Abstract: Donna Marie Keller was the first born of Donald (Buster) Keller and Shirley Keller in 1954 on a military base. Her mother was only eighteen years old when she was born and her father 21. After her father left the army they moved to Saint Louis, Missouri to raise the family. Her mother graduated high school at age sixteen but her father had only an eighth grade education.
Though going to college was not expected of the children, it was expected of my mother to attend for at least two years. They could see through co-workers what a college education could do for a person financially so not going to college was not an option. Donna went to the best parochial Catholic schools and although she had to deal with her alcoholic father interrupting her studies, she managed to graduate with flying colors.
However, because of her parents' lack of education they thought all colleges were the same and insisted she go to a college nearby rather than the prestigious colleges she was qualified for. Donna's parents wanted her to take the hardest classes available and she ended up being forced into chemistry major, despite her wishes to become a dancer or possibly an architect.
Once she was away at college her family would ridicule her for the way she spoke. They thought that when she spoke "well educated" she was showing off. Because of this she always felt that she had to censor how she spoke to those who didn’t have the education she had in order to avoid confusing or offending them. Though she faced many obstacles and stresses in her college experience, she embraced them in order to better assist her children’s education.
Keywords: first generation, Catholic school, self-censoring
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