Reflection: The reality of what circumstances can mean

During Friday’s discussion, we got to talking about education as a right vs. a privilege and how accessible higher education is to society. When some people started saying things like, “you can get anything you want if you work for it,” and “college is possible for those who really want it,” I started to get a bit annoyed and it got to me on a personal level. I was frustrated at people’s ignorance, but at the same time I recognize that some people are just removed from certain situations and thus stems their lack of knowledge. I raised my hand to voice my opinion and concluded with something along the lines of “it all depends on circumstances.” PTJ then asked, “like what?” and at that, a flood of emotions washed over me.  Since I was not comfortable sharing personal situations, and since that was all that was going through my mind at the time, I wasn’t able to verbalize my thoughts or offer any examples as to what circumstances I was talking about.  I’d like to try again.

While victorious stories like those of Chris Gardner’s in the Pursuit of Happyness can and do happen, for many people, such a rise to success through hard work and determination is not always a reality. To echo what Katrina stated, there are countless circumstances that factor into the chance for someone to obtain a higher degree, including both social and economic factors. If, for example, the eldest child of a family acts as the caregiver for younger siblings, and the parents (or parent) cannot afford to hire someone else, then that teenager will likely be forced to forgo any college opportunity. If the mother of a family is illiterate and her daughter is the one who pays the bills, reads the mail, and sorts her mother’s prescriptions, then whether the daughter gets accepted into college or not doesn’t matter because there’s no way she can leave her mother. It doesn’t matter how much he/she may want to get a college degree and it doesn’t matter how hard he/she works to earn the chance to get a college degree, there are always going to be circumstances for some people that pose an impassable barrier.