Frances Fagan isn’t the average student, but she is paving the way for the average student to reach success.
Born in Hood River, Fagan grew up in a rural community across the river in White Salmon, Wash. She will tell you that she grew up in a family that encouraged autonomy and, for many years, in a household that had no running water or electricity. Some call it a bohemian lifestyle. Fagan says it was more like “rainbow gathering hippies.” Whatever the case, next month, Fagan will pack up her life (and her cat) and move to New Haven, Conn. Once there, she will begin her study, on a full scholarship, at Yale University with a focus on studying ethnicity, race and migration.
The remarkable thing about Fagan isn’t that she got into an Ivy League school. It is that through using a supportive academic network and by staying obsessively focused on her goals and hours of tutoring, in two years Fagan went from a fifth-grade math level to a full-ride scholarship to Yale.
But while she says she is overwhelmingly grateful to be headed to such a well-respected school, it is simply a step on the road to a larger goal. Fagan wants to work for the United Nations as an adviser on the design of refugee camps.
It is no accident that the enterprising woman has an interest in supportive, therapeutic environments. In 2005, Fagan suffered a seizure caused by a brain tumor in her left frontal lobe. The seizure and the surgery to remove the tumor left her paralyzed on half of her body, with years of recovery ahead. Suddenly, this self-sufficient woman was dependent on a supportive community, unable to drive because of the risk of continued seizure, and spent countless hours sitting in public spaces: traveling by bus and idling in social service agencies’ waiting rooms. She had a lot of time to watch these spaces, how diverse groups of people used them and how the spaces were limiting. She also had a lot of time to think about how to make these spaces more welcoming.
The story of Frances Fagan isn’t one about a woman who worked hard to overcome a brain tumor to go to Yale. It is the story of a woman who is blazing the way so that others might follow.
Frances Fagan: In 2013, I began a two-year process that led me to here. But a couple of years after high school, I actually enrolled in some classes in the wintertime, thinking it would be fun to take some art classes and take a philosophy class. But I didn’t have a focus. And I didn’t have a plan, and I didn’t seek out any guidance counseling or help like that.
When it started snowing, halfway through the winter season, I just kind of wandered away. I had no attachments. I hadn’t reached out to any communities in the school or organizations, clubs or guidance counselors, and so there was nothing anchoring me to PCC. It was easy for me to wander away. I think that is a problem a lot of people face — either first-timers or people returning to school — they don’t find any anchor points or connections within their campus and so they are kind of just adrift.
Sue Zalokar: How did you stay “anchored” this time around?
F.F.: The Transitions Program gave me that. It gave me a community. It’s a one-term program for nontraditional students, and it gives you an automatic cohort of other people from diverse backgrounds. There are all kinds of ages and skill levels. People are coming from all kinds of transitional points in their life. It’s a bunch of relatable misfits, in a way.
S.Z.: You’ve said that as a child, your family moved around a lot. As a teacher, I have seen how this can affect students’ skill and confidence. How did this affect your understanding of formal schooling?
F.F.: It made it extremely difficult for me to appreciate formal school because some years, I would go to two schools in the same year. Each school is working on different topics at different times.
I learned how to be really adaptable socially, which has helped me, but academically, I never really had any foundation. I never developed any kind of lasting relationship with any school or with any extracurricular program.
S.Z.: Then June 2005 happened: You suffered a major seizure in Southeast Portland right outside of your home. You were diagnosed with a brain tumor in your left frontal lobe. The recovery from surgery left you paralyzed on one side of your body. Recovery took three years. You’ve said you were pretty fiercely independent before the surgery. What was it like to become dependent on a support network, made up largely of people you didn’t know?
F.F.: It was extremely humbling. And very disorienting. After that initial (surgery), because of the scar tissue in my head, I started having seizures pretty constantly, which is disorienting.
I couldn’t work, and I had worked since I was 15. The process of applying for disability was exhausting. Especially because my mental capacity had been totally messed with, and then I was having seizures constantly.
I was initially on some pretty intense seizure medication like phenobarbital. Anyone that takes such intense medications knows that it’s kind of like moving through a fog. And so to be asked to do a lot of complicated paperwork and to go to different offices around town (was difficult).
If you need the resources, you have to be extremely diligent. It is common that you’re denied Social Security benefits; you are denied off the bat. I actually had to hire an attorney.
S.Z.: You were denied?
F.F.: Yes. I was. Like many people. I was housed, but I heard of people that were living in their car and having intense problems who were also denied.
S.Z.: Advocating for yourself at this time couldn’t have been very easy.
F.F.: If you want to have access to the resources that you need, even though we are one of the richest countries in the world, you have to get lucky. I had a good attorney, but I still had to be super adamant and make calls to (move things forward). Granted, there are wonderful people in the (Supplemental Security Income) program, but the process is exhausting and basically set up for people to fail.
I think you are being punished for being vulnerable. You’re on hold for hours on the phone. There is a constant stream of paperwork that you have to stay on top of. … I was going from a radiation appointment to getting right back onto a TriMet bus and riding over to Powell Boulevard and waiting for a couple of hours to see if I could get food benefits.
Ultimately, after I was denied, I had to move out of my apartment in Southeast and move up to live with my grandparents (in Hood River). My case was eventually approved, and I was able to move back to Portland and be near the resources that I needed.
S.Z.: You’ve been in remission for 10 years now. Do you have any lingering anxiety about that experience?
F.F.: Absolutely. I’m still really hypersensitive to sound and light and — (sigh) — I get overwhelmed pretty easily by crowds of people or intense environments. I had to really develop a lot of coping skills. I had to do a lot of affirmation.
My right foot is still smaller than my left foot. I don’t have the same kind of motor skills on both sides of my body. I have to rest. I can only be really active for a certain amount of time, and then I have to rest and refresh myself. It’s mainly the sensory input. And I still have to take anti-seizure medication, but it is much more manageable now. I also have a lot of anxiety. I would get up early in the morning and go through calming exercises, and I wore earplugs on the bus. And I would find a safe spot in the library where I could calm down.
S.Z.: Those are huge barriers for most people. That’s a lot of work just to get to school. I’m an instructor at (Mt. Hood Community College), and I see students with barriers all the time who vanish because of outside stresses. What would you say to these folks?
F.F.: I would do this exercise where I would draw a circle and then I would divide it into four sections, and I labeled them 1, 2, 3 and 4. That was the importance rating I gave elements in my life. I always put school and homework in the first quarter. I put my health and close, supportive relationships in the second. And everything else was in the third and fourth.
So if something came up, I would ask myself what was more important to me. Knowing myself and considering my anxiety, I knew that I needed to really eliminate outside elements as much as possible. I signed up for any kind of tutoring that I could and study-skills tutoring. I learned a lot about my learning styles, and I just really stuck to it. I just kept telling myself that it was worth it. And that I could do it.
In the first year, I had to move three times. I realized that it was worth taking out loans to live in a more stable environment.
I also had to pass on people who told me I couldn’t do it.
What isn’t really talked about a lot: older students or people coming from backgrounds that aren’t full of college graduates. There’s a lot of separation and strangeness with relationships with people I had outside of school. Most of my friends are supportive, but I did meet resistance to what I was doing. I really had to stay focused on that No. 1 objective: to do well, to develop a good academic history and then to transfer to a respected four-year university.
S.Z.: You like libraries. In a day and age when print media are under scrutiny and libraries struggle to keep doors open, you are looking at libraries as community centers. Tell me about your research.
F.F.: When I first enrolled in PCC, it was with an interest in creating therapeutic environments. Public service centers, like waiting rooms in disability offices that would be supportive to families and the lighting wasn’t so harsh. (Spaces) that were easy for people to understand for people coming from different cultures, what to do. I went in with that idea: human ecology study.
I developed a plan about how to build therapeutic environments for public agencies. When I started (school), PCC had just received a large bond, and they were remodeling all of their campuses. I was able to sit in on an architecture, design, construction meeting where they were discussing these buildings that were going to be used by students and staff at PCC.
Immediately I realized that it was the decision-making process that was the most important part of any change. The meat underlying any kind of transformation that you see in this society, it happens in some office somewhere where these decisions were being made. I became extremely interested in decision-making process within the public sector.
At the same time, I read an article on the PCC website about Phil Seder in the business department. He was discussing decision-making processes. We met, and over a year and a half we had a series of conversations around (this topic). I asked him: Where is there an intersection between decision-making processes and information exchange and public service? And he told me to look at libraries.
It was kind of mind-blowing, because contemporary libraries are not only refining the exchange of information, but within their own building and between different library agencies crossing states, but they are also community centers, places where you can get job training, you can have day care, you can use the Internet even if you can’t afford a computer of your own. They are nonpolitical, supportive environments open and accepting to the public at large.
S.Z.: I’ve not been to a library that has a day care or job training. What are some examples?
F.F.: The Seattle Public Library. And I think the Hillsboro Public Library; they have a play center. The library in Tigard is really incredible. They have a child play area and classes. And all of these libraries have computer centers. Libraries are not only refining technical infrastructure and information sharing, and they’re having to be really adaptive to live in this world, because it is turning digital. Library science itself is really working around public exchange and support based on a deeper technical infrastructure.
Because of my love for environmental space, human needs and supportive architecture, I found the idea of a refugee camp really interesting. Over the course of developing this capstone, those ideas really merged. A lot of people will sit for years in these camps, waiting for documents to be transferred. Anyone who has had to sit in a waiting room in a public service agency or wait for a document to come through so that you can pay your rent or so that you can feed yourself or your family knows that information exchange is hugely important.
Libraries, their whole point is sending one piece of information to a specific person. They are streamlining this process of exchanging information as well as being centers that are welcoming to a diverse range of people.
S.Z.: You seem to be innately driven, formal education or no. You are an exceptional student; surely you know this. Can anyone be successful in college?
F.F.: I believe so, yes! If I can do it, anyone can do it — honestly. Yale is a big, shiny prize, but I’ve seen so many incredible people around me that have found more success than they ever expected. And that might be by completing a class or making it to school almost every day. It’s up to the individual to define what success is to them at that moment. Successes build upon one another.
Also, you have to be willing to work for it. If you want to have a successful academic experience, I found that I had to sacrifice a lot of personal things. It was a lot of tears, and it was a lot of really late nights. It was, on average, 14 hours on a bus each week. It was a lot of lonely time, just working. You have to know that it’s going to take some work. I had to work through a lot of fear of failure. I had to pretend like I was a student until I felt like I actually was becoming one.
S.Z.: You are totally a Renaissance woman.
F.F.: I love that you said that! Because when I was growing up, that is why I felt I didn’t need formal education because I felt this romantic idea of acquiring skills by apprenticing and this kind of Renaissance lifestyle. And that’s also one of the things that made Yale appealing to me. The program I am headed into, this art and culture and science, and it is related to ethnicity, race and migration. It is perfectly suited to my research. It’s about having a seat at the table, you know?
It is so important to advocate for the greater good in some way. I was talking to a friend of mine, and she was saying, “Why would you choose not to be seated at the table where the conversation is happening?”