A rural Nebraska student writes about her transition to college

I just came across this piece by Lily Nagengast in the Hechinger Report, about Ms. Nagengast's transition from a rural high school in Nebraska (Bloomfield, population 1,028) to Boston College.  Here's an excerpt:  

While rural students encounter challenges similar to those faced by other underserved students, such as having to navigate the complex financial aid process with little assistance, some obstacles are specific to our student experience. To address these barriers and improve college access for rural students, colleges need to listen to rural voices.

For me, the challenges began in high school. For instance, my guidance counselor — who served as the guidance counselor for grades K through 12 — had only used the Common Application once before: the prior year, when my older brother applied to college.

In my college search, I largely relied on information gleaned from the internet and advice from my brother. Needless to say, in my school, preparation for standardized testing was minimal. Even if we wanted to take advantage of free online test preparation resources, the lack of high-speed internet access prevented my peers and me from doing so.

When I left my hometown to attend college, I knew my background would be different from that of my new peers. What I didn’t know was how different. At the time, I didn’t have the language for it. I struggled academically for the first time, earning mostly B’s and C’s while taking my college’s core curriculum. My high school didn’t offer any honors or Advanced Placement classes.

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Although college-going has increased among rural students in recent years, the number filling out the federal application for financial aid dropped in 2020. While many attribute this drop to the pandemic, I see it as emblematic of larger problems plaguing rural students’ pursuit of higher education. Already exhausted and frustrated by the emotional and structural hardships the pandemic laid bare — such as isolation and lack of access to high-speed internet — rural students must reckon with the formidable question: Why spend four years of your life pursuing a degree when higher education doesn’t acknowledge or reduce the burden of your hardships?

I’m not advocating that all rural students need to pursue, or should aspire to, higher education. Instead, I’d argue that it shouldn’t be so difficult for the students that do. Improving rural students’ access to higher education isn’t an impossible task; it can be done. Consider the University of Georgia’s successful ALL Georgia Program, a new initiative developed specifically for rural students that provides scholarships, summer academic preparation programs, mentors and academic advising.

An essay with some similar themes, by Claire Vaye Watkins, is here.  My own essay about going from rural Arkansas to law school is here. 

I came across Ms. Nagengast when her Master's Thesis, in English from Georgetown University, was posted online to a few days ago.  It's titled "Repositioning the Rural: Contemporary Representations of Gender and Rurality in American Media and Memoir," and it centers Sarah Smarsh's memoir Heartland:  On Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth.  I'm happy to say that Nagengast also cites my 2007 article, Toward a Feminist Theory of the Rural.