I was a second-generation English and American Literature major at Stanford University.  My mother came from Poland to Canada at age 15, and had to repeat grades 1 through 8 in a one-room schoolhouse because her English was not good enough to recite nursery rhymes well.  She went back to college when I was in high school.  My father escaped Nazi Germany in 1938, and later went back with the Allied infantry, going to college on the G.I. bill after the war.  I had it quite a bit easier.