Essay On First Generation College Students

Individuals such as Steve Jobs, President Obama and John Pemberton, explain how one specific aspect of their life drastically changed causing them to become more driven to find success and innovation. The motivation of first generation college students can be broken into multiple categories. As a new first generation college student I can confirm that a student’s motivation can change over time when going to college. In the article “First Generation College Students: Motivation, Integration, and Academic Achievement summary” written by Moises Prospero and Shetal Vohra-Gupta (2007), they explain that students who attend college to receive a higher paycheck tend to have a lower grade point average. Many low income students are driven to drop
After meeting with my professional mentor, I realized that being a first generation student can be used as an advantage when interviewing for jobs. It shows my motivation that I had to change my life. When I entered college, I believed to be deemed successful you had to have the highest paycheck possible in your field of study. However, after becoming a responsible college student I began to understand that the intrinsic motivation and academic achievement contribute to a student’s academic success. This suggest that students who are motivated to learn for their own educational benefit, reap the most out of their college education because these students feel they can make a bigger difference for their community. They are willing to go to class because they are interested in new material rather than viewing the degree as a source of money. I have been intrinsically motivated because I was raised that having a high education makes you a more respectable person. I wanted to bring prestige to my family by bringing a college degree to my family. Additionally, first generation students are at a major disadvantage caused by a lack of psychosocial and cognitive