I don’t even remember the moment they drove away. I’m told it’s one of those instances you never forget, that second when you realize you’re finally on your own. But for me, it’s not there — perhaps because, when you’re the first in your family to go to college, you never truly feel like they’ve let you go.

“It’s something that colleges love to brag about,” said Brian Taylor, managing director of Ivy Coach, a New York counseling company, noting that many colleges list their first-gen statistics in their brochures.

Emerging from the University’s long-standing commitments to teaching, learning and social justice, the new strategic plan is anchored by five core University values: Courage, Life of the Mind, Equity, Community and Resilience.

SF State is a major public urban university, situated in one of the world's great cities.

Many classes require you to go beyond the ideas presented. Instead of just understanding the basics of an idea, you need to apply it to different situations, or solve logic puzzles that might otherwise be difficult.

How schools recognize, integrate, or honor diversity and multicultural perspectives may convey both intentional and unintended messages. For example, some schools may expect recently arrived immigrant students and their families to “assimilate” into American culture—for example, by requiring the students to speak English in school at all times or by not providing translated informational materials or other specialized assistance. Other schools, however, may actively integrate or celebrate the multicultural diversity of the student body by inviting students and parents to share stories about their home country, for example, or by posting and publishing informational materials in multiple languages. In one school, non-American cultures may be entirely ignored, while in another they may be actively celebrated, with students and their families experiencing feelings of either isolation or inclusion as a result.

if biased or prejudicial behaviors and statements are tolerated in a school, students may embrace the values that are accepted or modeled—either explicitly or implicitly—by adults and other students.

It should be noted that a hidden curriculum can reinforce the lessons of the formal curriculum, or it can contradict the formal curriculum, revealing hypocrisies or inconsistencies

No more late nights reading and re-reading your notes until you feel like you’ve paid your academic dues. Get specific. Then get it done.

Taking stock of everything that’s on your plate can be scary, but it’s also crucial for maintaining control over your life. It provides the foundation needed to build intelligent plans and it eliminates the toxic stress generated by disorganization.

The question is how to enable more working-class students to do so. “It’s really the way democracy regenerates itself,” said Ted Mitchell

as frequently happens with low-income students — was not willing to leave home at age 18 for an unfamiliar world. “I just didn’t feel like I was ready to go out to college on my own,” he said. “So I decided to stay home and save money.”

Fleming zeroed in on how it is that people like to be presented information. For example, when asking for directions, do you prefer to be told where to go or to have a map sketched for you?

Fleming did not return a request for comment by press time, but his own papers seem to warn against getting too carried away by VARK. “I sometimes believe that students and teachers invest more belief in VARK than it warrants,” he wrote in 2006. “You can like something, but be good at it or not good at it ... VARK tells you about how you like to communicate. It tells you nothing about the quality of that communication.”