Living the Scholarship Experience

Episode 2 of Bridging the Gap shifts the focus from policy and history to the lived experience of students navigating higher education in the DMV. In this episode, host Rebecca Beavers speaks with two alumni — Afriasia Bermudez-Crespin and Oscar Nzekwu — whose journeys reveal how identity, opportunity, and institutional support intertwine long before a student steps foot on campus.

Their stories illuminate the messy, emotional, often contradictory reality behind DEI initiatives and the scholarship pathways tied to them. This blog post expands on those themes and provides additional context for the barriers, breakthroughs, and complexities they described.

First-Generation Journeys: More Than Academics, More Than Finances

Both guests entered college carrying burdens that aren’t easily captured through admissions statistics.

Afriasia came into the college process as a first-generation college student and first-generation teacher, facing a familiar cluster of challenges: navigating FAFSA, deciphering SAT/ACT expectations, and attempting to understand admissions without a blueprint. She credits her private high school for offering tutoring, guidance, and academic resources — advantages not always available to first-gen students in public systems.

Yet even with support, she described the disorienting shift from being a “big fish in a small pond” to feeling like an itty bitty fish in a wide ocean at the University of Maryland, where the diversity of backgrounds, interests, and ambitions made finding community surprisingly difficult.

Oscar echoed similar barriers: FAFSA confusion, financial calculations, and the pressure of choosing a college not only based on interest but affordability. But his challenges intensified once he arrived at UMBC, where the institution’s strong STEM identity often overshadowed arts and humanities majors. Despite being a communications major and theater minor, he found few career opportunities geared toward students like him — a subtle but powerful form of exclusion.

Both guests’ stories reinforce a key truth that the path to college isn’t just academic; it’s emotional, cultural, and navigational.

DEI Scholarships: Gratitude, Access, and Complicated Emotions

One of the most compelling parts of the episode came from Afriasia’s description of her earliest exposure to DEI scholarships — and the complicated feelings that followed.

Without her knowledge, she was placed on a Latina scholarship throughout high school purely because of her last name and ethnic identity. It reduced tuition for four years and made her education possible. But it also came with an unsettling revelation: the donor created the scholarship out of pity for Latina women he believed could not succeed on their own.

Her reflection shows the duality many students feel: gratitude for opportunity but discomfort with the motivations or assumptions behind it.Access, she notes, should not feel like charity — especially when students have earned their place.

Later, in her master’s-level teaching program, she encountered a scholarship originally intended for Black educators but expanding to include Latinos and others. Instead of relief, she felt the need to ask her peers whether they felt tokenized or affirmed — a sign of how deeply scholarship experiences shape identity and belonging.

Oscar’s perspective added another layer. He did not have a DEI-specific scholarship but still felt the sting of exclusion in a STEM-dominated environment. While not framed as DEI, the lack of structural support for non-STEM fields made him feel peripheral, invisible, and disconnected from institutional opportunities.

These stories reveal that DEI support is not simply about money. It is about legitimacy, visibility, and feeling like you belong.

Finding Belonging: Where Students Seek Community — and Why

One powerful thread throughout the episode was how both alumni searched for people who shared their identities, experiences, or ambitions.

• Afriasia found comfort among first-generation students and other Latinos, yet still struggled with isolation in large lecture halls where she was often the only Latina in the room.

• I, the host, added critical context from the HBCU perspective, noting that DEI at historically Black institutions looks strikingly different — often referring to international students, white rural students, or small numbers of Asian or Latino students seeking refuge from microaggressions at PWIs.

• Oscar longed for a more inclusive arts community, frustrated that career fairs and departmental opportunities overwhelmingly catered to engineering and computer science majors.

Their combined experiences highlight something scholars have long argued– that belonging is not automatic in diverse environments. It must be cultivated.

The Hidden Labor of Identity on Campus

Identity doesn’t simply accompany students into the classroom — it shapes their daily decisions, interactions, and opportunities.

For first-generation students like Afriasia, identity shaped:

• how she approached scholarships

• how she asked for help

• how she interpreted “merit”

• how she found community

• how she planned a financially accessible future

For students like Oscar, identity as an arts/humanities major influenced:

• whether he felt seen by institutional structures

• whether he felt included in career conversations

• whether he believed his field was valued

For both, identity intersected with opportunity in ways that were often unspoken but deeply felt.

These stories serve as reminders that DEI work cannot be separated from student identity. They are inseparable — and students feel the consequences when institutions fail to support that connection.

What “Living the Scholarship” Really Means

Episode 2 shows that receiving a DEI scholarship — or being shaped by DEI frameworks — is not simply a transaction. It is:

• a shift in confidence,

• a restructuring of self-understanding,

• an introduction to systemic inequality,

• and, for many, the first time they realize the complexity of institutional support.

For some, like Afriasia, it means wrestling with gratitude and discomfort at the same time. For others, like Oscar, it means navigating what inclusion looks like beyond demographic categories.

But across all their stories, one truth emerges. Students do not live DEI on paper — they live it in classrooms, offices, career centers, dorms, and cultural spaces every day.

And those lived experiences reveal more about higher education than any policy document could.

Episode 2 reminds us that before students become data points, case studies, or political talking points, they are individuals navigating systems that were not always designed with them in mind. Their stories ground this series in humanity — and set the stage for Episode 3, where we hear from the professionals responsible for guiding these students through it all.