Mike Geraci’s parents didn’t go to college, but they worked to pay for their son to go to private high school school.
“It was a blue-collar family, but they valued education,” said Geraci, who is a professor of media arts at 鶹Ӱ. “They wanted me to go to college but were probably terrified I would want to go and they couldn’t send me for financial reasons.”
Navigating the college process was a foreign experience.
He applied to the big state schools, because that’s what everyone was doing, and he applied to Pacific because it was nearby.
“I knew I could get there with public transportation.”
He drove a friend’s car to Forest Grove to visit, and at summer registration, he met Professor Dave Boersema.
“He said, ‘What do you like?’ and I said, ‘I like writing, maybe journalism.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I think we have those classes,’” Geraci recalled. “It dawned on me I didn’t even know if they had a program I was interested in.”
Pacific does, in fact, have a journalism program, within the Department of Media Arts, where Geraci is now a professor.
His advice to fellow first-generation students: Use your social networks, ask people questions. And, he said, ask yourself what you’re missing.
“For me, it was going abroad,” he said. “As transformative as college was, even a short course abroad would have expanded my horizons even more.”
First-Generation at Pacific | 鶹Ӱ 24 percent of 鶹Ӱ under鶹Ӱ students are “first-generation,” meaning they are the first in their families to attend college. Pacific faculty and staff are seeking out ways to better support those students through their college experience, including through mentorship by staff and faculty who were, themselves, first-generation students.