First-Generation Student Spotlight

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What led you back to college?

For a long time, imposter syndrome kept reinforcing the idea that I was somehow less qualified than the people around me. While working in a Lexus service department, I worked my way into a leadership role overseeing six highly experienced technicians. The team trusted my judgment, but privately I questioned whether I belonged there because I didn’t have the degrees I saw around me. Eventually, I walked away from an opportunity I had earned.

The turning point came years later at a Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast. Something about it forced me to confront how much of my own potential I had left unexplored. The very next day, I walked into Roxbury Community College and registered for classes.

I went back to school because I was tired of allowing self-doubt to decide what rooms I belonged in.

Quiana Wilson

What did your family understand, and not understand, about what you were signing up for?

When I first tried college right out of high school, a lot of it was unfamiliar territory. Many first-gen students can relate to a parent asking, “Why do these people need my Social Security number? You’re the one going to school!”

When I returned as an adult, I didn’t tell anyone. I did what social media calls “disappear and level up.” I knew how easily other people’s fears could become noise in my own head. Someone very close to me even asked if I had joined a cult because I kept disappearing at the same time every week. It wasn’t until I was close to finishing my associate degree, and had been accepted to Northeastern, that I let people in on what I had been doing.

Was there a moment you felt you didn’t belong?

When I first went to Fisher College, I felt like a fish out of water, and I didn’t last long. Later, at Bunker Hill Community College, I often had to take every other semester off just to pay for the semester before it. For a long time, I wondered whether college was simply not a place where I belonged.

What got me through was realizing that struggling within a system did not mean I was incapable of succeeding in it. I came back with more maturity, more determination, and a much stronger sense of who I was.

What does being first-gen mean to you?

I get to be the one who changes what is possible for my family. My journey has taken me places I never imagined: Phi Theta Kappa, the 2026 All-USA Academic Team, a U.S. Senate citation for academic excellence at the Massachusetts State House, and the student commencement speech at Roxbury Community College. My mother, my greatest supporter, was there to witness it.

I grew up in Bromley-Heath in Jamaica Plain, where Northeastern felt like an untouchable backdrop to my childhood, a university I could see but never imagined attending. Now, I walk onto this campus as a student, while helping care for my mother and younger brother.

Badge of honor, source of pressure, or something more complicated?

More complicated. Sometimes it feels a little like survivor’s remorse. There are moments when I feel pressure to prove that my growth hasn’t disconnected me from where I come from. But I’m learning that growth does not have to mean leaving people behind. I can belong at Northeastern and still belong to the communities that raised me.

What do you want to be different for the next generation?

I want access to opportunity to feel intentional, not accidental. I found out almost by chance about the funding and pathway that led me here. I’ve already spoken with Dr. Richard O’Brien about my long-term goal of creating a stronger pipeline from my neighborhood into Northeastern.

I want what I learned by accident to become information that someone else receives on purpose.

Quiana Wilson