… and a week into classes, I received the topics for what would be my first college paper, in 
an English course on the modern novel. I might as well have been my non-English-speaking grandmother trying to read and understand them: The language felt that foreign. I called my mom at work and in tears told her that I had to come home, that I’d made a terrible mistake.
She sighed into the phone and said: “Just read me the first question. We’ll go through it a little at a time and figure it out.”
I read her the topic slowly, pausing after each sentence, waiting for her to say something. The first topic was two paragraphs long. I remember it had the word intersectionalities in it. And the word gendered. And maybe the phrase theoretical framework. I waited for her response and for the ways it would encourage me, for her to tell me I could do this, that I would eventually be the first in my family to graduate from college.
“You’re right,” she said after a moment. “You’re screwed.”
NYT/Jennine Capó Crucet: Taking My Parents to College