The purpose of the study was to write individual narrative stories about the subjective experiences of six students who entered college and had to take at least one remedial course their first semester. A subjective experience refers to the emotional and cognitive impact of the personal account of an experience (Subjective Experience, n.d.). The participants, including the researcher, were students who entered college for the first time without the minimum requirements for college enrollment; therefore, each was considered a remedial college student. The students were required to take remedial courses in math, writing, and/or reading before taking any credit bearing courses. In educational literature, the terms foundational, conditional, or probationary are interchangeable with the word remedial when referring to students who are not prepared for college coursework (Porter & Polikoff, 2012). For this dissertation, the term remedial was used. This qualitative arts-based study used narrative inquiry and rich pictures created by the participants to describe their subjective experiences. I wrote six separate narrative stories and interpreted six separate rich pictures to describe the participants' subjective experiences. The methodology of data collection included interpretive grounded theory using a series of non-formal interviews, field notations, interpretations of rich pictures, coding cycles, and reflections. The narrative stories and the emerging theory will help the educators, administrators, and policy makers, at the K-12 level, learn the importance of college readiness at the high school level. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]