Not Bad For A Small Town Gal
BY KATRINA JAMES
Driving East on Highway 12 you can see rolling wheat hills. As you head toward town, on your left a faded Jolly Green Giant smiles down at you from the golden hill above. My mom helped paint it her senior year of high school. He points you in the direction of the old canning factory, long since shutdown.
I never worked on a farm, though most of my peers did. At fourteen, I got my first job thanks to the Blue Mountain Action Council (BMAC) which had a program connecting young people with their first jobs. One summer day I walked into the Liberty Theater for the first time not as a guest, but as an employee. I loved everything: scraping the gum out from under the chairs, sweeping and vacuuming the aisles, seeing free movies, making the popcorn, balancing the till. But one thing sticks out especially for me: staring for minutes on end at a print called All the World’s a Stage by James C. Christensen.
The print features many of Shakespeare’s characters interacting and telling their stories all at once in a beautiful cacophony on a golden stage. I remembered staring up at this print as a girl, and now in the quiet theater I had all the time in the world to take it in.
I got my first job at fourteen, which is around the time my mom quit hers. We scraped by for a long time, which is nothing new to our family. When my grandpa was a boy he and his six or so siblings lived together in a small shack. My grandpa, one of the youngest, was the first of his family to graduate from high school. Most of the adults in my life had not gone to college, and those that did never finished. The first time I really thought about college I was 13. I was so confused because my classmates seemed to understand the assignment- picking our future college- and I had only thought about it as an abstract idea.
In high school I got into the AVID program. AVID stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination. It is a college readiness program that gave me time and resources to apply to colleges, scholarships, and job shadow. When I started my undergrad I was disoriented at first; neither of my parents were involved in my college experience. I am thankful that throughout college I had various support systems to get me through as a first generation student.
After graduation I found myself in a similar position from where I started. What now? I have a degree but how do those skills lend to my current job, and where do I go from here in my career? I had all of these questions and that is why I joined the First Gen Cohorts Program. I have been able to discuss my fears, anxieties, and questions, in equal measure with my hopes, dreams, and desires.
After BMAC and AVID, this was the next logical step for me and it was sorely needed. My family might not have had the experience necessary to help me through college and with my career, but there have been so many people in various programs who have gotten me where I am today. I like to look back at all of the people who helped me like All the World’s a Stage and see where in my life these players showed me how to create a good life. I like to think about my grandpa being the first to graduate high school, and feel that his motivation lives on in me. Through the help and support of people who care, who once were strangers, I have been able to break barriers in my family. Not bad for a small town gal.
