{"id":127739,"date":"2019-10-10T13:39:06","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T17:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=127739"},"modified":"2021-08-13T11:55:31","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T15:55:31","slug":"video-a-first-gen-student-from-maine-ryan-lizanecz-20-found-a-home-in-bates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/10\/10\/video-a-first-gen-student-from-maine-ryan-lizanecz-20-found-a-home-in-bates\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: A first-gen student from Maine, Ryan Lizanecz \u201920 found a home at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Ryan Lizanecz \u201920 first came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, \u201cI was anxious, I was curious, I was scared,\u201d he says. \u201cLiterally every feeling I could possibly feel at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lizanecz is from Portland, Maine, and he is the first in his family to go to college. Maine as a whole and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ are similar, he says, in that both are \u201csmall communities where people know each other and people are friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, arriving on campus was an \u201cinformation overload.\u201d Lizanecz had lived in the same house all his life and never been away from his family for more than a week.<\/p>\n<p>At night early in his ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ career, he says, he often dreamed of home.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #009779;\"><em>Video by Theophil Syslo<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ryan Lizanecz \u201920 | Voices from the Class of 2020\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/w1P6CqRcoIo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThankfully,\u201d he says, \u201cBobcat First! was my foothold.\u201d The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2017\/10\/12\/bobcat-first-success-that-lasts\/\">four-year program<\/a> designed to foster belonging among first-generation-to-college students \u201cprovided me with everything I needed to succeed in the first year\u2013plus of my college experience. They were really a family to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With that support, Lizanecz flourished. A politics major, he has delved into the ways that structures of power shape the world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ does a very good job, especially in the liberal arts, of teaching you about how all these different moving parts of the world are interconnected, and how that impacts how the world works,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_127901\" style=\"width: 910px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/10\/190903_Convocation_0798.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-127901\" class=\"wp-image-127901 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/10\/190903_Convocation_0798-900x596.jpg\" alt=\"At Opening Convocation on Sept. 3, Ryan Lizanecz \u201920 (center) sits between keynote speaker and honorand Dolores Huerta and Phillips Professor of Economics Michael Murray. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)\" width=\"900\" height=\"596\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/10\/190903_Convocation_0798-900x596.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/10\/190903_Convocation_0798-400x265.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/10\/190903_Convocation_0798-200x132.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/10\/190903_Convocation_0798.jpg 1919w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-127901\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Opening Convocation on Sept. 3, Ryan Lizanecz \u201920 (center) sits between keynote speaker and honorand Dolores Huerta and Phillips Professor of Economics Michael Murray. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Lizanecz has sung with the Deansmen, the oldest of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ <em>a cappella<\/em> ensembles, throughout college. He is also the president of student government this year; in that role, at Opening Convocation, he told the incoming first-year students that their ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ experience will be what they make of it.<\/p>\n<p>Now, when he spends the night at home in Portland, Lizanecz dreams of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is my home,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is where my friends are. This is where I have the most fun. This is where I learn things that I care about. I think that that\u2019s what ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has become to me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A first-generation-to-college student from Portland, Maine, Lizanecz at first felt \u201canxious, curious, scared\u201d on campus. The Bobcat First! program gave him a foothold. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1016,"featured_media":127901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"bates_author_byline_override":"ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ News","_estimated-read-time":"","_post-template":"\/usr\/local\/webserver\/webpve\/htdocs\/new-www.bates.edu\/wp-content\/themes\/b\/news\/single-big-header-image.php","_header-color":"#000000","_photo-credit":"Phyllis Graber Jensen","_header-effect":"parallax","override_related_with_tag":"","_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,31,32,11012],"tags":[11133,7080,10834,12250,12037],"class_list":["post-127739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-lewiston-auburn","category-maine-and-new-england","category-student-life","tag-class-of-2020","tag-portland","tag-video","tag-voices","tag-voices-from-the-class-of-2020"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1016"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127739"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127914,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127739\/revisions\/127914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}