that kept me going. Then it was also doing this for myself, because I realized that getting a PhD provided me with a sense of consciousness, paradigm shifting. This is this feeling of understanding where I am in the world, understanding my identity at such a deep level that no one can take that for me. No matter what would happen, no matter what career I would pursue, regardless of if I was working in an institution of higher education or not. I would forever be a scholar. I would forever think critically. I would forever understand myself in the world. And I needed to finish that. I needed to complete the PhD. It was a personal goal for me. I also have this motto that I've had for a long time where I'd say- failure is not an option. So no matter how many hurdles I went through, I didn't see it as an option for me to just give up. That's what kept motivating me.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I think that- I guess in short- unfortunately, this episode, the re-recording is shorter than my previous one. It is what it is. The main idea I want to get across to you in terms of thriving as a low income, first gen, or URM student in grad school is that you've got to learn to fight, combat that impostor syndrome. Learn to manage those microaggressions. Find out how to cope with that. Find advocates, find femtors and mentors who are going to fight for you, and learn to fight for yourself too. Implement the self care, the stress management, the community building, the support system building. And keep reminding yourself of what motivates you to keep going ,to pursue these educational goals. I don't want to send people off to graduate school to barely survive and to kill themselves along the way, to get sick during this. I want to send you off to thrive, to make the most of this opportunity, to do your best and not kill yourself while doing it. To do your best and still be be well, to do it while you're healing. I hope that some of this advice is useful to you. Again, ask these questions to the people around you. See, find out what strategies do they use, because I don't know everything. Hopefully, some of what I said will help you and hopefully you'll reach out to others and you'll get even more advice. I want you all to be your best selves. All right. That is all I have for today. Thank you so much for listening with me. If any of this resonated with you, shoot me an email. I'd love to hear from you. All right, bye.