Jerrye Chesnes Memorial Scholarship

I've always had a complicated relationship with education. I love learning. This has been true as long as I can remember. Before I turned three, I taught myself to read. I read anything I could get my hands on, from cereal boxes to VCR manuals. I absorbed all the information I could—facts about elephants' knees, the biological connection between rhinoceroses and horses. I could identify different swords by the shape of their blades. I was an odd kid, certainly. But I was sharp, eager to understand, and motivated to explore the world. I began writing, and by age nine knew that's what I wanted to do with my life. But when I began public school, everything shifted. Suddenly I was bored, rehashing things I learned very quickly, or I was out of my depth, unable to keep up with my classmates. Our self-paced reading program was the only thing that kept me afloat in a system that became increasingly perplexing. By high school, my GPA had dropped troublingly. Then, after years of struggling in college, my anxiety around math was enough to slow me to a stop. I dropped out just one class shy of my associate's degree. Leaving school did not mean leaving learning, though. My longing to absorb life and interpret it wisely, to understand what I can of the world, has never grown tired. I started writing for a living, and am now a published poet. I spent a year learning other languages as I traveled—literally—all the way around the world. Still, I have always felt untapped potential hidden somewhere in me. This raised so many questions. This year, I finally got some answers. At 33-years-old, I was diagnosed with autism. Finally, a clue to why I struggled so much in school. The system was not built for brains like mine, whose growth is asynchronous, whose sensitivity to the environment causes constant overwhelm, whose social difficulties become a bewildering distraction. Teachers dismissed me as lazy, aloof, because my perceived intelligence didn't match my levels of success. I bought into this for a long time. Recognizing I am autistic made me feel less like a failure. Actually, it made me feel proud. Proud that I got so far without support or necessary self-understanding. Seeing myself in this new light sparked something: a desire to try again. Now I am the mother of a two-year-old boy who is so much like I was at his age. He knows the names of his planets (and corrects me when I mislabel them), his alphabet, his numbers, identifies birds by their calls. He is peculiar and hilarious and precocious and beautifully odd. I am eager to get back to school for myself, for my own yearning and sense of accomplishment. But beyond that, I am eager to show him what brains like ours can do when we enter challenging spaces with self-understanding, trust in our minds and our enthusiasm for learning, and willingness to ask for support when we need it. Applying for scholarships like this one have been, for me, an act of determination. We don't have the funds to get me back to school, and I'm reluctant to take out loans when we already have a number of outstanding debts. My family is the priority, and making sure we aren't overwhelming ourselves for my schooling is important to me. Finances really are the last hurdle for me in reestablishing myself as a student. I plan to attend school as full-time as finances allow. Thank you so much for considering me for this scholarship - it means everything!