sometimes i wonder if these students think i have a big red cape hanging above my desk that i just throw on at their every beck and call. one thing i had as a low income student growing up was some damn humility. i could've qualified for every scholarship under the sun for being a poor little black girl in america, but i grew to know that without the proper work ethic, communicative manners and professional etiquette it took to get what i needed out of what wasn't made for me, i wouldn't get too far. as little as i may have thought i had, i always told myself that nobody and nothing in this world owed me shit. that made me work. that made me risk. that made me humble. that made me swallow back my pride and ask for what i didn't have and make a case for what i knew i needed to get me to where i planned to go. as quiet and as angry and as painfully shy as i was, i always made it a point to research in some way, to reach out in some way, and to always look over and look back again and again. i never took without giving something first. sometimes i want to look these students square in their eyes and ask if they have any common sense, if they have any sense of purpose, ask if they have any motherfucking grit. education wasn't my only fight but it was always the most vital one. i did and will do anything i can to get it because it is the only thing no one can ever take from me. i'm tired of working with these older kids in school after school after school where before i can do my actual job of teaching them some concrete knowledge i have to do a job that should've come well before me and teach them how to BE. i get it. you're from a fucked up place. so was i. so am i. i still live here. but for goodness sake, make a conscious, consistent effort to understand that that is not who or how you always have to be. there are ways, child. there are ALWAYS ways. you just need to have the courage to find them and then have the sense to follow them. at a certain point, you have to start teaching yourself how to be because there will be no scholarship, no counselor, no mentor there to save you. after twenty five years of being a scholarship baby, of being black, of being a woman, i get tired of having to prove my worth. so what do i do? i tell myself day in and day out that i'm worth every ounce of the struggle. i've learned to save myself sometimes.
