To not understand people who talk about being the first in their family to go to uni like it’s a badge of honour?

[Kyrgyzstan]

Sorry if this sounds dismissive of their achievements but isn’t it less of a rags to riches tale of personal achievement and more of a generational difference? I mean barely any of our parents generation went to university and now it’s pretty much expected if you want a half way decent job.

Obviously if you were raised by heroin addicts and managed to still get good grades and go off to uni that’s different but the children of ordinary parents who just didn’t go to university talking about it like a huge achievement sounds a little strange to me?

Yet your barriers were so great you DIDNT go despite clearly wanting to.

I don’t think I lack achievement I have a beautiful family, GCSEs and a level 3 qualification ready to go to university in a few years. You asked me if I even have a job hoping to get some ammunition

And you’re still missing the huge point that they got TRAINING. That their training might have been vocational but they’re not working in a low skilled job. But one that required them to read, wrote, have soecific skills theyre using everyday.
The very fa to that those jobs didn’t require a degree then but do now is telling you they are skilled jobs.

That’s not the same than someone who didn’t go further than a GCSE.

And btw, I was abused/neglected as a child. I have cptsd as a result. That didn’t stop me from getting a VERY good Master (30 years ago when getting a master was very unusual).
It fucked my life up. Not my education.

It feels the way you look at things is full of preconceived ideas on what is or isn’t a hindrance to studying/going to Uni.

So let me get this right, @Kyrgyzstan , only those from pukka deprived backgrounds get to be publicly proud of their achievements?

How would this go in a social situation? How would it be framed so as to be OK in your eyes? How would you know, seeing as you're the one exercised by this?

What a weaselly, mean-spirited thread.

As I said I have GCSEs went to college with a nursery attached and will go to uni when my kids are a little older, my parents didn’t go to uni but that’s completely irrelevant you don’t need parents to have been to uni to tell you how to go, the information is all available online

Statistically, your mother’s education level has a huge impact on your outcomes in life. In reality, the father is also important, but this information is much more difficult to collect consistently, so mother’s education is traditionally used for studies.

If your parents didn’t go to university, you are less likely to go to university. That might not be true for any one family, but it is true in a societal level. We know working class parents can be supportive and encouraging and highly educated parents can be abusive assholes who kick their kids out the second it is legal. This is about generalizations, not individual cases.

that it is easier for some young adults to walk the path to university does not devalue their achievement. They still have to do the work. We can still give a little extra acknowledgement to the people who may have had an extra challenge to get there.

I pointed out I’ve mentioned a hundred times on this thread that having abusive/drug addict parents is a massive barrier despite not experiencing that myself.

The problem is that abuse/neglect doesn’t automatically lead to poor achievement at school/Uni.
It might do if the child/teen ends rebelling, not going to school etc…
But you can be abused/neglected afd still get very good grades (and then abuse is usually never spotted at school). You might even have parents who abuse you AND expect you to do well at school.

Yes, it's a big deal. I work in higher education and the proportion of 'first in family' students is a pretty important statistic that universities will report on and monitor as part of their widening participation activities.

It's pretty well documented that access to higher education is harder for those that don't have family that have experienced it themselves. Figuring out which uni to apply for, how to navigate all the different stages etc.

What about when you turn up and find everyone else is far more intelligent, mature confident and worldly wise in comparison to you? When you can’t contribute to seminars or discussions because their learning is far in advance of yours. When you find they somehow know all the little secrets to life you can’t just google.

of course you might just sign up at your local university and rock up every few days to the university of Essex or wherever, attend a lecture, drive yourself home after wards and forget about it.

that is a very marginal (and not necessarily very value add) version of “getting a degree”

Maybe when you've done 3-4 years of uni, you might have more understanding of what an achievement it is.

When you've juggled assignments and part time work (or in your case family) you might understand more of why it's difficult for some. You might develop some critical thinking skills.

You don't ever know what has gone on in someone else past - nobody here owes you their story of neglect or abuse just to prove they acheieved something you deem worthy. None of us went to university to prove anything to you (or anyone else) but for ourselves. I hope when your children go to university you take great pleasure and pride in their achievements.

It was beyond my families expectations to even think about university it just wasn’t for us

I didn’t go until I was in my mid 30’s (in my 50’s now) and felt really sad when I graduated that my grandparents were not there as they woudl have been unbelievably proud and I know if they were still alive they would when dropped it into every conversation they had be it relevant or not

I’m still the only one and I am hopping ds will go to university and become a doctor (the dream 😁 he has no desire to become a doctor but I’m working on it)

so yes it’s a badge of honour if you want to refer to it in that way

Agreed. OP clearly has no awareness that there are many disadvantaged backgrounds. You don’t need to have substance abuse or alcoholism in your family to experience challenges and obstacles in accessing further and higher education. It is not that easy to break cycles of generational trauma and poverty. How about letting people feel proud of their achievements, even if your own privilege doesn’t allow you to understand how huge a deal it is for them.
Nasty thread indeed.

I agree. Uni is mostly meaningless now. I did a law degree, my parents didn’t go to uni. I found it pretty easy, I did it while working full time too as I went a couple of years after my peers.

Unless you’re doing something like maths or astrophysics I’m not particularly impressed by degrees. Though maybe even those are made straight forward to pass as well?

It never even crossed my mind that my mum and dad hadn’t done uni. We just live different lives in different generations. My dad was successful in the fire service, but didn’t do “uni”, he had a trade prior to that.

Well, hopefully university will help you broaden your horizons and who knows, maybe even your children’s prospects.

(I became a mother at 16 as well and I’m honestly baffled at how dismissive you are of other people’s accomplishments, but I suspect this post is just a riling exercise)

God how rude maybe they will all be more intelligent than me but I doubt a bunch of 18 year olds will be more mature and worldly wise than a mother ten years older than them

Ancestors of mine were amongst the first to study Philosophy at Lampeter University in the 1830s. Nearly 200 years ago. You on the other hand, sound completely clueless.

My grandad started in this country as a road sweeper. My mother left school at 16 to get (arranged) married. My family are big on family business rather than academia. So yes it was a pretty big deal when I went to uni 20 odd years ago and became a lawyer. It may be more expected than in previous generations but it represented our family being able to feel established and have financially stable careers than previous generations.

What does being a mother have to do it, do you plan to start every assignment with “As a mother…”?

Ok? Less than 1% of people went to uni in the 1800s. Do you not understand what I’m trying to say? Getting a degree is an accomplishment but not having parents who went to uni isn’t unusual, considering it just wasn’t as common in the past as it is now

No I don’t did you read the comment I responded to? Are you being deliberately obtuse? To think the average 18 year olds is more mature and worldly wise than a woman a decade older with children of her own?

I tried to go to university, my mum didn’t understand why. As others said it wasn’t for the like of us, it didn’t make sense to her. You just got a job at 16 and paid rent. During sixth form I worked two jobs to pay for bus fair and clothes etc I eventually left before taking my levels as i just didn’t have the support from home. I really wanted to go, but had no real guidance or support and no idea how to get there :(

I couldn’t be prouder of my daughters having choices. That’s all I wanted for them, that we would support them and give them every opportunity possible. My eldest has finished uni and now in her second year of her grad job role. My second can’t wait to go to uni.

Unless you know what’s it like to really have no choice. I will shout loud how very proud I am of my girls achievements.

Do you still not get it?

Up until very very recently, most people who went to uni had parents (and occasionally grandparents) who went to uni. It was a small number of people.

And even now, half of people don’t go to uni.

In all your many posts on this thread you have done nothing to change the original opinion that you’re just sniping at people who’ve achieved something you haven’t.

Again, I said you *have little in the way of academic or professional achievements. Having a beautiful family is neither of those things, so not relevant to this conversation. And if uni isn’t an achievement, then GCSEs certainly aren’t.

I don’t need to ‘hope to get ammunition’, the ammunition is all there: You were a teen mother. You don’t have a degree. You don’t have (by your own admission) a decent job.

So, again: you haven’t been to uni and don’t have a good job, so have little in the way of academic or professional achievements. Perhaps acknowledge that you’re not in a position to sneer at other people for being proud of their own.

You can pretend this isn’t the case as much as you like, but it’s still highly amusing. A lot of huffing and puffing from someone who has achieved so little because of ‘reasons’ (but thinks they totally will, once they get round to it).

Yeah, go to an elite university and you’ll noticeably see many students are more intelligent and mature than you, confidently so.

i mean, they’ll be people who are more intelligent and mature than you at any university, but the more privileged the university the more obvious it’ll be

Based on the level of reasoning she’s displaying here, OP is going to find university extremely difficult (if she ever actually manages to go).