My Journey to Get an Education

Celeste Jackson

My Journey to Get an Education

Throughout most of high school I had one goal: to get into the best college I possibly could, preferably one as far away from my home as possible, because my mother suffers from severe alcoholism. During those four years, I watched her drinking escalate to a degree I had never witnessed before. The kitchen shelves were always lined with bottles of vodka and whisky. The air was always thick and dark with cigarette smoke. There is a desperate kind of sadness that surrounds people who have given up on their lives, but refuse to admit it. It’s not a healthy environment for anyone to live in, so I focused all of my energy on trying to get out. However, it seems that in life, no matter how hard I, or anyone else for that matter, work to plan the future, things can go awry. My journey has been finding a way to go to school and, more importantly, learning how to accept the fact that my path to an education will not be what I imagined.

For four years I worked tirelessly to build an extensive resume and get the best grades in the class. Everyone at my school assumed that colleges appreciate students who have a plethora of extracurricular activities. It was constantly repeated to us by teachers, guidance counselors, and club directors. Because of this, I worked a terrible office job putting together tax returns. The whole office was painted gray, which made the room I sat in almost as dull and mind-numbing as the work I was doing. I also traveled by bus and train from the Lakeview neighborhood to Downtown Chicago then back to my home twice a week to take supplementary art classes. This was one more way to build my resume and add on activities outside of school. Instead of going out to parties on weekends, I spent the rest of my free time studying for tests, writing good essays, and doing all of the homework my Advanced Placement courses assigned.

However, it was not until my senior year that I actually realized what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. A scheduling mix-up landed me in my first Zoology class. It was something I never would have chosen for myself but ended up helping me decide my ultimate career path. At first I thought it was going to be a boring class where I got an easy “A” but ultimately learned nothing. However, this was not the case at all; slowly but surely it started to grow on me. Zoology was by far the most interesting class I had ever taken, and each day I looked forward learning more. I learned about octopuses who locked themselves inside of jelly jars found at the bottom of the ocean and used them as mobile homes for protection against predators. I learned that elephants take time on certain paths to grieve over members of their herd who died. I was fascinated, and it was there I decided I wanted to major in Environmental Sciences and someday work in wildlife conservation. In order to do this, I wanted to pick a college that was well-known for its science program. The more I researched, the more I found that the University of Colorado would be a good fit for me. It is located at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and surrounded by lush, green forest preserves. For this reason, it is also full of wildlife that I could study. They concentrated both in environmental science and environmental engineering, which opened up a lot of opportunities to learn and get a job once I graduated.

My entire high school career had prepared me for going away to school. I had the grades and resume to be accepted; I easily wrote my application and scholarship essays; I even started buying appliances for my dorm. When I finally received my acceptance letter, it did not come as much of a surprise. I had already prepared myself to leave in the fall. However, my parents told me that summer that they could not afford to help me financially in any way. I knew they did not have a college fund set aside for me, but I was unaware that they could not sign a student loan with me either. Without any credit whatsoever, I could not get a loan by myself. For reasons unknown to me, my parents did not notify me of these developments until late in the summer. By this time, I had already deferred enrollment at all other schools and it was too late to tell them I would be attending. Regardless, even if I could have told them, I didn’t really have the money to go anywhere else.

Left with no other options, I was forced to work full time. I took one and a half years off, and during that period, I worked mainly in restaurants waitressing. It was not as terrible as many would think it to be, but it certainly was not something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Working as a waitress takes its toll both physically and mentally. Waitstaff has to deal with demanding customers, burning hot food, and screaming children  – not to mention the feeling of being up on your feet carrying giant platters of food for eight hours. When I finally got to the point where I could no longer stand to do it, I decided to just enroll in community college.

So far, I have not actually attained my reward, which is a degree and later on a job working in the field of environmental science. This whole trip has been a learning experience and has taught me that although everyone can, and should, always work their hardest to achieve their goals; some things are simply out of our hands. I have learned to judge myself less harshly and to accept the fact that getting where I need to be may take a slower path.