Indigenous Student Experiences During Postecondary Education: An Analysis

In connection with my own experiences, the readings related to Indigenous student experiences during postsecondary education allowed me to better understand what these students need to overcome throughout their studies and how difficult they must be to balance between different responsibilities of their family and community, in addition to their academic achievement. I was also able to connect various aspects of Aboriginal student experiences through 4Rs by Kirkness and Barnhardt (1991).
The story presented by Tachine and Francis-Begay (2013), where a student got lost on her first day at the institution but also had to guide her parent, was exactly my experience when I first arrived at Queen’s University. I was new to the city and the institution, but when my family got lost finding my residence, and I was the one to ask people to find our way to the right building. As the first in the family to attend university in Canada and not knowing what to expect from Canadian postsecondary education system, my family was very worried about me attending an institution far away
Gallop and Bastien (2016), claimed that students with strong cultural identity can easily adjust to the mainstream environments as they maintain the commitment to their home culture. I have experienced both stages of cultural identity. Although I have proudly been identifying myself as a Korean, when I was asked about Korea from several friends curious about the country, I barely had clear answers for them. I was disappointed in myself for the lack of knowledge. Moreover, I was forgetting the language that it was becoming difficult to have conversations with my parents. Once I recognized the importance of my Korean identity, I started studying on my own to improve my language proficiency and expand my knowledge about