Ceon White, GS '21: ‘Just Keep Pushing On'

By Maya Mitrasinovic, Columbia Daily Spectator

April 28, 2021, 10:58 PM

Ceon White, GS ’21, vividly remembers how he felt the first time he walked onto Columbia’s campus as a student.

“I didn’t know how I was gonna get [to Columbia] or if I could. I just remember saying it, and even after I didn’t get in the first time, I just kept saying it,” White said. “They thought I was crazy because I was just a high school dropout going to community college. Those things don’t really lead to you going to an Ivy League school. … But I said it, and now I’m actually here.”

White first heard about the School of General Studies while at Vassar College, where he was chosen to attend the Exploring Transfer Program for community college students with high GPAs. The program aims to introduce community college students to the possibility of attending a residential liberal arts college.

However, even getting to Vassar for the program was a huge step for White. White immigrated from Jamaica to Brooklyn at the age of nine. His family lived in an area with high crime, in a building dubbed “Front Page” for how often it made the front page of the newspaper for violence. He never completed high school, dropping out and opting to get his GED instead.

“I got influenced by a lot of the things I saw growing up in my neighborhood—started doing the wrong things, hanging out with the wrong crowd,” White said. “I didn’t have to do any significant jail time, but I was labeled as a felon for the rest of my life.”

When his first son was born in 2008, he decided to turn things around and pursue an education, but being the first in his family to go to college presented some challenges. White attended the Borough of Manhattan Community College for a few years and excelled academically. Despite this, White had a difficult time finding work because of his incarceration.

However, the time that White spent at Vassar planted the idea of applying to General Studies at Columbia, and after a few years, he applied. While he did not get in the first time he applied, White reached out to the admissions office and made sure he could craft a better application for next time. White tried again in 2017 and was admitted.

“I found out that I could still get an Ivy League education, a world-class education, despite all of my shortcomings,” White said.

At Columbia, White became enamored with his Frontiers of Science class. He particularly enjoyed the physics portion of the course, especially because some of the theoretical concepts he was learning about in class were being proven and discovered in the physics field at the same time.

White also loved his political science classes. Two of his favorite classes he took at General Studies were Drugs and Politics in the Americas and Politics of Income Inequality.

“Some of the observations that I saw growing up, I finally got to see them put in terminologies and fit into concepts. It solidified some of the things that I experienced,” White said. “Taking a political science class [showed me how] my whole life mirrored the issues I saw discussed in my class.”

Even while at Columbia, White faced challenges that are not shared by most students. White lives in Pennsylvania, and he commuted from Pennsylvania to New York and back all four years. Two-to-three days a week he would leave his house at 5:30 a.m. to make it to class on time and leave campus later in the evening, as he tried to stack his classes so that he had time to work jobs on the side as well. White managed to do all of this while raising six children.

“I wasn’t always able to make school my number one priority, because I had to work full time and commute,” White said.

However, White channeled these challenges into helping fellow General Studies students, deciding to become a peer advisor his junior year.

“[Becoming a peer advisor] was one of the best decisions I made. I truly believe that you measure success by how many people you bless,” White said. “I had to learn so much just to survive here, so I realized I could pass on some of that knowledge or peace of mind, like, ‘Hey, you can make it.’”

To incoming students, White sends a message of perseverance.

“Listen, impostor syndrome is real … but you belong here. You didn’t get here by chance,” White said. “Everyone has 24 hours, but not everyone’s 24 hours are equal. Just take advantage of the opportunity, and keep pushing on—your future self will thank you for not giving up.”

Staff writer Maya Mitrasinovic can be contacted at maya.mitrasinovic@columbiaspectator.com. Follow her on Twitter @m_mitrasinovic.

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