PICED - Pacific Islands Center for Educational Development

I didn’t always want to go to college.

Despite good grades in high school and parents who preached the value of a college education, I was—like many students born and raised in American Samoa—comfortable. Comfortable with the idea of serving my obligatory two years at ASCC (or even just working and not attending school). Comfortable with the sound of the ocean in the mornings. And comfortable with the idea of spending more time with my aging parents and close friends whom I had known all my life.

Deep down, I had questions. I was unsure of myself. I hid behind a curtain of excuses and conveniently rationalized my somewhat surprising lack of interest in even just applying to college, any college. This, despite years of grooming by my parents to eat, sleep, and breathe the notion that college was an inevitability, a sure thing that was required of me and all my siblings as official proof of our entry into adulthood.

Part of my reticence had to do with the weight of expectation. My older sister had been a force of nature in high school: valedictorian, student body president, editor of the yearbook—you name it, she was it. Confident, popular, and beautiful, Sandra was everything I was not. I was shy and awkward. I found my niche eventually but even after making the varsity basketball team my junior year and my relatively decent and consistent academic performance, I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow I just didn’t measure up.

There was more to it than just my own deep-seeded insecurities. Looking back, I see other forces that were in play. I attended Marist Brothers High School, then an all-boys school in the village of Malaeloa. Despite the wonderful job that the Brothers did, they still fell short in certain areas. It wasn’t their fault. They did the best they could with what they had. They were ultimately done in by a lack of resources, severely outdated textbooks, and a lack of a formal and rigorous, academic counseling process.

They sure tried though. The Brothers and a small band of tenacious volunteer teachers formed this small little circle that comprised the Marist High faculty and staff. A close-knit cadre of recent college graduates, the volunteers were part of a long-standing association with Catholic universities like St. Joseph’s in Philadelphia that the Marist Brothers had used quite effectively for many years to make sure that little runts like me knew the difference between a hypotenuse and a hippopotamus.

Whatever experience the volunteers lacked in formal teaching credentials, they more than made up for in their relentless quest to inspire us, to mold us, and to encourage us to think for ourselves. They didn’t just teach subjects. Lacking any real, trained academic counselors, it fell upon their shoulders to help us navigate the sometimes-murky waters of the college application process. Yet despite the optimism and the wonderful guidance they offered, their effectiveness was still limited by the same shrinking pool of institutional resources that defined the entire education system in those days, not just at Marist.

Things have changed. It is evident that the academic bar has been raised quite a bit since my high school years, and of course, we now have the Pacific Island Center for Educational Development (PiCED). I scored a 1050 on my SATs my senior year. Years later, while living in the States, I would hear of success stories like former PiCED student Sala McGuire, whose SAT results rated well above my score—at the time, one of the highest on island. In ways I certainly never imagined as a 16 year old teen contemplating my life beyond high school, Sala and others like her clearly represent a new breed of student from the territory: the kind more capable of gaining entry to better colleges and once there, competing and succeeding academically alongside their mainland counterparts. Sala’s SAT score alone and that she was, as far as I know, the first Samoan ever born, raised, and educated in the territory to be accepted at and graduate from MIT, speak volumes.

Let there be no illusions: Students like Sala deserve all the credit for their success (or at least most of it—sorry moms and dads ; ). PiCED means different things to different people, depending on the student. But no matter the situation, it is the student, in the end, who must always do the work and practice the kind of diligence it takes to make the grade. We’d love to take the credit, but we know that despite our best intentions, PiCED is surely a brief pit stop along the academic highway. It is, however, an important one that I will periodically muse about and discuss here in the PiCED blog.

As the Director of Outreach, a big part of my job is communicating regularly with the general Pacific Island student populace, current PiCED students, and of course, PiCED alumni. Whether you’ve matriculated with PICED or not or you have already graduated and are in college or even working—and you happen to be reading this virtual call to arms—please feel free to consider this your official invite to stop by and register as a member (it’s free!) at the PiCED forums, to me, about anything at all, or to comment on one of my blogs. We are interested in hearing and sharing the stories of our Pacific Island students. Come back for more. Change is afoot here at PiCED.org.

Soifua,
Gary