Oppression is something that America has gotten quite good at. While we may be the good ole “land of the free” we are also the land of the selective. You are free to be who you want in this country,...

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.