Speaker 0 00:00:00 From Romano Leadership, I'm Oscar Romano. This is Learn, reflect Lead Leadership and d I A development for mission-driven individuals and organizations. This episode is titled First Gen at Harvard, unleashing Resilience for Personal Growth and Triumph. This episode is for you if you're a first generation college student looking for inspiration and guidance in navigating the challenges of higher education. It's for you if you've faced adversity in your life and are seeking ways to build resilience and learn from your experiences, or if you're interested in personal growth and self-awareness and want to better understand the importance of crafting your own resilience story. Today we're gonna talk about the power of resilience stories. So I want you to, to reflect on these questions, right? What, what challenges in your life have you overcome? How have those experiences impacted your life?
Speaker 0 00:01:05 Reflecting on those is important because each one of those experiences can be crafted into a resilient story that belongs to you. Resilience is the ability to rise above adversity and adapt to difficult situations. Your resilient story and narrative about obstacles you overcome, strategies you use to overcome those obstacles and lessons you took away from the experience. Knowing your resilient story can come with powerful benefits for you and the people around you. There's a lot of imp importance in a resilient story. Everybody has at least one resilient story that's all their own. A resilient story isn't something you write down once and never look at again. It also isn't something that you have to reference every single day. It's a narrative that's there for you when you need it. A resilient story is there to remind you that anything is possible. You see, one of the most important parts of a resilient story is the act of writing it down.
Speaker 0 00:02:09 By writing it down, you're forcing yourself to reflect on and process all the important aspects of your story. Usually people come up with new realizations while they're writing down their story, and here are three other benefits that come with the resilience story. Number one, it reminds you of what you've already overcome and accomplished. You can easily gloss over achievements in your life if you don't take the time to process what it took to get there. Number two, it gives you a vehicle by which you can connect with others. People are more likely to feel connection with you if you are vulnerable with them. A resilient story where you talk about the ups and downs of a moment in your life can provide that vulnerability. Number three, it grounds you to what's true to you. There's a lot that you learn about yourself when reflecting on challenges that you've faced in your life. Oftentimes, this is when you are your most authentic self. So let's talk about crafting your resilience story. Putting together your resilience story doesn't have to be a laborious task. In fact, all you have to do is answer a couple of questions.
Speaker 0 00:03:17 So the first question, what obstacles have you overcome in your life? Keep in mind that you can reference your personal life or your career. Second question, what background knowledge is important to understand the obstacles that you've overcome? And third, how are you successful or unsuccessful in overcoming those challenges? The fourth, what strategies did you use when facing those challenges? What worked and what didn't? And fifth, what lessons did you learn from overcoming those obstacles? To give you a sense of what it looks like when it's all put together, here's one of my resilient stories.
Speaker 1 00:04:06 So
Speaker 0 00:04:07 My, my resilience story, you know, and I wanna make sure that that you have the complete picture. Uh, so I broke it down into a few different sections. First section, news of a Lifetime. In the spring of 2005, I received so some of the most exciting news possible all told, I opened 10 envelopes with acceptances to every college I applied to as a son of Salvadorian immigrants who didn't get to attend college. This was a powerful moment, not just for me, but for my entire family. I didn't have any college counselors who helped me out, didn't visit any colleges before I applied and didn't do any research on any of the colleges that I applied to. The only support I received to complete my college applications came from my best friend who was attending a private school in New York City.
Speaker 0 00:04:52 Let's talk about the academic struggles that I went through. You see, when I started school in the fall of 2005 at Harvard University, I thought I'd gotten past the hard part. Unfortunately, I couldn't be more wrong. As soon as I started my classes, I realized that I wasn't yet prepared to succeed at this level. When I was in high school, I had months to read a book, but I was asked to finish one within weeks during that fall semester. This turned out to be a trend. During my first two years of college, I didn't have the appropriate study skills, discipline or sufficient prior experience with rigorous work to perform at the level to be expected of students at Harvard. To put it simply, I was stunned by culture shock.
Speaker 0 00:05:32 On top of those academic struggles, I was dazed by the culture shock I experienced. Latinos made, made up 9% of all Harvard students and low to middle income. Latinos made up an even smaller portion of the student population. I didn't realize how much of an impact these statistics would have on my experience in college until I started to see and hear how different my background was from so many of my peers. I heard about the 10 AP classes that some took in high school, the companies others had already started, and the weekend getaways to Las Vegas for the affluent around me. In my case, Spanish was my first language. I had barely traveled out of my home state of New Jersey, and I wouldn't have been able to afford college if it wasn't for the generous financial aid package I received.
Speaker 0 00:06:15 I was also weighed down by expectations. While I was there, I grew up with the expectation that I needed to be successful, to be able to support my family. Any failure I experienced would mean letting down my entire family, the academic struggles, along with the culture shock. I experience compounded together to cause me to feel like I didn't belong like I was an outsider. Not only did failure feel like an option, but it felt like the inevitable destination. This feeling was debilitating and caused me to battle a serious bout of depression. Throughout my college experience, nothing seemed to work.
Speaker 0 00:06:55 At first, it seemed as though nothing would help me overcome the internal struggles I faced to find my place in this new world. I tried to focus on my studies, but saw my grades fail or or not fail, failed for me, but they, they did fall a lot. I remember crying after leaving my first midterm for Statistics 1 0 1 because I left half to test plank. When I looked to focus my effort on extra cooker activities, I found some success, but even that made things worse as I just added things to my plate. Although I felt lonely at times, I would try to avoid spending a lot of time with my friends as I didn't want them to be brought down with me.
Speaker 0 00:07:33 So how I turn it around, there are two ways. I was able to make some progress in battling my internal troubles, albeit on an infrequent basis. When I acknowledge that I needed to get my mental health addressed, I started seeing a therapist and slowly began to see gains. It meant a lot to hear that my struggles weren't unique and that there were others who had overcome similar experiences. And the second way that I looked to mentors for, for guidance and support, there were a number of older guys who did so much to pick me up and set me on a brighter path. I owe. I owe a lot, and I mean a lot to the black and Latino male upperclassmen who took me under their wings and helped me see what I might look like in a few years.
Speaker 0 00:08:16 Failure was not an option. Regardless of how I felt on the inside, I knew I could never give up. Failures seemed like a possibility, a real one, but I was determined to find a way forward. I needed to get more strategic about the work I was putting in. I switched my major because I've realized I wasn't interested in economics and went into social anthropology because of the true interests I found in the content matter. This helped me see that taking action to control my situation is a powerful way to change my outlook. I also co-founded an organization for Latino males on campus called the Latino Men's Collective to be able to provide young Latino men at Harvard with their brotherhood to support and bond with one another. This helped me find a greater purpose in my place at college, and ultimately helped set a foundation for a purpose that's guided me to this day.
Speaker 0 00:09:07 You know, being in tune with myself was important, although I did see some success early on. I still view my first two years of college as one of the darkest moments in my life. There's still moments when those dark feelings start to come back, but I've learned to pick up on signs that help indicate when I'm heading down a negative path and here's what that looks like. You know, I start to feel physically and emotionally exhausted. I'm not motivated to do anything but stand on my couch and watch tv. The to-do list that I maintain on a regular basis gets thrown aside as I tried to hide from any and all responsibilities I have. I also wanna stay away from everybody, friends and family included.
Speaker 0 00:09:47 You know, there, there's some resilience lessons that that I picked up along the way. I've learned to act as soon as any of these negative symptoms hit. The theme behind these strategies is control. Everything I do involves taking control of my situation. One of the most important refueling tools I use is exercise. I work hard to exercise on a regular basis, so it remains a habit. At some points in my life, I've gone on, you know, running or biking, streaks, and at other points, I'll spend my time in the gym. Not only do the endorphins lift me up, but I also feel a sense of accomplishment for working on myself that day. I'll also start to create and work through realistic to-do lists. The realistic part is key. It's defeating to end the day with tasks I couldn't complete or even start my to-do list needs to have items that I can get through in a few hours or a day. It's powerful to experience the success I feel after crossing off items on a to-do list.
Speaker 0 00:10:44 When I start feeling negativity, it's also a sign to share positivity. Even if I'm feeling lonely, sad, or wanting to keep to myself, I strive to share positive thoughts with others. I'll think about who I'm grateful for and why, or think about an accomplishment a friend recently had. Then I'll share it with them. It feels good to think positively about others and to get their reactions as well. Now, now some closing thoughts on the whole experience. Knowing your resilient story reminds you that you are more resilient than you ever think you are. It reminds you of what you've already accomplished in your life and how far you've come. It reminds you that your struggles make you who you are today and will teach you valuable lessons along the way. A resilient story is not just something to pin down once. It's something to con constantly reference throughout your life. It's no, it's now. It's time for you to commit. Reflect on these questions. What's your resilient story? When did you overcome a great challenge to help define who you are and how can knowing your resilient story help you? Let me know how it goes. Thanks. That's it for this episode of Learn, reflect Lead. Thank you for watching on YouTube or listening via podcast. If you're interested in more, you can find
[email protected] or connect with me on LinkedIn at Romano Leadership. If you like this episode, please share with your friends. Subscribe and leave a review. I'm Oscar Romano. Until next time.
