John Tough's Who Gets To Graduate

First generation students of color gain overwhelming experiences in college because they are the first in the family to pursue higher education. They are constantly overthinking making new friends, taking the right classes, and getting used to being on their own. John Tough, a Canadian-American writer, explains in his article “Who Gets to Graduate” that first generation students start off with a positive attitude towards college until they fail their first test or recognize the difficulty of the class, which discourages them from continuing with school. To address the issue of first generation students who are not prepared for school, a chemist teacher named David Laude, created two programs, TIP (Texas Interdisciplinary Plan) and U.L.N. (University

A fixed mindset is when people set barriers to themselves and believe they won’t be able to do or learn what they want to do. Marina Krakovsky writes about fixed mind set in her article “The Effort Effect”. In her article a business professor explains how grading systems make people think negatively about their potential, “Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer says Dweck’s research has implications for the more workaday problem of performance management. He faults businesses for spending too much time in rank-and-yank mode, grading and evaluating people instead of developing their skills” (Krakovsky). In other words Krakovsky points out how in our society we focus too much on our failures and mistakes. In this case first generation students do this a lot. They have this fixed mindset that they will continue to fail and cannot see themselves improving. This issue is important because first generation students need the help and guidance to get through school. First generation students can get through college if they seek out the help for their

If students continue to compare their failures to their full potential, it makes things worse. When they are struggling with a certain class, they give up without looking for help or stop showing up to class. Rebecca D. Cox, educator, writes in her book, The Student Fear Factor that students come into college with a lot of fear and doubts of their potential in school. In her book, a student states, “‘I turned in my first paper and I got an X… I mean, you’re supposed to get like, a B over X, or a C over X, so that you can have a chance to fix what you made a mistake in and then get that C… That’s why I don’t like turning anything in, because every time I do, I get a bad grade’” (38). Cox’s point is that students give up easily upon failure, instead of putting the effort to do better the next time. The student just gave up on herself and did nothing to improve on her writing. She could have easily gone and talked to her instructor to find out what her grade actually was, instead she chose to accept her “bad” grade. My discussion of Cox is in fact addressing the larger matter of first generation students who often do not seek help when they are struggling. Being a first generation student I have often felt discouraged about my failures. I would often times feel like I had no one to reach out to for help. This could have been avoided if I had gone to the