Being first-gen means you’re writing chapter one of a book your great-grandkids will read.

Doing something first in a family means no map and nobody to call when a form makes no sense. That is genuinely harder, and it is also why whatever you work out becomes the standard everyone after you inherits. Somebody has to be the one with no instructions, and that person ends up writing them.

Keep notes as you go: what the real deadline was, who actually helped, what you wish you had known in September. Pass them to the next person in your family or your neighborhood. That is the chapter, written in small practical pieces.