College Musing

 July 16, 2016 

Our education matters. The beauty of the brain is that it remains immune to pressures uncharacteristic of its innovative capacities - it wanders unleashed and unfettered.

Through the graveyard of financial constraints, where the skeletons of my family's past clung to my feet, I found an escape. Learning lifted me. And it can lift others too.

As a low-income first-generation college student, I have trudged the steep incline towards desired excellence. I've moved from city to city as school systems from old homes deteriorated. My parents had always sought the best possible educational route for my brother and I, even if it meant living in the cheapest apartments in wealthier, well-funded municipalities.

Without scholastic resources to bolster my academic promise, I am unsure as to where my path would have taken me. My dreams may have withered before I was even able to create a college admissions account on the Common App website. But with a boulevard towards better schooling, I was reinvigorated with confidence. I shook hands with my own potential and laid to rest my financial shackles, knowing they were fantasy weaknesses. Neither my nor my parents’ bank accounts defined me; instead, my ideas were my currency, and my diligence proved to be my security for a hopeful future.

When it comes to any form of education, whether it be preparatory programs or a simple book assigned in the classroom, the outcomes can be truly life changing. At the steps of a school, innovation begins. The minds of children are cultivated and nurtured, without regard for any disabling factors out of their control. Education breeds equality if resources are used wisely and fully - monetary scarcities do not snuff out success.

With higher education, the sons and daughters of carpenters can become engineers. The children of cashiers can become CEOs. The possibilities are limitless if an educational foundation is present. I have witnessed firsthand the advantage education plays in miracle-making. Students whose families could barely afford their own living arrangements, were able to gain acceptance to top-tier universities on account of their own drive and commitment to education. They remind me of my own journey - a journey that anyone can trek if their motivations align with the educational assets that lie before them.

Too many underprivileged students fail to capitalize on their opportunities. They constrict themselves within the confines of their perceived financial barriers. Whether that may be because they lack self-assurance or their parents and mentors do not offer sufficient support, they should understand that education is their life's savior. The lives their parents or guardians led do not condition theirs. Progress through the educational system, and henceforth what is afforded due to academic merit, is not gradual. Students from lower income backgrounds can surpass those that come from families whose earnings hover around the higher income brackets. The lone factor that determines their prosperity is their mind's effort.

For those students that do not realize that they can grasp the reigns of their own potential and mold their own destinies through schooling, I invite them to recite the poem below to themselves. I ask them to do so with hopes that it will inspire them to become untouchable, for they finally understand that their finances do not control or condemn their contributions to society. Their poorer backgrounds do not hinder the impactful footprints they can leave behind:

----

Those selfless books will break my destitute chains.

To grant me knowledge and relieve my past's pains.

To propel me out of penniless surety.

With vengeance and thirst for intellectual purity.

For my peasantry comes with a mind not yet ripened.

With the ability to educate, I seek be enlightened.