Welcome to The Rabble-Rouser Lounge: A Blog For and By First-Generation Students and Working-Class P
Welcome! I go by the name "K" and I edit and in many cases produce the content for this blog. The inspiration for this blog comes from my own experiences as a Black first-generation college student who came from a working-class home in addition to my more recent experiences as a doctoral student and now early-career tenure-track faculty member. As a first-generation student of color, I learned first-hand how much of higher education requires understanding the "unsaid" aspects of how the institution operates. Yet, the more I learned about higher education's operations and the job market in the United States in general, the more I began to take a critical perspective on these issues. For that reason, this blog aims not to give advice on how to climb a social ladder or engage in careerism, so to speak, but instead to inform, support, and inspire like-minded people who want to know how exactly to navigate higher education at each and every level if we are to actually radically change the social institutions that make it excruciating to be a working-class-born and first-generation college student. Likewise, posts targeting those of us who ended up in graduate school or the faculty ranks will emphasize how to best support working-class-born and first-generation college students in both becoming aware of the ways engagement with academe changes us (for better or worse) and also preparing to act for radical change. Most crucially, posts on this blog will be written by former and current working-class people, other low-wage/contingent academic laborers, and first-generation undergraduates. If this mission resonates with you and you are a member of one of the target groups, feel free to use the feedback form on the homepage to propose a blog post submission.