The Difficulties of Attending College for Transgender Students

Being transgender has created so many difficulties for me in affording and attending college that I wouldn't have expected before my transition. I never even stopped to think about how difficult and anxiety-inducing it would be to find housing when you need to save money by living with roommates, and everyone expects that the living situation be segregated by sex. As a transfeminine person, this leaves me feeling either unsafe living with cisgender men in a conservative area, or feared living with cisgender women who don't understand my experience. While it is possible to find options, the extremely limited nature of them forces me to settle for much higher housing prices and much less convenient locations than I would in a less marginalized situation.

Another issue I have faced is with health care. Like many college students, my class schedule and internships force me to work multiple part time jobs rather than a single full time one. This means that despite the hours I work, I am not provided with health insurance benefits. This leaves me as a transgender person in great danger and inconvenience. Without a doctor to document my time on hormone replacement medications I will have to wait longer to receive surgeries that require proof patients have fully transitioned and maintained their medical regimen in recent years. This will leave me with years of dysphoria that could have been avoided with simply a slight investment in better health care. In addition, I fear that I won't be able to have my transition hormone levels checked regularly, creating fears both of side effects and of failures in my medications that will not be fully resolved until I am able to graduate.

Finally, college is difficult on a social and emotional level for transgender students. We are often misunderstood and left out of gendered activities. It is harder to make friends, and we live with long histories of people making fun of us or looking down on us for being who we are. I do my best not to let these things affect me, but it is difficult to have poor judgements and isolation from many of my fellow students enjoined with all of the economic difficulties I already face.

I hope that people reading this can understand better that there is bravery and power in transgender people seeking to further their lives through education. Even for myself, just writing this, I am better able to see just why it feels there is so much stress and sadness in my college experience. The challenges we face are immense and it's daunting to go up against so many challenges largely by ourselves. Despite all of this, I am excited about the fact that I am furthering my life, and I really do look forward to the opportunities I'm opening up for myself by completing my higher education.