Theorizing about the past

I have only recently begun to theorize about what has driven me to pursue higher education. In my view, many people from so-called “first gen” backgrounds are encouraged to pursue higher education perhaps by family, friends, or even an invested high schooler counselor. There is a plethora of personal stories. As for me, I had a different experience distinguished by the absence of any encouragement.

In addition to being the “first-generation” in my family to attend college, I am still the one to have been enrolled for a substantial amount of time.  Not only did no one set an example, college was not something my family really talked about with me nor was there anyone to set the example. This is not to say that my family was discouraging, but higher education was not in our orbit.

Yet, even when I was young, I always assumed I would go to college. In fact, I was indignant about it. Without citing statistics, my intuition tells me that few people in my high school graduating class ended up going to college. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I always felt “different” from them somehow.

Looking back, I wonder if my experience was as idiosyncratic as it might seem. In retrospect, I attribute much of this to my LGBTQ identity (more on this later). Perhaps obvious to us now, kids who are perceived to have LGBTQ identities are often ostracized by their peers. It can be a struggle to relate to people who constantly brand you as different. Despite having grown up with other working-class kids, I could not relate to the things that they (especially other boys) were interested in. I was fond of geography, history, art, literature, and other things associated with “intellectualism.”

There may have even been somewhat of an “anti-intellectual” culture in my “rural-ish” hometown. With no clearer explanations as to what drove me from this environment, I am left to assume that being “different” from everyone else in one way caused me to not only relate to, but also to pursue, markers of this difference. Ultimately, I would not trade my education, travel experience, knowledge of several languages, and future job opportunities for a different childhood. That said, I have been wondering if my experience has been shared by other gay men.

In preparing to write this post, I came across the article Gay Men Earn Degrees at Highest Rate, Study Finds. I was surprised to see that recent data corroborate my experience. I am even more surprised that I was not privy to this research until now. In the article, Maria Carrasco reports that 52% of gay men have undergraduate degrees where only 35% of straight men do. Moreover, the study she cites shows that 6% of gay men in the United States have an advanced degree, which is 50% higher than straight men (It is worth nothing that these numbers do not hold up with lesbian women; a very interesting observation but obviously this could be a dissertation.).

Apparently, this phenomenon has been labeled the “Best Little Boy in the World Hypothesis.” The hypothesis goes that gay men tend to be “overachievers” to deflect attention away from their stigmatized sexuality. What pondering my own experience has revealed to me is that a desire for class mobility may not be the only thing that pushes us into the sphere of higher education.