We are a group of first-gen students who burned out in our first-year of college. We did not know how to manage our own schedules between our classes, extra-curricular activities, jobs and family resulting in us being stressed, falling behind and burning out.
From this experience, we had to ask if we were the only ones and so we interviewed other first-gen students.
In California, 33% of all first-generation students drop out of college every year. This number comes down to about 400,000 students in California alone.
One of the leading causes of dropping out is mismanagement of coursework and falling behind within their first two years.
“Being a full-time student and part-time designer means I have my work cut out for me”
- Jenny, Cal Poly SLO
“I would have loved to learn about different scheduling and managing options to make my life easier, especially since its difficult to manage yourself in your freshmen year of college”
- Luis, USC
“How am i gonna eat, and where im gonna live, and like how all that plays out with transportation”
- Stephanie, USC
We see an opportunity where we can help students while improving first-gen retention
Find best times for studying, completing homework, events, and personal time.
Create goals & keep track of focus needed to complete assignments or other tasks
Get help with crafting your calendar that adapts to your workload and goals.
We are first-generation students in South Los Angeles. College meant that we were building the upward social mobility we our immigrant families dreamed of. We all entered in competitive schools like Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, UC Santa Cruz and University of Southern California.
As we went through our first-year we quickly learned how steep the learning curve for college truly is. We found ourselves burning out very heavily, where we each had to take time to mentally and physically recover, considering dropping out at some point. We found the resources over time, but we realized that there was a barrier of comfort and knowledge that was between us and our non first-gen peers.
We later found that one of the common things that we all struggled heavily with was planning our schedules. We often could not find time to study with balancing our projects, families, relationships and jobs. We fell behind early on by taking on too much and took a lot of time finding communities and learning how to prioritize our schedules and maintain more positive work-life balances. We found that many of our peers experienced very similar struggles of balance and organization in their early academic career.
We are focusing on calendar scheduling because we want to emulate the feeling of having a sibling check up on you and make sure your on track with your goals. We want to create a system that all first-gen students can use and succeed in their academic journey. Our mission as a company is to suppress the first-gen fear while creating an empowered trailblazing experience.
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