Legacy: The First Generation

Rebekah L. Crooks ’05 realized how different her background was from many Harvard students in an economics class last year. “The professor said that the average yearly income for a family of four was $50,000,” she recalls. “Someone raised their hand and asked, ‘How can a family of four live off of $50,000 a year?’ I wanted to say, ‘Well...’”

Crooks, a Government concentrator in Kirkland House, hails from Klamath Falls, Ore., a farming town of roughly 25,000 people. The youngest of four daughters of construction workers, she graduated from a high school that she describes as “70 percent below the poverty line.”

“It’s kind of like when you do things, the whole town is proud of you,” she says. “Like a ‘Local Girl Makes Good’ kind of thing.”

Guillermo A. Coronado ’05 understands that type of responsibility. Coronado, a Social Studies concentrator in Dunster House, was born in Guatemala City but raised in a suburb of Chicago. He is the first member of his family to attend college, the first graduate of his high school to attend an Ivy League college, and the first member of his tightly-knit Pentecostal church to attend college.

Coronado, the younger of two sons of factory workers, says he feels accountable to those who have supported him. “First, there’s the set of expectations from the church. There’s a lot of talk about staying close to God. It’s like they think of my time here as a kind of hiatus, after which I’ll go back to them,” he says. “Then there’s the added cultural expectation from my parents to return home. In [their culture], it’s like you don’t leave the house until you’re married.”

For these two, Harvard wasn’t always on the radar. Coronado says he didn’t expect to get into Harvard. “It was totally a whim,” he says. “I was really hoping that I was qualified enough for Georgetown.”

Crooks says she always knew she would go away for college. “My parents always told me that I was capable and wanted me to go somewhere,” she says. “However, I was never invested in the idea of Harvard. It’s really surreal to meet people that always had these definite plans in life and the resources to get here.”

Crooks’ calm posture and bright confidence were honed in theater and on the scholarship pageant circuit. At one point, she accidentally entered a pageant intended only for girls of Hispanic descent, the Reina de Fiesta pageant. “They let me stay anyway,” she says. “The whole thing was done in Spanish, and my Spanish at the time was terrible. And we all had to dance to mariachi music. It was so awkward, but I won.”

Both say their backgrounds had a profound impact on their paths to Harvard. “Our experience was different from most other Harvard kids in the sense that our parents weren’t college graduates,” says Coronado. “We didn’t have the opportunities that a lot of people here had.”

“It was interesting coming here and seeing others who had access to things and knew exactly what to do in the college process,” Crooks says. “It seems like there’s a list of books that everyone read that I don’t remember reading.”

Coronado recalls his family renting a U-Haul for first-year move-in weekend and packing almost all of his belongings. “When I got here, I realized that I couldn’t fit all that stuff in a dorm room,” he says. “I had no idea.”

Once settled in, Coronado also had to contend with the inevitable class differences. “People here are not pretentious, but some of them approach money differently,” he says. “One of my roommates freshman year bought the whole room tickets to a New York Knicks game. We all assumed that we would take the bus down, but then he said that it would be $300 to get there.” The roommate had assumed the whole group would fly.

Both Coronado and Crooks agree that despite socioeconomic differences, Harvard is “a level playing field.” Both are confident that they made the right decision, and say the students here alone are worth it. “Everyone has a cool story to tell,” says Coronado. “That’s Harvard. You don’t have to seek out the ‘movers and shakers,’ because all your friends will be the movers and shakers.”

Coronado and Crooks say they are proud of how their backgrounds have shaped their perspectives, but increasingly conscious of the future obligations that they entail. “I appreciate the way that I grew up so much that I almost hope that I don’t have much money in the future,” Crooks says. “At the same time, my parents need to take it easy for a while. I have seen my parents, who have literally nothing, make so many sacrifices.” She sees either politics or business in her future.

She says the chance to “learn and gain resources to go back and make a difference where I’m from,” is one for which she’s grateful. “Harvard’s not a given for anyone,” she says. “You don’t take it for granted.”

Coronado also says he’s interested in politics. “However, there’s also a pressure to make money and take care of my family, and that might mean investment banking and corporate America. For us, it’s not about wanting money, it’s about needing money. You feel compelled to go into the field that gives you lots of money instantly. That’s not selling out, that’s what you have to do.”

Despite the weight of all these expectations, both Crooks and Coronado emphasize that the pressure on them is mostly self-imposed. “The expectations I put on myself are really high because of what I’ve been given,” Crooks says. “I am so lucky to be here. My whole life, I’ve been the luckiest person I know.”