Student journalist Amanda Allen shares a revealing perspective of life on her Ann Arbor campus that outsiders don't often see.
Amanda Allen: "University life was strangely foreign." She was "impressed and intimidated" at first. (Facebook photo)
"Like other first-generation students and those from lower socioeconomic areas might feel, university life was strangely foreign," the University of Michigan junior from the outskirts of Flint -- "the white-flight area" -- writes Wednesday in a "Personal Statement" section of The Michigan Daily. Her piece is among "seven stories of love, of loss, of heartbreak, of anger," as the paper's introduction says.
Allen, a global studies major who is assistant photo editor of the student daily, tells why she sees "no future for myself in Flint" and why UM "feels like another world."
Supported by a single mother, I struggle with having less capital than the general U of M population (sorry friends, $50 is nowhere near “cheap” for me) and feeling generally unprepared.
I remember in the first few weeks of college being so impressed and intimidated at the way that people articulated in speech, even in everyday conversations, that I was afraid to speak at all.
The essayist describes a push and pull between her past and her future:
- She feels "caught between never really wanting to go back, but anxious to reach out to friends in Flint dealing with broken families."
- She wonders "why I chose to study international issues at the university rather than focus on serious issues right in my backyard."
- She experiences "guilt for not doing more with the resources I have now . . . guilt for complaining about all of this when I wasn’t from the 'real Flint' and subjected to gang violence and serious blight, which are very real things for a lot of residents. It was guilt for getting out when others couldn’t.
Wednesday's essay in the student paper is in a section with seven heartfelt reflections.
After describing her hometown as "like a smaller version of Detroit," Allen adds:
But, like Detroit, that is not the whole story of the city. I don’t want to paint Flint as a city devoid of anything positive — that wouldn’t be fair. . . .
There is the Flint Cultural Center, which provides great art, music and theatre community events and education. There is the Flint Public Library with all of its glorious books. Downtown Flint is beautiful, with its iconic iron archways and brick lanes lined by historic buildings.
Flint just wasn’t for me, though. Despite the good, I felt the negatives overshadowed it. . . .
With luck and a whole lot of scholarships, I am very happy to have been provided the opportunity to attend this amazing university in Ann Arbor. . . .
I commend all who stay in Flint, doing good works and trying to move the city forward. I commend all of the hard workers in Flint, just trying to make a living and make a good life for themselves and their children. But for me, I think leaving was one of the best decisions I’ve made for myself.
That's it -- no moment of Zen, just a young woman's honest self-portrait of a Michigan life in transition. It's a journey experienced by other first-generation students at UM, MSU and other campuses away from the streets they knew.
-- Alan Stamm
