The Reality of College Life: Is Jennine Capó Crucet’s Novel an Accurate Depiction?

This novel does not shy away from depicting the realities of college life. Or does it? Make an argument as to the value of such aspects, focusing in on specific moments from the text.

Making your home amongst strangers is a fiction novel written by Jennine Capó Crucet, who is a Cuban-American author and was a first-generation college student at Cornell University. Although this novel is fiction, I believe, Crucet depicts her college experience of being a first-generation college student through the protagonist of the novel, Lizet Ramirez who -alike Crucet- is a Cuban-American student studying at Rawlings College (a prestigious fictional university away from her home). Throughout the novel, Crucet describes Lizet’s college experiences which represent the realities of college life because of which many college students of the 21st century can relate to Lizet and find this novel interesting to read.

Initially, Crucet illustrates the reality of college by talking about the financial pressure on Lizet and her family caused by the college fees, which the author refers as “astronomically expensive education” and ‘insane amount of money” (Crucet 7) which shines a light on the ridiculously expensive cost of attending college in the 21st century and portrays its burden on students and their families. Most of the college students reading this novel could sympathize with Lizet because a lot of students face similar financial issues while attending college and reading someone else describe their college’s financial issues can -in some way- comfort the reader as it makes them feel as if they are not the only one facing this crisis.

In addition, Crucet talks about Lizet’s struggle of increasing her college’s aid package by appealing to the New York state and changing her parents’ relationship status to “formally separated” (Crucet 7), which decreased her four thousand dollars college fee, and made it “a budget we (they) could afford” (Crucet 7) – giving readers a sense of hope that Lizet can attend Rawlings college and makes them optimistic about Lizet’s future. However, later in the novel, Lizet feels guilty for her “betrayal” (Crucet 36) because she “gave them (her parents) permission to finally abandon their marriage” (Crucet 36). This incident portrays the suffering of Lizet and her family caused by the financial pressure of college which makes the readers overwhelmed and sympathetic to Lizet.

Also, Crucet briefly discusses the support provided by the college to help Lizet understand her aid package better. Initially, she described the federal work-study as “a mysterious line in my aid package that I thought had something to do with working for the government or joining the army, and so I’d ignored it, hoping it would disappear.” (Crucet 7). However, after talking to the aid officer, she understood that work-study was “just a job on the campus” (Crucet 7). This incident demonstrates that, in college, students can misunderstand some words they are not familiar with; however, it is necessary to ask for help whenever in doubt in order to succeed. In this case, Lizet clarified her doubts about her aid package with the aid officer which helped her find a job she liked, which later helped her buy the plane ticket that she desperately wanted to visit her family for Thanksgiving.

In the novel, Crucet describes Lizet’s dorm life and the amusing side of college – friendships. Friendships are an essential part of college experience which is explicitly described by Crucet. As Lizet had never seen snow in her life, on the day “the snow finally came” (Crucet 40), Jillian (her roommate) woke her up by screaming “Liz! It snowed! All last night and this morning!” (Crucet 40). The exclamation marks are used to describe Jillian’s excitement as she knew it was Lizet’s first time seeing snow in real life. She also called other girls from her dorm by yelling “You guys! It’s Lizet’s first snow! Let’s do this!”. This portrays the strong friendship between Lizet and her roommate because from the text it seems as if Jillian is more thrilled for Lizet to see her first snowfall than Lizet herself.

In addition, Crucet highlights the quality of work ethic expected of a college student. At the end of chapter 2, Lizet is concerned about her status at Rawlings College because she plagiarized a part of the paper because she “didn’t even know the extent to which that needed to be done to be count as correct” (Crucet 11) because she went to Hialeah Lakes High which was “an undeserving high school” (Crucet 11) according to the Academic Integrity Committee. Later, in a meeting with Lizet, Academic Integrity Committee decided to place her on probation because they thought her “old school didn’t foster… a culture of success” (Crucet 96). By writing about the Academic Integrity Committee meeting, Crucet emphasizes that plagiarism is taken very seriously in college and conveys the message that not every college student is aware of plagiarism because there can be some students who are not fully aware of how to cite sources due to a poor academic background.

Overall, I strongly believe, Crucet explicitly describes the realities of college which makes the novel more engaging for the readers because they can learn about college life and many readers who are studying in college can relate their college life to Lizet’s, which makes the novel more interesting to read.  Works Cited: Crucet, Jennine Capó. Make Your Home among Strangers. Picador, 2016.