From the beginning of my education to now: California State University, Channel Islands as the sponsor of my literacy.

 

As I sat at the conference table eating breakfast, President Rush staring at me while I tried to figure out what I had just signed myself up for, I got the nice feeling that I had finally accomplished what I had been working my whole life to get: college. I had arrived with a huge scholarship placed in front me, and I couldn’t think of a single other thing that I wanted which was nice…for a moment. Then the nice feeling very quickly turned into a sick feeling when I suddenly felt very empty. I thought to myself: What do you mean you don’t want anything else? You don’t have any other hobbies or interests? The truth was, not really. I had worked my whole life to get this piece of paper in front of me. There was nothing else.

I turned to look up at President Rush’s smiling eyes. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Are you ready to start?”

Start? But I just finished.

I don’t believe it is naïve of me to think that everything I have learned and will ever learn all extends from this exact point in my life: my enrollment in California State University, Channel Islands (CSUCI). Not that I knew beforehand that CSUCI would be the pivotal experience; it was always this far off thing known as ‘college’.

I wouldn’t expect all college students to say the same because, for most, college is merely a means on the way to appeasing their literacy sponsors. They need master’s degrees to become psychologists, professors, dog trainers, etc. However, I am not like most college students. I have become indebted to CSUCI by means of a Presidential Scholarship. They are responsible for my access to literacy and quality of literacy. They own me, and, because of not only this debt but also because I work in the fundraising department of the university, my future has been made exasperatingly clear to me.

In 2050, a student, possibly a girl named Jennifer—or some other name that sounds perky and is easy to say—will call me and invite me to the annual President’s Dinner because by that time I will be a successful business person who owns three companies—they hoped that it would be four, but they will settle for three—that are making huge impacts on society, and she will express her utmost excitement that I would accept the her oh-so-sincere invitation to the event. I will show up and bid a few thousand dollars on auction item #13, and at the end of the night I will be feeling so generous to the institution that gave me what I have accomplished today that I will start my own endowed scholarship and join the legacy society so that my millions of dollars will not go to my seven children—all CSUCI alumni, of course—but will pass on to the university for even more scholarships. And I know that all of these things will happen because I am Jennifer (well, Madison, actually). I make these kinds of calls and send these kinds of emails all too often from my office on campus.

Obviously, that whole scenario is a ridiculous exaggeration of a possible future relationship with Channel Islands, but it does raise the question of what I am already giving and will need to give the university as a result of my scholarship.

Scholarships, in general, are interesting tools used to foster students. While scholarships provide amazing opportunities, they also exact certain things of their recipients. A  scholarship forms a contract between the provider and the recipient while the scholarship is in use–and, arguably, even after the scholarship expires.

Socially, scholars are hindered from participating in “typical” activities. Going out drinking with friends might not send the right message if someone in the community were to see. Walking around campus in comfy pajamas might look bad if a community member were to visit that day. Going to a friend’s house for the weekend instead of attending the President’s Gala is frowned up. Scholars are held to a higher and separate standard. They are expected to put social and academic standing above the desire to participate in regular college life.

Scholarships also take an emotional toll. They create this sense of competition to continue being the best–to continue being the person they offered the scholarship to. Yes, scholars are allowed to grow and learn but must do so within the guidelines of the scholarship. That 4.0 GPA won’t keep itself up. In this way, scholarships also take away the developmental opportunities that failure offers. While other students are allowed to be not good at one subject or another and can learn from their failures, scholars are expected to succeed in all academic areas with harsh consequences if failure does occur. Scholarships create this sense of fear; there is something to lose.

I see even now how these hidden clauses of my scholarship are affecting my college experience. I am asked a few times a year for statements on how the university is helping me and what my future plans are so that our fundraisers can show donors what kind of students the university is cultivating. I have to have these future plans and have to be participating in several different activities in order to truthfully write these statements. I am a fundraising tool. And so are President’s Scholars Alumni. They have moved on to do amazing things, and I can’t help but feel pressure that I am expected to do the same. I don’t have the free will to have a failed future.

As much as I can see my future, I can also, in retrospect, tell how receiving a scholarship to CSUCI has ended my educational path from my birth all through high school. I started my academic journey as a small child. Spurred by the education of my four older siblings, I was promptly sneaked into kindergarten before I was five years old. From kindergarten until sixth grade, I relocated schools four times in search of the highest level of education possible despite never moving homes . My parents were the reason for this. With three siblings in college and one on the way, they were just trying to best prepare me for the inevitability of college.

After elementary school, the pressure only increased. Middle School honors track was only to prepare me for high school honors track which was only to prepare me for Advanced Placement (AP) classes which were only useful to gain college course credit as you can tell from the College Board Advanced Placement Webpage. After all, the original intent for AP classes was only to create a smooth transition from high school into college (Warne, Larsen, Anderson, and Odasso 400). It was only in my best interest that I got, on average, 5 hours of sleep to make the hour trek to the best high school around. The only problem was that I had vigorously trained for one thing that I wasn’t even sure I wanted. You know what I am talking about… just choose any cheesy {insert sport here} movie where the son ends up yelling, “No dad, I’m not breaking my dreams, I’m breaking yours!” and then walks out the front door followed by a sad emotional montage. But of course, that teenage rebellion lasted all of two seconds until my perfect grades and community service landed me a scholarship. Who can turn that down?

After all, money holds such high priority that I would be crazy to turn down a free college education. I feel that if I had turned it down, I would be spitting in the face of anyone who struggled for their literacy such as Malcom X or Malala Yousafzai.

Malcom X was an African-American man born into a racist culture and participated in illegal activities to make a living. He found literacy that would support him in a white culture while in jail (Malcolm X 1-6).

 

Malala Yousafzai was born into a sexist culture through which she has fought, almost giving her life, in order to have access to education.

 

I am a Caucasian women born into a mostly Caucasian suburb within a feminist culture. I didn’t have to fight for my literacy. I was born into the ‘proper’ standard of literacy and was perfectly positioned by my economic status, education level of my parents, and gender to be a perfect candidate for college. Who am I to turn down a free education when others have suffered for theirs?

Through the narratives of my early education and my position in society, I see evidence of a stress more on college than on literacy. For example, I crammed two years of Spanish into two weeks during one summer just so that I would be able to apply to college. I did not do that for myself. In no way, was that beneficial to my learning or literacy, but I made these kinds of sacrifices throughout my education because college is so important in today’s society. This compromise is becoming more and more common. I would like to show you an excerpt from Eccles, Vida, and Barber’s study on The Relation of Early Adolescents’ College Plans and Both Academic Ability and Task-Value Beliefs to Subsequent College Enrollment:

“Although we agree with the importance of eighth grade, we believe the groundwork for eighth graders’ academic decisions and performances is laid at younger ages. Consequently, it is important that parents set high educational goals for their children and discuss course selection and future plans for college with them earlier than eighth grade” (75).

There is a frame of mind that I had my whole life and that still continues in many people today that a long-term focus on college strengthens the potential of “academic, personal, social, psychological, and financial” aspects of education to align for a beneficial college experience (Eccles, Vida, and Barber 74). But what is wrong with this statement? Living acollege-centered life gets you a good college experience…and then what?

This stress over college occurred, for me, because of the sponsorship of Channel Islands. What makes CSUCI a sponsor? In her Sponsors of Literacy, Deborah Brandt explains that organizations become sponsors when they offer literacy at some cost (178). Colleges are sponsors in the sense that they have what we need: degrees. In the current ever-changing culture, the standard of literacy is constantly in flux and on the rise. In order for me to be successful and survive in the world, I need to have the education of a college (Eccles, Vida, and Barber 74). And this is where CSUCI holds economic power over me. This is why I am here despite not necessarily wanting to be. CSUCI is one of many sponsors who “are delivery systems for the economy of literacy…” (167). And they are willing to offer literacy to me as long as I pay them back.

My payment towards CSUCI will be unlike others’ payments to the multitudes of other sponsors because I am attending CI at a very interesting time in its growth as an institution: its youth. Channel Islands needs me, among its other alumni, to build up its credibility in academia. My award of the scholarship is a huge proof to that statement. I have excellent academic standing and a bright future (if I choose to). Based on my past achievement, I was awarded the scholarship in hopes that my future achievements could bolster the name of CSUCI. If I had not received the scholarship, I probably would have gone to a more revered and settled college (Stanford, Harvard, UCLA, etc.) than CSUCI, but because CSUCI took economic power by giving me money, I decided to attend. Now they have the power again, and I have lost my bargaining chips. My repayment to CSUCI will not be physical repayment but will consist of me lending back to them all future success and achievements (Brandt 167).

There is only one problem with my criticism: Channel Islands is expecting me to appropriate the knowledge they are giving me and succeed in society as my repayment to them. In this sense, while I can criticize them with grounds to do so, can I rightly call them a negative sponsor in my life if the way that I am to seek revenge against them according to Brandt is through appropriation which  is exactly the one thing that they want me to do (183)? But in this sense, I can still criticize them for that because while they say (and I do believe) that they want me to appropriate the literacy they are giving me for my own use and own good, that is not their only motive. They want to then use my future success.

Still, maybe Channel Islands is, in the end, the type of sponsor that Brandt advocates. They are helping me to pursue literacy in a practical way because they know (and now I do too) that literacy is equally (if not more so) in pursuit of me (Brandt 183).

 

Works Cited

Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” College Composition and Communication. 49.2 (1998): 165-185. Jstor. Web. 13 Sept. 2015.

Eccles, Jacquelynne S., Mina N. Vida, and Bonnie Barber. “The Relation Of Early Adolescents’ College Plans And Both Academic Ability And Task-Value Beliefs To Subsequent College Enrollment.” Journal Of Early Adolescence 24.1 (2004): 63-77. Academic Search Premier. Web.  10 Sept. 2015.

Malcolm X. Digital image. Malcom X. The Red List, n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.

Malcolm X. “Learning to Read.” The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Random House, 1964. Web. 13 Sept. 2015.

Mapp, Kevin. CI President’s Scholars. Digital image. About the President’s Scholars Program. California State University, Channel Islands, 2015. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.

Office of the President. N.p.: Office of the President, n.d. President’s Scholars. CSU Channel Islands, 2015. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.

Office of the President. N.p.: Office of the President, n.d. President’s Scholars Alumni. CSU Channel Islands, 2015. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.

Olmos, Antonio. Malala Yousafzai. Digital image. My Letter to Noble Peace Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai. The Odyssey Online, 2 Nov. 2015. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.

Warne, Russell T., et al. “The Impact Of Participation In The Advanced Placement Program On Students’ College Admissions Test Scores.” Journal Of Educational Research108.5 (2015): 400-416. Academic Search Premier. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.

“Work Toward College Success.” The Rewards – Explore AP – The College Board. The College Board, 2015. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.