West vs. Midwest

This past weekend a middle-aged woman from the Bay Area asked where I was from. I told her, “I'm from Michigan.” Her response: “Oh I’m sorry.” Curiously, another gay man from Michigan was present at this gathering. His sentiments echoed hers – he was glad to be out. People view non-coastal states as provincial, backward, and ultimately boring.

I live with a constant tension. Why did I leave Michigan when I claim to love it so much and constantly defend it? What Californians think of Michigan isn’t entirely untrue. There is a larger and more visible socially conservative population. This is a fact. The State of Michigan is very effectively gerrymandered in favor of the GOP. The topography is relatively flat. There is a lot of agriculture. There is only one somewhat major city.

Until actually moving to another part of the county, I also thought that Michigan was devoid of culture. California is a beautiful state and I love it here. I love the diversity, the ostensibly progressive politics, the beautiful topography, and perhaps most of all the Pacific. Would I move back to Michigan? Despite how much I will “go to bat” for the state, I don’t see myself moving back at this time but the possibility is becoming increasingly more likely.

I have gotten too used to having easy access to cities known worldwide. I have gotten too used to the Sierras being only a couple of hours away. I have gotten too used to the thought of living in San Francisco near the sea. Maybe there is a reason that there are no songs about Detroit akin to Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart In San Francisco.”

All things being said, absence really does make the heart grow fonder. Truths and historical facts about Michigan that I have always known, but never really acknowledged, have become center-stage in my mind and the topic of my speech when people ask about my home.

Here is what you won’t hear about Michigan from California elites: Techno music was first popularized in America in my hometown; the Detroit area is home to a many thriving communities of color; Hamtramck (originally a Polish enclave) is the United State’s first and only Muslim majority city; Motown was invented here; Michigan borders the largest lake in the country; one of the largest labor unions in the country was founded there; Michigan became the first English-Speaking government in the world to abolish the death penalty.

All to say, I have given up on perpetuating negativity about an economically important and diverse region of the country for the sake of class-passing.

The impact of place on who gets ahead

I've read lots of books about the impact of place on who gets ahead in life--and who does not.  I assign excerpts of many of them to students in my seminars on Law and Rural Livelihoods and The First-Gen Experience in Scholarly and Popular Literature.  We read excerpts, for example, from Sheryll Cashin's Place, Not Race.  The famous economist Raj Chetty has also focused on zipcode as destiny.   

So I was particularly interested to see coverage in the Daily Yonder (a news source oriented to rural issues) of a new book by a famous sociologist who studies poverty and inequality, Kathryn Edin, and colleagues Timothy Nelson and Luke Shaefer:  The Injustice of Place:  Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America.  Here are some excerpts from early in the book that mention rural places specifically, including in the first two paragraphs, which follow:   

IT IS HARD TO SAY exactly when we first noticed the pattern. Just before we hit the outskirts of a Cotton Belt town, the fields would give way to a string of gleaming white antebellum homes with large lawns, old-growth trees, and grand entrances framed by columns reaching two or three stories high. Merging onto the majestic arterial boulevards leading into town, we would see more imposing homes presiding over meticulously manicured grounds. 

In Sparta, a rural hamlet near Augusta, Georgia, it appears as though someone has invested millions to restore an elegant Greek Revival home. New windows and shutters gleam. Yet just across the street lies a dilapidated shack, one room deep, with a sagging roof. Over in Demopolis, Alabama, sits the venerable Gaineswood, a massive structure known for its elaborate interior suites, including domed ceilings, remarkable decorative arts, and original antebellum furnishings. Left out of the photos on Gaineswood’s website and tourist brochures are the aging wood cottages in varying states of disrepair, the tumbledown trailers, and the sagging modular houses that flank the historic home.  (page 1) 

The scholars undertook in this book to study poor places, whereas they had previously studied poor people.  They also decided to study health in addition to income.  Here's more on their methodology:

To assess the level of disadvantage in a community, such as a county or a city, we combined traditional income-based measures with other markers, including health. Especially in the United States, health outcomes vary tremendously by race, ethnicity, and income. In 2008, life expectancy for highly educated white males was eighty years, but only sixty-six for low-educated Black men, whose average life span resembled numbers seen in Pakistan and Mongolia. In 2011, the infant mortality rate for Black mothers in the United States was comparable to that in Grenada and just a bit better than that in Tonga. The rate for non-Hispanic whites was much closer to that in Germany and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, a tidal wave of new research was showing that a person’s health is shaped more by their context—their income, family circumstances, and community characteristics, for example—than by their genetic profiles or the medical care they receive. 

Ultimately, as the scope of our study of place-based disadvantage grew, we chose to incorporate two well-measured health outcomes, one that captured conditions at the start of life and the other at the end. In a particular community, what were a baby’s chances of being born with low birth weight, which is closely associated with infant mortality and other threats to children’s health? In that community, how long could the average person expect to live? 

We also recognized the importance of measuring whether disadvantage in a particular place persisted for children growing up there. Especially in the American context, it is almost an article of faith that kids should have the opportunity to do better than their parents. Recently, a team of economists employed confidential IRS data to create a measure of intergenerational mobility (the chance that children born low-income could rise up the economic ladder) for every city and county in the nation. These researchers used tax records to follow children born in the 1980s through adulthood to see where they stood on the income ladder compared to their parents. It was already understood that there were big differences in intergenerational mobility by parental income, ethnicity, and race, but the most stunning revelation of this new research was how much variation there was by place. In some communities, a child born into poverty would probably stay low-income as an adult. Yet in others, they had a much better chance of reaching the middle class. It seemed clear to us that to measure the depth of disadvantage in a community, it would be important to include the rate of mobility from one generation to the next. (pp. 3-4) 

This follows several pages later--and reveals a rural surprise to the authors:    

Immediately, we could see from the rankings that the geographical pattern was stark. The first surprise—especially for three professors who had spent our careers studying urban poverty—was that the “most disadvantaged” places on our index were mostly rural. There is considerable poverty in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. But in our apples-to-apples comparison, none of those cities ranked even among the 600 most disadvantaged places in the nation. For the most part, the only cities and urban counties to find themselves among the most disadvantaged were a relatively small number of industrial municipalities in the Northeast and Midwest, such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Rochester. 

Among the rural counties at the top of the list, what we found didn’t fit what most people think of as “rural.” While some of these were majority-white, many, indeed most, were communities of Black and Hispanic Americans. We could see, too, that many places with large Native American populations ranked among the most disadvantaged in the nation (19 of the top 200). Beyond these, though, not one community in the western part of the United States registered among the “most disadvantaged” (those in the top fifth). While some might say we ought to have considered the impact of the high cost of living on poverty—those costs are higher in some places—there are trade-offs. Although people pay more for housing in those places, there are at the same time structural advantages in those areas of the country, such as good health care systems, a more generous safety net, public transportation, and higher-quality schools. This, we think, is why some high-cost big cities like San Francisco and Seattle fall further down our index than expected. We also found that those living in the 200 most disadvantaged places on our index were just as prone to have major difficulties paying for housing as those in America’s 500 largest cities. 

Apart from predominantly Native American communities, the places that our index identified as “most disadvantaged” most often are found in three regions—Appalachia, South Texas, and the vast southern Cotton Belt running across seven states. (pp. 5-6) 

* * * 

Across rural America, monuments, celebrations, and museums are markers of local pride. Indeed, Crystal City has vigorously defended its claim to the title “Spinach Capital of the World” against upstart Alma, Arkansas—also a former spinach mecca that has erected multiple statues of Popeye. Yet in South Texas, the vast Cotton Belt, central Appalachia, and the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, these symbols celebrate a past that is fraught, to say the least. They commemorate the very industries that, for a century or more, spelled misery and hardship for thousands, if not millions, while profiting only a few. They memorialize the intensive resource extraction and resulting human exploitation that made these places America’s internal colonies. 

How did the identities of these communities become so bound to the economic legacies of the past? (p. 21) 

And, skipping to much later in the book, this is especially intersting regarding the diploma divide and how higher education is increasingly seen by some as a culprit: 

Most often, emerging leaders trying to set a new course have the odds stacked against them—as was the case with Cornejo’s coalition and later with the slate of La Raza candidates who came into office in South Texas in the early 1970s. People at every level are hoping for their failure: when they stumble, it is all the easier to blame the community for its own problems. Universities could certainly play a role in helping to equip local leaders with the tools needed to succeed, perhaps through a model like the USDA’s community- and university-based Cooperative Extension System. Recently, one community leader told us that while his state’s flagship university is not beloved in most rural towns, the extension service is immensely popular because it provides knowledge and resources the community values. Using university extension programs as a conduit for equipping local leaders might help higher ed prove its worth in many far-flung communities. (p. 237) 

Altogether, the book uses the word "rural" 67 times, but many of those are in end notes/sources.  Here's a WHYY segment on the book.  

Edin's prior books did not pay particular attention to rural poverty or other rural issues.  She is perhaps most famous for Promises I Can Keep:  Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage (2005) (with Maria Kefalas); Doing the Best I Can:  Fatherhood in the Inner City (2013) (also with Nelson) and $2.00 a Day:  Living on Almost Nothing in America (2015) (also with Shaefer). 

Crossposted to Legal Ruralism.  

Maine Democrat Jared Golden doubles down in opposition to student loan forgiveness

The Portland Press-Herald (Maine) reported last week on U.S. Congressman Jared Golden's provocative statement opposing student loan forgiveness.  Golden, a Democrat, is a three-term incumbent from the state's second district, which leans Republican and includes vast rural areas.  Golden's career and politically pragmatic stances are discussed in three prior posts, which also provide more information on the demographics and economics of his congressional district.  

Golden's mid-August Tweet responded to a report from the Maine Beacon that Golden, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, had received a donation from Sallie Mae after he was one of two Democrats who joined Republicans in May to oppose Biden's student-loan relief program.  (The other was fellow leader of the "yellow-dog coalition," Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, of southwestern Washington State).  Golden's Tweet led with 

I've always held the opinion that working class Mainers shouldn't foot the bill for someone else's choices. Once again, radical leftist elites prove they don't understand Maine.

It then included this text:   

Sadly, this is what the radical leftist elites are learning about "democracy" these days:  silence and destroy anyone who disagrees with your views or goals.  I stand by my vote and my opposition to forking out $10,000 to people who freely chose to attend college.  They were privileged to have the opportunity, andmany left college well-situted to make six figure salaries for life.  The Twitterati can keep bemoaning their privileged status and demanding handouts all they want, but as far as I’m concerned if they want free money for college, they can join the Marines and serve the country like I, and so many others, have in the past and many more will in the future. If they want a career and hard skills without college debt, they should join a union and enter an apprenticeship. But if they choose to attend college, they can pay back their loans just like working-class people pay back home mortgages, car loans, and many other expenses that people choose to take out loans for.

Golden's statement provoked lots of strong reaction on X, formerly known as Twitter.  One of those responding was Tiffany Bond, an independent who has twice challenged Golden in the past.  Bond broached the matter of the implications of Golden's position for rural Maine, writing:  

What the hell is wrong with you, Jared?  Rural Maine will have no dentists, doctors, lawyers, teachers or anyone requiring a professional education. You don’t understand rural Maine.

The Maine People’s Alliance account responded  “Really? I’m not sure the ‘Twitterati’ are the ones not understanding Maine right now.”

Academics responded, too.  History professor Heather Cox Richardson wrote, 

Heavens!  Did you really write this or have you been hacked?!? You always seemed a centrist voie of reason that represented your Maine district well.  What's with this "radical leftist elitists"?!? 

And University of Maine political science professor Amy Fried posted a few responses:

This language is divisive and nasty.  There is a real debate to be had about helping people go to and graduate college and if there are benefits to be gleaned by the whole society.  You've done nothing to contribute to that.  Just awful.  Don't think of running statewide, ever. 

An account holder called bre kidman's awkward blue check wrote: 

Yikes, bub.

Did you draw the short straw on making the cringe statement to get that Sallie Mae money for the team? You know college educated Mainers aren't making 6 figure salaries.

JS there are classier ways to quit Congress than slamming your constituents when they're down.

Then, from the same account: 

Also, real quick math question: how much money did Maine voters spend getting you elected to a job with a low six-figure salary?

Like this comment, some others raise larger questions of how higher education is financed--and who benefits from that financing.  For purposes of this course, it's important to ask:  to what extent do first-gen students get the benefit of higher education investments, from public coffers or otherwise?  and how do those benefits accrue?  from serving in the military or on some other basis? 

The tone of Golden's statement--though not the substance--is in sharp contrast to the statement of another "rural" Democrat, former Montana Governor Steve Bullock who wrote in a New York Times op-ed in December, 2021: 

To overcome these obstacles [facing the Democratic party in rural America], Democrats need to show up, listen, and respect voters in rural America by finding common ground instead of talking down to them. Eliminating student loans isn’t a top-of-mind matter for the two-thirds of Americans lacking a college degree. Being told that climate change is the most critical issue our nation faces rings hollow if you’re struggling to make it to the end of the month.

Note that Bullock held himself out as representing what rural voters generally think, which is not necessarily the same as saying he would side with them on either student loan relief or climate change policies.  That is, we do not know what he thinks or what side he would land on faced with policies to ameliorate student debt or climate change.  What is clear is that Bullock's tone is more conciliatory than Golden's, that it leaves room for nuance and discussion.  His op-ed criticizes his fellow Democrats who are urbancentric in not thinking about rural concerns, but he does not call his fellow Democrats "radical leftist elites." 

I blogged about Bullock's op-ed and the response to it in this post.

In any event, I'm curious to see how Golden's stance on student loan relief plays out when he's up for re-election next year.  I am guessing there are working-class Mainers on both sides of this issue.

Cross-posted to Working Class Whites and the Law Blog and Legal Ruralism.  

How Tyler, the Creator got me into college

When I was fifteen years old, I had an indescribable, all-consuming obsession with an up-and-coming rapper named Tyler, the Creator. I listened to every song, had notifications turned on for every one of his tweets, and watched every interview and vlog of his I could find. 

In October of that year, I waited in a six-hour line at the grand opening of his Odd Future store on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, CA. When I finally reached the front of the line, I met Tyler. We took a picture, he told me I had pretty teeth, and I bought a photography book and tank top. For years, I never washed the shirt I was wearing while I met him. It was literally the best day of my life up until that point. 

This is the picture of Tyler & I (There was a no photo policy in the store but he made an exception for me, because I was practically hyperventilating, saying, "Someone take a picture of us before she passes out.") 

I saw a bunch of street banners advertising UCLA while waiting in line. I assumed the campus was close by, not knowing anything about LA's geography or traffic. That day changed the trajectory of my life and was the birth of my "dream school." My goal was clear: I would gain acceptance to UCLA, putting me in clear proximity to Tyler's store which would allow me to be around him often enough for us to fall in love and get married. 

The second part of the goal never came to fruition; I very rarely went back to his store. The first part of the goal, however, did come true on March 21, 2014. This became the new best day of my life. Little had I known, my unhealthy obsession with a rapper would lead to my acceptance to UCLA. 

Once I got to UCLA, I realized my journey there was unlike the rest of my peers. In the words of Claire Vaye Watkins, "All educations, [I] realized then, are not created equal." In The Ivy League was Another Planet, Vaye Watkins tells her college admission story. Growing up in rural Pahrump, Nevada, population 44,738, she explains, "By the time they're ready to apply to colleges, most kids from families like mine--poor, rural, no college grads in sight--know of and apply to only those few universities to which they've incidentally been exposed."

This blog by Professor Pruitt explores Vaye Watkins article in more detail.

Growing up in Merced, California, was similar in a lot of ways to Vaye Watkins in Pahrump but also very different. Merced is a mid-sized, agricultural city in the middle of the central valley, but it also the home of the University of California's newest campus, UC Merced and Merced Community College. Moreover, twenty minutes north is California State University (CSU), Stanislaus and fifty minutes south is CSU Fresno. It is a great privilege to grow up surrounded by so many options for higher education, one that many rural students don't enjoy.

For the most part, however, I learned of these schools because of proximity or incidental exposure, not because they put any effort into recruiting my classmates or me. Like Watkins' high school, the only recruiters that came to Merced High were military recruiters. And their efforts were rewarded. We loved the college-aged men coming to our school, getting us out of history class to go into the quad and engage in pushup and pull up challenges. They bragged to us about seeing the world, buying brand new Mustangs and Camaros, and making double the money for simply being married. Sarina Mugino discusses military recruitment, and military marriages, in more detail in this blog. At my high school graduation, a small group of us were going off to a university, but plenty of others stood to be honored for enlisting in the military. 

Ivy League schools were truly another planet. I couldn't even name any outside of Harvard and Yale. I often got Stanford confused with CSU Stanislaus. I knew absolutely nothing about the vast range of prestigious universities throughout the country.

I applied to eight schools because I qualified for a fee waiver that granted me four free CSU applications and four free UC applications. At seventeen, my choices were based on location. I knew practically nothing about any of the schools, but I knew UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, and San Diego State University were by the beach. I knew CSU Chico was known for parties. I knew UC Irvine, CSU Humboldt, and CSU Northridge were far enough away from my hometown that I could distance myself and begin healing from the difficult environment I grew up in. 

Outside of Tyler, the Creator, UCLA also had one thing no other school had. It had prestige. The day I proudly announced to my geometry class that I planned to go to UCLA I had no clue of its prestige or small acceptance rate. After my announcement, two of my classmates burst out laughing, telling me that "like 5% of people accepted there are Black" and I wouldn't qualify to join that small number. I will always remember my geometry teacher, Mr. Aguayo, for adamantly and immediately sticking up for me by saying his brother, "who was a lot less smart than me," graduated from there and Riki could, too. 

Unfortunately, Mr. Aguayo was an exception to the norm. It became a pattern for people to doubt my dream. Repeatedly, I was told I would not be admitted. These messages came from classmates, teachers, an assistant principal, and probably many more people behind my back. Eventually, I allowed the doubts to erode my enthusiasm until I stopped telling people my dream. In fact, by UCLA's decision day, I told all my classmates I wasn't going to check because I would never go to UCLA anyways. I will always regret waiting to read my acceptance until I was at home and all alone. I wish I had trusted myself more. 

In hindsight, the people who doubted me knew something I, very thankfully, had no clue of--the resources of the students I was up against. 

I took my SATs twice, with no studying beforehand. I had straight As, but from a low-funded, low-performing high school. Most shocking of it all, to me, is that little seventeen-year-old me submitted every part of my college applications through my iPhone because my family had no computer. I wrote my personal statement and scholarship essays in my notes app, copy and pasting straight from there to admissions portals. 

I've worked in college admissions since I was nineteen and I've seen over and over how unequal educations are. With my current company, students start their college preparation as early as middle school. They are assigned a tutor for every subject they can't get an A in. They begin our rigorous, years-long SAT/ACT prep. They are assigned a college counselor who studies their transcripts, extracurricular activities, interests, etc. and curates a perfect college list for them that ranges across the country. And, before the applications even open, essay coaches, like me, fine comb through every word on each and every one of their applications, using our CEO's essay writing formula, until each is polished to perfection.

I look back at my own college application efforts and I truly marvel that I ever stood a chance. 

In some ways, I think there is a privilege in growing up a world away from the Ivy Leagues. I still remember the unexplainable joy I got reading I was accepted into my first college, San Diego State. I ran to my mom's room and we both cried, repeating over and over, "we're going to college." She immediately asked me to send her a screenshot so she could brag on Facebook. For us, honestly, any college was a dream.

But I was lucky enough to grow up in California. Even my "safety" schools were great schools. There are many students for whom UCs and CSUs are on another planet, and many for whom even community college is in another universe. Watkins ends her article with a very powerful question, "...is it any wonder that students in Pahrump and throughout rural America are more likely to end up in Afghanistan than N.Y.U.?" From my experience, there is no wonder in this at all. 

This post, by Geovanna, goes into detail about other risks that hold rural students back from receiving college educations.

Reversing the Rural Brain Drain and my guilt for contributing to the problem

This past week in class we discussed elitism in higher education and the social, intellectual, and physical disconnect between more highly educated individuals and lower-class communities. Rob Henderson's article perfectly describes the alienation of the working class from the T.V.-like lives of the elite. We also talked about the rural brain drain, a phenomenon arising out of the exodus of more highly educated individuals from their rural, lower-class communities to concentrated bigger cities. Studies have shown that the rural brain drain is especially potent in rural California.

This discussion reminded me of a recent experience I had that brought my own guilt for contributing to the rural brain drain into focus. During my 2L fall at UC Davis's Aoki Water Justice Clinic, I worked on a water rights project in unincorporated Tulare County. My supervising attorney and I took a road trip down to meet with the owners of a remote gas station. The goal was to convince the owners to sign an easement allowing a local mutual water company to access their property and expand the water storage tank for the surrounding homes. We had reason to believe this would be difficult given the stay-out-of-my-business mindset of the owners.

Picture of the gas station in Tulare.

Before we left, my supervising attorney warned me that the owners may not trust us because they would think of us as "big city" attorneys and they might even liken us to big government. Studies have shown that rural Americans tend to distrust the federal government. Because of that, he recommended that we wear casual clothing and refrain from using legal jargon. My response was incredulous: Is Davis a big city? Am I the out-of-touch liberal that Fox News warned my uncles about? Could someone really mistake me for an attorney?

I tried to explain to my supervisor that I was so clearly not a "big city" attorney. For one, I had no idea what I was doing. On top of that, I spent a good portion of my life with my family in the Central Valley (Newman, California to be exact). Newman, located in sunny Stanislaus County, looked almost exactly like this area of unincorporated Tulare (it smelled like it too). Surely, that fact would win me some trust from the owners of the gas station.

Picture of "bustling" downtown Newman.

It didn't. The first thing the owners asked us was where we were from. One owner explained that this was very important to them because things "ran differently" down there and we wouldn't understand unless we were actually from there. I tried to explain that although I was from the Bay Area, I had a connection to the Central Valley through my family. That wasn't good enough. He dismissed us with a "you would never understand." Our field trip was a bust.

In the end, we were lucky that another student at the clinic was from Tulare. Over the phone, she and the owners bonded over local Mexican restaurants and dive bars. We managed to convince the owners to sign the easement by communicating through her. This equalizing factor, that they were all from Tulare, was necessary to foster trust and close the deal.

For me, this experience illustrated the air of elitism and pretentiousness in higher education that is immediately recognized and distrusted by rural, working class communities. It also proved that the most effective way to bridge this gap is through the return and reestablishment of more highly educated class migrants in their respective communities. This would avert the "you would never understand" impulse.

This whole experience reminds me of my role within the rural brain drain. I can't help but feel guilty that I don't plan to return to my community in Newman. My mom told me many stories about how my grandparents were forced to work long hours in subpar conditions for below minimum wage. Hearing about the way that farm owners and corporations took advantage of my migrant grandparents disgusted me to my core. I wish someone had come and provided them with legal help. Wouldn't it be moral for me to move back and provide that assistance for others?

Picture of my siblings and my vovô in his Newman backyard on Easter.

But then I start to think about what it would be like for me if I actually went back. The last time I was in Newman, Main Street was lined with Blue Lives Matter flags. The latest news was a hate crime that occurred when a group of men knocked down the mailbox of a gay couple and threw rocks at their house. My uncle, a typical resident of Newman and a lifelong Republican, told me he wouldn't speak to me anymore because I had come out as gay.

I know in my heart that no matter how much I might want to give back to Newman, I would never feel safe if I returned. Hate crimes in California, against both gay and Asian people, are on the rise. This is especially true in Trump supporting counties. My choices would seem to be staying away from Newman or sacrificing my identity and hiding who I am. For me, the latter is inconceivable. For now, I will have to contribute to the rural brain drain.

One of the trade-offs first gen students make: loss of place

With my maternal grandparents, Effie and Elver Shatwell
at their home in Vendor, Arkansas (1995)

At our first class meeting of the fall semester last week, we discussed this Nov. 2020 episode of The Hidden Brain podcast when Jennifer Morton was Shankar Vedantam's guest.  She's a philosopher, now at the University of Pennsylvania, who has published a book called Moving Up without Losing Your Way (Princeton University Press 2019).  In it, she brings her perspective as a philosopher to think about what I call the class migration phenomenon.  Specifically, Morton talks about the trade-offs students must make when they pursue a course different from that of their families of origin.  Vedantam introduces Morton's work:   

Morton argues there is [a] less obvious ingredient in the story of upward mobility: a willingness to make ethical trade-offs. She doesn't mean lying or cheating, but something subtler and far more consequential.

* * * 

[S]trivers are, as you might expect, ambitious, hard working, smart, but also I think are willing to make trade-offs in the pursuit of those ambitions. Some of those trade-offs in some cases are quite difficult and painful.

My mother at a family cemetery
in Newton County, Arkansas 
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2017

We talked in class about some of the trade-offs--we could even call them sacrifices--that we, as first gen students, have made as we have pursued higher education.  A lot of us spoke about giving up time with family--even the opportunity to get to know family members, such as older relatives, or attend their funerals.  That reminded me of the visit captured in the photo above with my maternal grandparents, a few years before my grandfather died.  I was glad I got to see him the weekend before his death but sad I could not be at his funeral to honor and remember him.  It was just too far to travel from California, mid-semester, the first year I taught at UC Davis.  Unfortunately, for similar reasons, I was also unable to attend the funerals of my other grandparents, as well as that of a great grandmother.  All died while I was living too far away or doing work that made it impractical (sometimes just prohibitively expensive) to go home to their funerals in the small Arkansas community where I grew up and where they all lived.  

We talked in class about how some parents arduously protect the time of their "striver" children, while others are oblivious to the twin demands of higher education and family, expecting the sacrifice of the former in the name of family duty.  My mom was in the former category.  She never put pressure on me to attend a grandparent's funeral because she knew it would distract from my school work or my job--and also that it would be a big financial burden. 

One thing we didn't talk much about in class as part of this discussion is loss of place, though it was implicit in some of our answers, like those referencing family.  What I mean by loss of place is that many people can't or don't remain near their families of origin when they go to college.  This means they experience not only diminished family connections, they also experience diminished connections with the place they grew up, the place they consider home.  

The house where I grew up, a few weeks before my family 
moved in, fall 1964

This can refer to the community, the state or even the house where one grew up.  I recently wrote this about the house where I was raised.  We moved into it when I was three weeks old, and my mother still lives there.  I will always be attached to that house and wish I could see it more often; unfortunately, I've not even set foot in Arkansas during the pandemic, though I'm excited to visit The Natural State next spring, when there will be a reunion/Birthday Party for the 8th Circuit judge for whom I clerked, who has taken senior status but still works in Little Rock. 

Same house where I grew up, after some improvements
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2017

The loss of place may be a particular loss for students who grew up in rural places because those rural areas are associated with attachment to place.  This is because many rural residents live on land passed down from their ancestors, and rural land is more likely than urban land to remain in a family over the course of generations.  

That was the case with me.  I am the fifth generation on both sides of my family to grow up in a rural county in Arkansas.  Both my mother's family and my father's homesteaded the land on which they lived, and I was raised on part of the farm that had been in my father's family since the late 1800s.  There is even a town--really a wide spot in the road that used to have a post office and is now an access point on the Buffalo National River--called Pruitt. 

With my son and my mother
on the Buffalo National River
Pruitt access point 2015

It is a little known fact that many students attend the college nearest their home--if, that is, there is one.  Lack of a nearby college or university is one reason that many rural high school graduates don't continue on to college.  

I was a rural high school graduate who didn't have the opportunity to attend a college within commuting distance from my parents' home (there was a two-year community college 20 miles away), but I was lucky in that the state's flagship land grant university was just 80 miles away.   So, I got a good education, while also being able to maintain many family connections. 

Still, when it came to careers, I was unable to return home to fulfill my professional destiny.  First, I earned an undergraduate degree in journalism, but there was only a weekly newspaper in my hometown, and they didn't have the budget to hire people with journalism degrees.  Indeed, the journalism market in Arkansas is one reason I decided to go ahead and undertake law school, which had long been a dream.  (At the time, journalists in Arkansas earned about $10K/year, which seemed barely enough to service my student loans). 

I had only been in law school a short time when I realized I'd never "go home" to the county where I grew up (Newton) to practice law, simply because there was no market there.  My county of 8000 residents was home to one attorney.  They didn't need another, and there was no one there to mentor me.  Eventually, law school channeled me to the city anyway and to what passes for "big law" in that region.  I had summer associate gigs in Little Rock, Tulsa and Kansas City before deciding to pursue a PhD, which took me to London (because that's where the best scholarship opportunity was).  That led to a decade living and working abroad.  

Then, when I went on the law school teaching market, I'd hoped to be offered a job back in Arkansas, but that didn't happen.  (It is typical for law schools, unless they are T14, not to hire their own graduates, though I note that exceptions get made for men more often than for women). I wound up in California, where I still live and work 23 years later.  I'm very grateful for my career--and the opportunity to raise a Californian--but I still lament that many (though certainly not all) of my Arkansas connections have slipped away. 

With my mother, at the Newton County Museum,
Arkansas
(c) W.R. Pruitt-Herbert 2017 

I moved to California to fulfill what I believe was my professional destiny--becoming a law professor--and one consequence of that was a certain loss of place.