My high school sent a counselor to visit me in college. I repaid the favor by running a marathon.
As my feet pounded the pavement during the marathon I was surprised to be running, I thought back to seventh grade.
I was a student at Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School, but everyone there called it WHEELS, and I was in Ms. Aberger’s class for College 101 week. Throughout that week, we learned about following the path to get to college. We learned about choosing majors of interest, moving away from home, and writing theses. We even learned about the University of Notre Dame and its renowned football games.
I recall telling my mother about what we were learning. As a woman who migrated from the Dominican Republic a year before I was born, she was excited to hear I was being exposed to something — confidence that a college education was in reach — that she’d wished for.