I was 15 when I became homeless. The school year had begun, and Florida was experiencing the first cool weather of the year—a welcome relief after a summer with no AC whatsoever, and no electricity for almost two weeks. I had signed up for Early Childhood Education II classes and had started going to the elementary school during that period to intern with a teacher there. I had recently learned to knit.
These mundane observations are what strike me the most when I think of this time. The eviction notice pinned to the door, the search for a roof to shelter under the boxes and boxes of junk tossed haphazardly together—they are all a blur, but I can still clearly remember the essay project we were working on in English, the CD my friend had lent me, and the fact that I was rereading “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak that week.
Two and a half years have passed since then, and in some ways my life has changed very little. My friend’s family took me into their hodgepodge home and I have lived with them ever since. I rarely see my parents or my two brothers. I go to school, I do my homework, and I eat more junk food than is good for me. And yet…
My future is different than it was then. Such a simple sentence—“It gives us great pleasure, on behalf of the admission committee and the Wesleyan faculty, to offer you admission to the Class of 2015 through the QuestBridge National College Match program.” Fourteen pre-frosh received this letter out of thousands of applicants. They gave me a scholarship package most people don’t dare dream of.
I spent years at a disadvantage to my classmates, struggling with the simplest of projects simply because of my family’s economic weakness. Supplies that other students in my school took for granted were a luxury to me. These circumstances forced me to come to grips with an overwhelming inferiority complex that plagues the lower classes. My acceptance to Wesleyan has put me on equal footing for the first time in my life.
While my fellow admittees have likely found the college admissions process to be as emotional as I have, it is hard to fathom the difference one little letter has made in my life. Two years ago, an eviction notice seemed like a harbinger of the future to come, a bad omen of the sort few people experience. Now, an entirely different omen indicates a brighter, more hopeful tomorrow among the Wesleyan Class of 2015—a messily scribbled exclamation below Nancy Hargrave’s signature on my admittance letter with the words, “Welcome to Wes!”
Proper is a prospective student of the class of 2015.
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