If you know me, of even if you don’t, one of the most interesting ‘facts’ about me is where I grew up. When I tell people where I spent my formative years, I am frequently met with two responses: “I’ve never been there,” or “What was it like growing up there?”
Oklahoma, to the people on the coasts, feels as foreign a place as New Delhi. Growing up there, I found myself an Indian culture ambassador within my peer group. One simple example: the Diwali one-sheets I would create and hang inside the bathroom stalls of my sorority house. On it, I would include photos of me in my traditional dress and a western-friendly spin on Diwali facts: “It’s like 4th of July, Christmas and New Year’s all combined.”
Now, in my adult life, the roles have reversed. Conversations about my Oklahoma upbringing are more interesting in spaces I enter now.
There aren’t as many of us ‘Okies’ on the coasts because there isn’t an easy or well-traveled pathway to places like New York City. I know from first hand experience that it takes a lot of courage, inner drive and risk tolerance to find your way out of the region, should you desire it.
So, when I meet fellow Sooners who have done that too, I am curious about their stories. At an event, where I met some incredible Oklahoma-born leaders, I was reminded of the power of determination and the transformative impact of education in America.
Education as impact
At a San Francisco event for the University of Oklahoma, my alma mater, a group of 30 or so of us alumni gathered at an elegant member’s only club. This was the first Bay Area alumni event (that I was aware of) in my 5 years of living here. This is sharply in contrast to the Harvard Business School alumni association, which holds weekly events for graduates and boasts thousands of members.
So, it was special for me to attend this event. As I walked into the 9th floor library, I stayed on the fringe to view the room full of mingling attendees. I felt a slow wave of childhood deja vu blanket me, entering the thick sea of southern drawls and “y’alls” floating. I also seemed to be the only person of color in the room, another old but familiar feeling.
True to the Sooner-state way, fellow alums began approaching me with a friendly smile to ask me how I was connected to OU. If you attended college in Oklahoma, chances as you grew up there, too. Inevitably, we exchanged details about what high schools we attended and the towns in which we grew up. Responses were always met with a familiarity so deep, it created a type of comfort and ease that’s hard to express.
Over the next hour, I met incredible individuals with very different stories of how they found their way to San Francisco – one a private equity professional who shared that he moved around many times while growing up in Oklahoma City, in and out of the rough parts of town. Even still, he found his way to college, then Ivy League institutions and eventually a successful career in finance. I met a woman who works at a major biotech company who shared her own unique path and now runs a large team.
One after the other, guests exchanged stories only made possible by higher education. It wasn’t simply their diploma that created the conduit, however, it was their inner strive for more that created new possibilities.
Universal strive for more
The story that touch me the most was that of one of the visiting college deans. She shared a little about her background in the opening remarks to the group. Having grown up in small town Oklahoma, she had no paved path to college as a first generation college student. There was no college counselor at her high school and no advanced education in her family. As the eldest child in a large, struggling family, she lived with her grandparents and cared for her siblings. She carried the weight that so many of us eldest daughters hold, no matter the continent.
Yet, she held the dream of going to college.
She shared that she went to college nearby to continue to help her family with ongoing responsibilities and share use of their only car. Even with many limitations, she completed her college degree, masters and went on to receive a Ph.D., becoming an accomplished scholar in mathematics education. Her greatest accomplishment? Ensuring her siblings went to college.
Because of her example, every member of her family has since attended college. In her work now, she is committed to providing educational support to Oklahoma students to encourage college attendance. She does this particularly with high school students studying Algebra 1. Her research shows that this one course is an important gateway to college and advanced education interest. Do better in Algebra and it creates encouragement and interest in college. Read on student’s story here.
Ironically, just the night before, I was up late working with my own distressed high schooler on her Algebra homework (that we both found challenging)!
What would it be like as a parent and for my daughter if I couldn’t help her with her homework?
The conversations that day reminded me of the transformational power of higher education and possessing a strong will. Both are needed, as a diploma is never a guarantee. Yet, story after story shared revealed that exact blueprint. Mingling together in that San Francisco high rise were living examples of Americans we often don’t think of in the first generation category.
While I know my own personal journey was challenging, my path seems unremarkable in comparison. The same emotions I feel when hearing immigration stories came up for me at this event. The yearning for more is a universal story. Even though it has been decades since I have lived in the state, I couldn’t have felt more proud to call Oklahoma my home.
