I vividly remember sitting in my high school auditorium when I was a junior and listening to several administrators describe the opportunities my future and the future of my classmates had waiting for us IF we attended college. At that moment, I do not quite remember if the auditorium truly fell silent or if my brain just shut down and decided to drown out all sound, but I do remember obsessing about the fact that my future could be an IF. College was never a question in my mind, and naively, I assumed most of my peers felt the same way. Furthering my education was always an expectation and a requirement that was instilled in me since birth and to be told by an administrator that college is not such a common path was shocking to me.