I could already hear the conversations at Thanksgiving.
“Victoria is doing so well at Whitmore.”
“And Francis… oh, she’s still figuring things out.”
But this wasn’t only about proving them wrong.
It was about proving myself right.
I scrolled through scholarship databases until my eyes burned.
Most required recommendations, essays, proof of financial need.
Some were scams.
Others had deadlines that had already passed.
Then I found something.
Eastbrook had a merit scholarship program for first-generation and independent students: full tuition coverage plus a living stipend.
The catch?
Only five students per year were selected.
The competition was brutal.
I saved the link.
Then I kept scrolling—and that’s when I first saw the name that would eventually change my life.
The Whitfield Scholarship.
Full ride.
$10,000 annually for living expenses.
Awarded to only twenty students nationwide.
I laughed out loud.
Twenty students in the entire country.
What chance did I have?
But I bookmarked it anyway.
I had two choices:
Accept the life my parents designed for me,
or design my own.
I chose the second.
But to do that, I needed a plan—and I needed it immediately.
That summer, I filled an entire notebook.
Every page was a calculation.
Every margin was covered in plans.
Job number one: barista at the Morning Grind, a campus café.
Shift: 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.
Estimated monthly income: $800.
Job number two: cleaning crew for the residence halls.
Weekends only: $400 a month.
Job number three: teaching assistant for the economics department—if I could land it.
Another $300.
Total: $1,500 per month, roughly $18,000 a year.
Still $7,000 short of tuition.
That gap would have to come from scholarships—merit-based ones.
The kind you earn.
Not the kind you’re handed.
I found the cheapest housing option within walking distance of campus: a tiny room in a house shared with four other students.
$300 a month, utilities included.
No parking.
No AC.
No privacy.
It would have to do.
My schedule crystallized into something brutal but precise.
5:00 a.m.: work at the café.
9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.: classes.
6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.: study, work, or TA duties.
11:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.: sleep.
Four to five hours a night.
For four years.
The week before I left for college, Victoria posted photos from her Cancún trip with friends—sunset beaches, margaritas, laughter.
I was packing my thrift-store comforter into a secondhand suitcase.
Our lives were already diverging.
And we hadn’t even started yet.
Every night before sleep, I whispered the same thing to myself.
This is the price of freedom.
Freedom from their expectations.
Freedom from their judgment.
Freedom from needing their approval.
I didn’t know then how right I’d be.
And I didn’t know that somewhere on the Eastbrook campus there was a professor who would see something in me that my own parents never could.
Freshman year—Thanksgiving.
I sat alone in my tiny rented room, phone pressed to my ear, listening to the sounds of home: laughter in the background, the clink of dishes, the warm chaos of a family gathering I wasn’t part of.
“Hello, Francis.”
Mom’s voice was distant, distracted.
“Hi, Mom. Happy Thanksgiving.”
“Oh. Yes. Happy Thanksgiving, honey. How are you?”
“I’m okay. Is Dad there? Can I talk to him?”
A pause.
Then I heard his voice in the background—muffled, but clear.
“Tell her I’m busy.”
The words landed like stones.
Mom’s voice returned, artificially bright.
“Your father’s just in the middle of something. Victoria was telling the funniest story.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Are you eating enough? Do you need anything?”
I looked around my room: the instant ramen on my desk, the secondhand blanket, the textbook I’d borrowed from the library because I couldn’t afford to buy it.
“No, Mom. I don’t need anything.”
“Okay. Well, we love you.”
“Love you too.”
I hung up.
Then I opened Facebook.
The first thing in my feed was a photo Victoria had just posted: Mom, Dad, and Victoria at the dining table.
Candles lit.
Turkey gleaming.
Caption: Thankful for my amazing family.
I zoomed in.
Three place settings.
Three chairs.
Not four.
They hadn’t even set a place for me.
I stared at that image for a long time.
Something shifted inside me that night.
The ache I’d carried for years—the longing for their approval, their attention, their love—it didn’t disappear.
But it changed.
It hollowed out.
And where the pain used to be, there was only quiet emptiness.
Strangely, that emptiness gave me something the pain never had.
Clarity.
Second semester, freshman year: Microeconomics 101.
Dr. Margaret Smith was legendary at Eastbrook.
Thirty years of teaching.
Published in every major journal.
A terrifying reputation.
Students whispered that she hadn’t given an A in five years.
I sat in the third row, took meticulous notes, and turned in my first essay expecting a B-minus at best.
The paper came back with two letters at the top:
A+
Beneath the grade, a note in red ink:
See me after class.
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