This month, most seniors at Osos will be receiving decision letters from the colleges they applied to. For many, it is a disappointing and stressful time because of how important college seems for the rest of our lives. 

A senior who wished to remain anonymous said, “There’s this misconception that you get into an Ivy League or you don’t do anything for the rest of your life. It’s really intimidating and scary.”

This fear hits especially hard for teenagers in immigrant families, who make up the majority of our student body. 

These students are often facing extra pressure. Especially if their parents or grandparents escaped extremely traumatic situations like war or poverty, some second or third-generation immigrant teens may feel like they have to succeed to make the experience “worth it” for their families. 

However, they are not at fault for these events. These events are the fault of the country’s government for waging a war, which almost always has ties to colonialism, resource extraction, and capitalism. These systems are at fault for the trauma our families have suffered, not us, so why should we bear the brunt of healing their trauma?

I am not saying that we should not strive to help our families heal, but I do wonder how capitalism benefits from us individualizing the issue. For example, the idea that if one individual goes to a prestigious college and has a prestigious life, then it will make their parents’ suffering “worth it”. 

This issue is not individual, or even just isolated to the two parents. 

Part of the possible traumas of immigration is having to leave your homeland, watching people suffer and die, and entering an unwelcoming country. These are collective experiences that greatly outweigh one person, and they need to be healed personally and collectively. 

Beyond the collectivity of it, can having a life of status even heal our families’ pain? In a capitalistic society like the United States, we are taught that being materially successful will make every aspect of life better. 

While money does bring extreme comfort and can help heal trauma by making things like rest, following dreams, and therapy more accessible, money or status without the desire and aim to heal cannot help us. We will just be sad, rich people.

If we want to heal the hurt our families have suffered, I think that we should shift our focus to some holistic healing methods like somatics or embodiment work, and help our parents actualize their dreams for their lives.

Senior Ivana Nwagbo said, “Most immigrated to give their kids a better life, but they end up pushing their own dreams and aspirations onto their children and stress them out.”

I don’t believe that stressing ourselves out over college will heal anything. I think it can perpetuate the problem.

College is an extremely honored institution in American life, and like any other extremely revered American institution, it has blood on its hands, old and new. 

Many colleges were built by enslaved Black people, and have been hubs of pseudoscientific eugenist studies that claimed people of color were inferior. It has been a long lineage of hate and oppression, and it continues today.

With the protests against the genocide in Gaza and the brutality of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), we have clearly seen how willing these colleges are to protect themselves. To protect themselves, they have to protect their funding, which often comes from Israeli and US government lobbyists. They also have to protect their branding and social image as a haven for the elite. Beyond image, they enforce their schools as havens for the elite through brutality. 

Last year, University of California (UC) students protested against Israeli genocide, and their school gave their names to ICE. 

How can this be “giving back to our parents” when we are giving tuition money, legitimacy, and academic success to an institution that is extremely complicit in the same colonial systems that oppressed them? 

How is it giving back when, once we go to these colleges, we will be oppressed ourselves in their toxic environments?

There are countless stories of immigrant children and other marginalized people, like Black Americans, disabled people, queer people, and women, going to prestigious colleges and having their wants and needs suppressed in an environment made for and by the upper class and elite. 

They will teach us to relinquish our spirit and shed our entire personalities to survive school, when we should be taking the time to nourish and grow ourselves and communities.

Even if we do not attend the school, applying does damage too. According to my calculations, last year, Harvard alone received $3 million in income from application fees, and that is excluding the people who received fee waivers. 

We need to stop applying “just to see”. It’s a ritual in testing our worth.

I understand that our parents may still want to know if we get in, so they can be proud or brag, but try to dissuade them if you can. 

Instead of prestigious schools, I highly suggest you go to a Historically Black College University (HBCU) if you are Black, and go to a less prestigious school and a more diverse school that still fits your needs. The name may not make you feel as safe for your future, but I implore you to try not stress over attending a prestigious school.

The poison ivy is not worth it.