Being a college student and daughter of a low-income family can bring heartache to many in this position. There's always a place of stability in your life that you feel you can never reach however hard you try. Not being able to go to school activities with all of your friends or going to those activities and sitting out on buying snacks with everyone. Everyone has the latest iPhone and you with a button phone with only one contact. The shame of growing up poor and the desire to be better held me back from great opportunities. I learned to not want to include myself in social gatherings because I was afraid we might have had to split the bill. I assumed my struggles and opinions on any conversation weren't important enough to mention or else I'd burden my peers with something none of them could change. I believe poverty puts you in this endless loop. You grow up thinking you have to starve in silence or else DCF would take you away from your family. You grow up not telling your mom about the most gut-wrenching tummy ache because you know hospital visits can set you back at least 10 grocery store visits. And the thing is, once you grow to have a stable and liveable income, you stay in that poor man's mindset, "just in case". What makes me most upset is that I thought I was poor because I am Black. While I still mildly agree with this statement, it's disappointing that at eleven years old, I thought that my skin color gave me no room for growth in this world. Noticing over the years, how many jobs my parents have gone through and how we still had nothing. I was beginning to think I was the unlucky one. Why did I have to be born Black? Why did I have to be born into hopelessness? No matter how hard I hoped, every day was exactly the same, except I got older. Now, I'm reaching the big two zero. In trying to give myself hope and purpose, I speak up more and walk about with my head held high. While I'm still burdened with my history, I know that I can find the tools to keep moving forward. I've learned to accept and embrace the things I cannot change. I have allowed myself into a community that is patient with me and allows me space to grow. I share my story disregarding anyone who cannot bother to hear it, "just in case".

The dream version of myself will be able to appreciate the little things in life without being overwhelmed by the disadvantages that come with life.

I love how maths tends to reinvent itself itself but is always miraculously related to each other. Initially, we learned simple addition and subtraction. Without any notice, we moved to multiplication and division. Then, on to PEMDAS and SOHCAHTOA. But wait! Skip to the product rule, related rates, proofs, circuits and propositions. Clearly all of these ideas derived from one point but, “How?” is the question. I admire the complexity of mathematics and how there will always be the next idea or theorem unbeknownst to me. Growing up, there was always some goal to reach. After it was accomplished, you would fixate on you next milestone. As soon as you turned nine, you began impatiently anticipating the day you would turn ten. The same is true of education. You look forward to advancing to the following grade level each year. There was always a next “best thing” you needed to achieve. Math gives me space to develop a curious mind. Even once I’ve reached a point where I have all of the theorems memorized and have locked down every known way to solve a problem, the slight chance that there might be the next discovery would allow the child in me to me intrigued.