Experiences of suffering and confrontation in entering higher education: autobiographical narrative

Abstract

The university since the discovery of Brazil is organized to meet the demands of the Brazilian elite. With the democratization movement of education, in recent decades, public policies aimed at reducing inequalities open the need to discuss the experience of other social groups. The present text presents the course of entrance into higher education of a young black of the lower middle class in northeastern Brazil. It is a autobiographical  narrative inspired by the cartography that allowed to discuss the experiences of psychic suffering, confrontation and identity maturation lived in the course between a private and a public institution. The work of cartography does not focus on the description of facts, it discusses the degree of importance of things, not from the perspective of social importance, but from what experience in the body. Thus, it presents a singular trajectory that, when narrating the course of suffering and facing adversities, discusses how the process of expanding the vacancies in higher education is a complex phenomenon and a historically constructed partner that involves more than educational structures of methodologies, pedagogical structures and faculty of expertise or a private subjectivity, but demands the careful implementation of other public policies of social and psychological assistance that support the experiences of belonging, care with mental health.