Serina Yan

“Did you know you are the only person I have ever met from Kansas?”

My new friends, my suitemates, my classmates, my professors — these are people whose first impression of me is my novelty. A throwaway question identifying something that doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Yet, every time I am greeted with my role as the only girl from Kansas, I am reminded of the loneliness of the sentence. 

It is a common myth that it is easier to get into an Ivy — to get into Yale — coming from a rural school, an idea unsupported by the fact that I personally know everyone from the class of 2029 who also happens to be from the Sunflower State. But this idea of the rural student making it out, or not being “in Kansas anymore,” leaves many rural students in an isolated position. 

Coming to Yale was supposed to, or is supposed to, be a new beginning. For me at least, that beginning was quite rough. The hidden curriculum of learning the campus and its structures, unspoken social rules and even new types of friendships created situations that I had no map for. I quickly realized that being the first person from my high school to get into Yale in the past few decades also made me the first person from my high school to be at Yale in the modern era.

I am more aware than ever of these problems in the moments that I try to articulate them. For my friend Michelle Lin ’29 — not the only person I have met from Missouri — and me, we are frequently burdened by not what to say, but how to say it. The dispersion of rural students on the Yale campus is enforced by the uniqueness of the dialect we brought with us. Without intending to, I have begun to speak in code. 

Rather than a simple conversation between small-town girls who have spent their lives together, our gossip now has moral and political implications. “I just feel like the way we communicate is different than the people here,” Michelle told me. Regional differences in communication have been known to manifest in accents, but I have encountered a greater disparity. The very ways and things about which I seek to communicate clash along lines of rurality and urbanity. The language difference informs much of how I am able to interact with Yale.

Walking into a Yale classroom was a hurdle I wasn’t entirely ready for. I didn’t know assignments were in the syllabus, and I didn’t know how best to phrase an email to ask the questions I needed answered. My communication hurdle didn’t stop at my friendships — it directly influenced my interactions with professors. 

At a meal with my Silliman-assigned big sibling, Bella Amell ’27, I had the chance to ask about her opinion on her rural origins, both as a “bumpkin” — her word to describe being a rural student at Yale — and as the chief of staff of Rural Students Alliance at Yale. 

When asked for her opinion on being a rural student at Yale, she identified “an issue in academia largely where most people are not from rural areas” and that, “if you teach at Yale, you aren’t from a rural area.” While this may not seem like that big of an issue, considering rural students are far outnumbered on campuses such as Yale, perhaps making our problems comparatively less important, the lack of understanding about rural spaces at Yale has caused some interesting — and troubling — situations. 

Whether it was being asked if I owned a tractor, or as Bella put it, “I have had people ask me if I went to school in a one-room schoolhouse,” the isolation of being a rural student is an issue that Yale doesn’t seem to know how to fix. It makes sense that a school that wants a student body reflective of the world it teaches about would have similar problems to that world — that rurality comes with associated stereotypes is just one of those problems.

So where does that leave the few hometown heroes who “made it out”? What does that mean for the kids whose accents or dialects reveal their rurality? 

“In my first year especially, I would tell people that I was rural or from a small town, not from a place of pride but from a place of ‘I am sorry,’” Bella said, a feeling I know all too well. But as her time has progressed, she channeled that feeling into a sense of pride. Now, instead of being ashamed or uncertain of her background, she openly discusses her rurality. “I am really proud that I grew up in this way.”

So, for the rural few, know that the sense of displacement that comes with coming to a small institution from a small town is not one you feel alone. You might be the only person from your school here, but you are not the only one to be the only one. Life as a rural student is certainly not perfect, but with programs like Rural Students Alliance at Yale — and the big siblings your randomly assigned residential college could randomly assign to you — they are not an unconquerable hurdle.

Update, Oct. 26: This illustration for this article has been updated.