Richard Middleton-Kaplan
Dean of Arts & Sciences, Criminal Justice, Early Childhood & Parenting Education, and Human & Social Services
“Although my parents were not able to complete college degrees on their own because of various barriers at the time, including needing to work to help support their families, their aspiration was always for me to go to College. My mother, as the daughter of a single mother on Welfare, could not complete college; moreover, her dream of becoming a Spanish teacher was scuttled because she had a very slight lisp because of gapped teeth–something we would consider barely detectable now–and under New York rules at the time that disqualified her from becoming a teacher (because of official fear that she would teach students to speak with a lisp). I cannot remember a time, no matter how far back, when it was not simply assumed that I would go to College. As children of immigrants from Eastern Europe, they saw education as the path to a better future in the United States. I am proud to have fulfilled their hopes for me to achieve what circumstances prevented them from doing.”
What’s your advice for first-gen students?
“I never wanted to lose my sense of connection to my parents’ working backgrounds and lives. That influenced me in many ways. When seeking jobs to support my education throughout high school, college, and graduate school, I purposely sought out physical labor–furniture mover, stock clerk, butcher’s apprentice–although my classmates who worked all seemed to find better paying jobs that were less physically arduous. But I wanted to maintain that connection to a sort of blue-collar world. In graduate school, when I wrote papers, I went out of my way to avoid the disciplinary jargon that my peers tossed around and instead tried to write in a way such that even my parents could understand it. I needed to maintain inside myself the idea that I was not leaving my background and my parents behind.
On the negative side, because I did not have savvy advisors, I sometimes declined to pursue opportunities that might have been open to me. For example, I decided not to apply to Stanford and UC Berkeley because I just assumed that they were unaffordable. My parents had driven me to those places for campus visits and were supportive, but somehow I decided internally that they would be unaffordable for my family and that sufficient financial aid would not come through. In retrospect, perhaps it would have. So my message is this: Never say NO to yourself. Never pour concrete over a pathway of your own future. Give yourself a chance. Let someone else say NO. They might say NO, but they also might surprise you with a YES. Give them the chance to tell you YES or NO, but never say NO to yourself.
My other message is that although I did not pursue these opportunities, I did get a great education (at UCLA) and I am grateful for that education every day of my life. I would not have met my wife, I would not live in the kind of house I do, I would have the daily pleasures of interacting with wonderful co-workers, I would not have traveled to the marvelous places I’ve been for academic conferences…without my education. It made everything possible about my life as it is now. I am grateful to it, and to my late parents of beloved and blessed memory for encouraging me, every single day.”
