Top Challenges for First Generation students in College

Links of resources mentioned in the episode located here:
https://www.arnoldmorales.com/nontraditionalcollegesuccess

Congratulations! you decided to attend community college. Attending community college was the decision that changed my life. I went from minimum wage warehouse employee to six figures engineer and it all started with the decision to get educated.

There are many challenges community college students go through. In this article you will learn how to overcome those obstacles. Doing the research for this article, and by research I mean google, I gathered the most common challenges and grouped them in three categories. Not enough time, not enough money, and I am not sure what I am doing. 

The following is what I have learned from experience and reading self-improvement books. 

I am not sure what I am doing

If you did not go to college straight out of high school, graduated with a GED, are the first in your family to go to college, do not do well with modern technology you probably have a lot of questions and are not sure what you are doing. That makes our confidence low and makes the biggest obstacle ourselves. Repeat after me. I can do this. I started community college and had no idea what to do. I did not know what to study, I did not know what I needed to apply and succeed. I did not know how to pay for college. I had no one to ask in my family.  I started engineering without even knowing what an engineer was. 3 Tips

I do not have enough Time

If you are working a full-time job, going to school part time, have family you take care of, or are juggling a lot this section is for you. Time is the most valuable resource we have. Once it is gone it will never come back. So how do we fit everything in our schedule? In the past my wife worked a full-time job and went to school full time. Now we have a baby, so she takes care of the baby and goes to school full time. I went to school full time, had one or two part time jobs, and was very involved with organizations. 4 Tips

I do not have enough Money

Money is one of the biggest obstacles for everything we want to do but going to a community college we have a huge advantage on getting affordable education. I started cc and had no idea how I was going to pay for it. I come from a low-income family household and they were not going to pay for the ridiculously high college tuition. If you have children, if you are a single parent or help someone in your family financially this is even harder to overcome. I received about $80,000 in aid for four years. $62,000 of those are in grants and scholarships that I will never have to repay. Remember I started as a GED graduate and had no idea what I was doing so you can do this to.  4 Tips

Nontraditional will motivate and empower students to get more out of your college experience. You will learn how to land your dream job, enjoy college more, make an impact, make lifelong friends and graduate with less debt 

This podcast is for College students that are first generation, delayed enrollment, older student, second career, military, Community college, Low income, Independent, Women in stem, minorities such as Hispanic, African American, Asian American and others; GED Graduates, Students that Work full time, attend school part time, Undocumented, DACA, and International students.