I grew up in rural Illinois, where (at the time) there were few opportunities for cultural or intellectual development, so I spent a lot of time at the local libraries. My parents were very intelligent, but neither had attended a four-year college. I graduated salutatorian of my high school and then, because I didn't know what else to do, started taking gen ed courses at the local community college. After one semester (which felt like high school all over again--same subjects, same people) I decided I needed to leave home and attend a four-year school. My mom and I visited a few liberal arts schools in Illinois, and I chose the one with the prettiest campus and the most robust scholarship: Lake Forest College. It took a few weeks to get used to being away from home—and being a transfer student was especially difficult—but finally I made a few friends, many of whom were also first-gen and from small towns. Luckily, my parents didn't pressure me to choose a particular major, and I remained undecided for 2 years, until an English professor urged me to declare English literature as my major. I didn't think about careers at the time; I just knew I loved my English courses most. College was incredibly enlightening for me--I loved every class, every teacher, and finding correspondences between different disciplines. During my senior year, 9/11 happened and everyone panicked about the economy. I'd planned to go to Chicago or Boston and find editorial work, but suddenly that seemed too daunting. Instead, I applied to English PhD programs. I was accepted at the University of Iowa and moved to Iowa City with my boyfriend (a first-gen student himself who was accepted into the UI's math PhD program). Grad school was not at all what I'd expected. In college, my professors were also my mentors. But in graduate school, they weren't. Plus, I felt very out of place among people who--from my perspective as a working-class, first-gen student--seemed out of touch with the world I'd come from. (By the way, I didn't hear the word "first-generation" or realize that it applied to me until I left my graduate program; suddenly, my experiences of homesickness, out-of-placeness, and code-switching started to make sense.) After a few years, I returned to a different graduate program, this time in writing. It was a much better fit for me; it seemed like my voice and perspective were welcomed. I shared some of my creative work with my family, but largely I inhabited two separate worlds: the one in Iowa City and the one back home—two different ways of talking, two different ways of being. My current job at the UI allows me to write about academic research for the general public, which aligns with my beliefs in the value of learning and of engaging with the world beyond the "ivory tower."