When I first stepped onto campus at Mercer, I didn’t feel brave. I had always cared about what everyone else thought, and I always felt so alone. I felt like an outsider, and of course, I thought about all the ways it could go wrong.
I was 30. I had two little boys at home, ages 2 and 6 months. I was living in a body I didn’t recognize, and struggling with postpartum depression. And here I was, returning to school after a long detour that included addiction, recovery, and the chaos that came with getting pregnant after only six months in recovery.
As I prepare to graduate, I remember what it felt like walking into MCCC for the first time, feeling anxious and inadequate, and like I was going to throw up everywhere.
I had no idea where to go for help. I didn’t know how to navigate financial aid, participate in class discussions, or fit in with other students. I was genuinely terrified.
But I stayed. I asked questions. I learned. And I grew into someone who loves learning, and not just for the sake of a degree, but for the first time in my life, I see a path towards genuinely understanding the world and my place in it.
One of the first moments I realized just how far I had come was the day I wrote my first hard news story. I had just started taking Journalism and while driving home, I drove past a fire that had broken out right near campus.
I reached out to our advisor to see if I should report on it, and she said “your hard news story has found you,” go for it. I turned my car around, grabbed my press pass, and walked past the caution tape toward the smoke. It was still burning.
I could feel the heat. My heart pounded, but I kept walking, repeating to myself: You belong here. I wasn’t just reporting the story, I was becoming the kind of person who didn’t turn away from the heat.
I’m leaving Mercer with a confidence I’ve never known and certainly never thought possible.
I changed, and my experience at Mercer gave me so much more than information. I became someone who spoke up, someone who earned respect, someone who dared to believe in her own intelligence and her voice. My professors saw me not as someone to pity, but someone to invest in. My foundation is solid.
Now, as I prepare to transfer to a four-year university, fear is creeping in again. This time it’s even more complex than what I felt when I arrived at Mercer.
It’s not just the fear of being new or in a new environment, it’s the fear of being overlooked: as a woman, as a mom, as a non-traditional student. I want to pursue my newfound love of psychological and sociological research, particularly in areas like addiction, identity, and harm reduction. But I fear I’ll be left behind.
I am not naive. I know that nationally, research funding in the social sciences is being cut. But to people like me, these are the fields that helped me heal, and the ones I want to give back to.
This country may be pushing mental health and social justice work to the margins, but I refuse to let myself be pushed with it. I’ve come too far to back down now.
So yes, I’m scared, but I’m going anyway.
I learned it’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to not know what comes next. I figured out what mattered to me and I asked questions even when I thought other people would think they were dumb, and I stopped apologizing for it.
I’m walking toward the fire once again, but with a newfound belief in myself. In the end, I won two awards for my article about the fire and the photos I took with it. Plus, I got the story before any of the other local papers.
I know now that fear doesn’t mean I’m not ready. It means I’m doing something that matters. And I am grateful to the person I was when I started this journey, even if she is unrecognizable now. She kept going.
Though the next steps are uncertain, and the funding may be tight, and the system may not have been built for someone like me, someone has to change that system. And I’m ready to try.
