To Pursue Dreams

To Pursue Dreams

I was born and raised in a rural community in the Appalachian Mountains. Most of the local people work at farms, factories, or mills. Education is not deemed terribly important, since even a high school education is of little practical value. My mom dropped out of high school because she was pregnant, and has been a factory seamstress for fifty years. My father dropped out after 8th grade because his own father ran out on his family, leaving him to have to work. He has been a welder in a steel mill my whole life. They expected that my scholastic career would be roughly similar to theirs. My own goals, however, were much higher: I wanted to go to college -- and not just any college. I wanted to go to a really good one. I thought that a higher education was my ticket to a better life than my parents had, and so I focused on college with a driven passion.

My "dream" schools included the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern, Dartmouth, and Brown. I made lists and charts, and papered the walls of my room with pictures and statistics of these four institutions. The evening I received my SAT score (1300), my parents came home from work and I ran out to tell them that I might be able to get into one of my top choices for college. Though my head was in the clouds, my parents had their feet very firmly planted on the ground. They asked me if I knew what kind of kids went to "those" schools. Hesitating, I said, "...not really." My mother explained how the kids who went to "those" schools were wealthy and well-educated, with lots of "connections" that would help them get into college. She told me that I was neither rich nor terribly smart, and thus should consider schools that were "more my speed".

I got applications for UNC-Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, and UNC-Asheville the next day. My father looked only at the UNC-Asheville booklet and said that it looked nice. My mother agreed, saying that I had finally chosen one school that I possibly could attend "in reality." My mother wouldn't even read the application booklet for Penn. My father snorted angrily if I so much as mentioned Northwestern. I was crushed. I began to wonder if my dream schools were just that: a fanciful dream.