Category: Blog Posts

I went down a bit of a research wormhole today, I was doing my reading for The American Community College and found a line that I couldn’t get out of my head.

“the result is that 74% of students at the nations top 146 colleges come from the richest socioeconomic quartile and just 3% come from the poorest quartile” Anthony P. Carnevale and Stephen J. Rose

This was in comparison to the 26% of students from the poorest quartile that attend Community Colleges. During my last year at Beloit College, Olivia Love and I got an unexpected check from the college and when we started asking questions, Olivia was told that there was left over money and it went to the poorest 30 students at the school, the bottom 2.5% out of our classmates. Using the same metrics that Carnevale and Rose used to determine the top 146 schools in 2004, I looked at Beloit college and found that it was in the top two tiers of most competitive/ highly competitive plus, their cut off for the top schools.

I had a strong suspicion that Olivia and I would fall into the poorest of the poor category. We both grew up hovering at or just below the poverty level, we met as children and reconnected at our local community college, College of Lake County. Olivia was there to finish high school (always a brilliant student, never challenged enough by her local public high school) and I was there after just barely managing to graduate high school, with a GPA so low that it was below most colleges cut off for admission.

I will defend Community Colleges until I take my dying breath, they are amazing resources that folks from all different walks of life have access to. For me, I was able to build my confidence in school. For the first time I got an A in a class, and my professors encouraged me and I felt a new fire. Both Olivia and I were able to work along going to classes, as did most of the students in our classes.

I didn’t have the social/familial capital to know how to set my sights on a college and apply, so once I was in my 3rd year of Community College I thought that would be the end of my formal education journey, and I heavily considered applying for a banker promotion at my job. Olivia had applied to a handful of colleges in Wisconsin and Beloit seemed really appealing to her and Susan, Olivia’s mother and my good family friend. They pulled me aside for an intervention of sorts and helped me look at 4 year colleges, I didn’t understand that students like us (poor) could go to a baccalaureate granting institution. I had gone to CLC for free because of federal aid, and they showed me that Beloit offered generous financial aid packages to poor families too.

 

We both applied and were accepted. Olivia and I lived together for our first year, non-traditional students against the bougie world that is Beloit. We both acclimated well (with our own missteps and terrible stories, no doubt) but we made it.

 

At Beloit we represent/ed the 2.5% of the poorest students, in the nation we represent the 3% of students from the lowest socioeconomic quartile attending one of the top colleges in the top two tiers of selectivity in the United States.

 

Olivia has been on the Dean’s List every semester she has attended Beloit, she has starred in musicals and made long lasting friendships. She still works multiple jobs, a reality of low-income students and a habit that will probably never go away.

I started my first semester of grad-school at UW-Madison in the Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis program, with an emphasis on Higher Education Student Affairs, it is the #1 program of its kind in the United States.

Is this a Community College success story? Is this a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” example? How many students out of that 3% graduate from the “top-colleges” that they got into? At what cost- emotionally and financially?

Olivia and I both still experience imposter-syndrome in our respective spaces, I’ve been told that no matter how much success we have that feeling will never go away.

Written by: Willow Wallis

Hello! Here is a handy-dandy list of some of the sources we used and discussed in Episode 3, in order of when they were mentioned.

The Guardian, “The healthcare gender bias: do men get better medical treatment?” by Fay Schopen, Nov 20, 2017.

Endometriosis UK, “NICE call for improved diagnosis and management of endometriosis,” Sept 7, 2017.

NY Times, “Wider Racial Gap Found in Cervical Cancer Deaths” by Jan Hoffman, Jan 23, 2017.

The Hill, “For women of color, the ‘healthcare gap’ is real and deadly” by Domenica Ghanem, March 8, 2017.

CNN, “After Serena Williams gave birth, ‘Everything went bad'” by Susan Scullt, Jan 11, 2018.

My LOLA, “How to advocate for yourself at the doctor,” March 17, 2017.

The Atlantic, “How Doctors Take Women’s Pain Less Seriously” by Joe Fassler, Oct 15, 2015.

Healthline, “The Husband Stitch Isn’t Just a Horrifying Childbirth Myth” by Carrie Murphy, Jan 24, 2018.

 

Hey folks!

I’ve been seeking a venue to post some life updates and this seems like just the place.

I graduated college. WOW. I’m going to sound like a broken record but let me tell you I never imagined this would happen. Just two short years ago I was finishing up my 3rd year at community college and was considering accepting a banker position where I worked full-time as a teller. The salary started at $60,000 and it already seemed like a dream bigger than I could imagine. A dear family friend of mine was giving me a ride after the battery of my car died and she pulled over, locked the doors, turn to me and said “you need to pursue a 4 year degree Willow”.

I was baffled. I didn’t know that was an option. Her daughter, my best friend, was applying to colleges and they were tapped into the potential financial aid packages that low income families could receive. Sort of on a hail mary I visited Beloit College with said dear friend and just fell in love. I applied, let my lease end, kept working feverishly at the bank in an effort to save up money and just like that I was accepted and packing my belongings in a car before I could even process what had happened.

Two years went by so fast, and so slow. I had some of the hardest, and some of the most rewarding endeavors to date. All of those are a story for another time (and perhaps, for my therapists ears first)

My health got considerably worse at Beloit. My mobility declined, my pain increased, and the medical bills continued to grow. Last fall I was diagnosed with Hypermobile-EDS and that lead to a whole slew of tests (genetics, heart echo-gram, blood work, rheumatology appointments, tests after tests) and I finally wound up at the UW-Madison Pain Clinic per the recommendation of a dear spoonie friend. I’d never had an experience where a doctor had really spent time familiarizing himself with my pages and pages and pages of medical issues and history. The doctor I saw was so amazing, I was there for over 2 and 1/2 hours. He explained to me how folks with chronic pain have receptors that create stuff similar to opioids and pump it through the body when experiencing extreme levels of pain, which means that those receptors are clogged when traditional opioid-medicine is entered into the system. He did a comprehensive exam to see how and where I was hypermobile, and validated my extreme pain by verbalizing how out of wack my bones and joints were.

He explained how science isn’t caught up to a lot of chronic pain disorders, and that hypermobile-eds and hypermobility diagnosis sort of depend on the doctor looking at you (they’re considered in some circles to be the same thing). Also, centralized sensitization is another all encapsulating term for folks who’s systems are over processing and sending out faulty signals that result in widespread health issues and pain. I was prescribed Lyrica, a handicap placard, OT and PT. It was such a validating experience.

 

Flash-forward to the walgreens drive-up where they informed me the month supply of Lyrica would be $780. I’m heartbroken, currently fighting with my insurance and will post updates as they come.