“You’re father is dead.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing through the phone.

“Mom you can not be serious, I just saw him a few weeks ago, he told me he was getting himself together and was going to come back home and make a family for us so I would be happy again.”  

“Honey that won’t be happening in this life and I am sorry had to be the one to break the news to you.”

This is my life that I live but this is only a dream. The dream that keeps playing over and over in my head but for many of my friends it is very true. I live in East St. Louis and to say the least its ghetto. Ghetto doesn’t even describe where I live. Where I live can is constantly being compared to the Magnolia projects in New Orleans, Louisiana and to the Bronx in New York City. But I have goals for myself; I have a plan for my life. I plan to go to be the first in my family to go to college; Washington University to be specific, but first I have to overcome this obstacle of graduating high school. I have a lot of challenges ahead of me but I am determined to make it through this last year and a half and I will be the first member of my family to make it through high school.

My mother, she dropped out at the age of 17 because she had one child and was pregnant with me at the time. She was a junior at East St. Louis High School. My father, he attended Liberty High school in the suburbs here but once my momma got pregnant and had me he felt the need to drop of high school so he could try to make something better for me and my brother. I thank my parents for they have done; they have done all they can with what they have to give me and my older sister the best lives possible for us.

Unfortunately, one thing that my sister and I have gone without due to my parents not making enough money is a decent education. I attend East St. Louis High School, you have probably heard about us, we’re located in a neighborhood full of crime and many males in this hood don’t live to see it until there twenty-first birthday. Its sad but it’s the harsh realities of the streets over here. Most of my friends I started out attending East St. Louis High with have dropped out for some reason or another, but I’m not a follower, I am a leader. I have a dream, just like Dr. King.

I love East St. Louis High but if I had the opportunity given to me I would move to Liberty High located just over the bridge. My school is just so sad bad and I sometimes get frustrated because I know that I am not being taught the same things that students over at Liberty are being taught, but what is being mad going to do? It’s not going to get me anywhere so I just do my work and go to the library on the other side of town and study in order to get the education I need so I can accomplish my dreams.

I take all Advanced Placement courses in order to be somewhat challenged here but it’s not too hard. In my advanced Chemistry class we don’t have many dissecting kits and we don’t have enough lab tables for everyone to fit into the room. Mr. Harp told us that we should have about 15 lab tables and we only have 6. Every time we get to go into the lab we must cram into the tables and in order to fit 5 to table instead of two that should be at a table. Mr. Harp has also told us that the reason we can not come to the lab on a regular basis is because we do not have enough supervision. He says he trusts us in the lab but the he knows that supervising thirty students in a lab in which it should be one adult to every twenty students is unsafe and can put us at risk for injury. He tells us that because we don’t get to the lab as much as we should that he worries about how we are going to do on the A.P. test coming up in about two months. We work out of our books a lot of times and I know that our books are not the most up to date.

Last semester, in my A.P. English class we didn’t have a class set of books for about nine weeks and when we finally got the needed books in and they were not the same as the one’s that we had already had. They were up to date at least once again we had the same problem, no class set. So half way through the semester we have the materials to begin to prepare for our A.P. exams, while across the city Liberty has been learning the material and we now have to pay catch.

I sometimes get upset when I am at school just because of all the funding inequalities that go on here. I feel that I am cheated as a student; most of the funding for my district comes from property tax and the property tax around here is so low that there is no way the money coming into my school will equal that of Liberty. It’s just not fair, but what am I to do, I want things to be fair I want to be equal and I want to go to college. With funding the way it is this is not going to be an easy task.

Many of my female friends have gotten pregnant and they feel that it’s the only life for them. They believe that because they go to a “ghetto” school they have no future even if they do get good grades. The girls believe that because most of America knows about East St. Louis being so bad that they won’t get accepted to college because the school is so easy.

The girls need to change their mind set and be determined to go out and make a difference. Nothing here in East St. Louis is going to just change, maybe if the government saw that students here were trying to do better and excel then maybe we would get more money but until then its going to be the same old stuff. I just want something to change. I want to have an equal opportunity when it comes to applying and getting accepted to college but right now I don’t.

So I am now thinking about colleges and I really know where I want to go. I have been taught all the knowledge to get the score I need to get into Washington University of St. Louis. I have been accepted early on the basis that I must get a score of a 4 to enter the main campus. I hope that this will happen because I truly want to make a difference in my family I want to be the first.

So it’s the morning of the A.P. test and I have done everything I can to prepare I enter my school building and notice that it’s so hot.

“Just great, the day I have to take this A.P. test the air conditioning is broken and it is so hot in this building and how is that supposed to help me. I wish my parents would have done something with their life so I could be over at Liberty, guaranteed theirs is working and they control it on-site. Unlike us over here roasting like chickens.” I said this talking Shae before we entered the testing room.

“Well good luck girl do your best and it will all work out, I promise.” Shea said this to me just before we took our seats.

I did my best on the test but I know that my best probably wasn’t good enough to get the 4 I need to get in to Washington University. I am frustrated when I leave the test because I was not properly prepared by my teacher who did not have the sufficient funds to do so for us. It’s not his fault so what is getting mad at him going to do. Nothing. I just got to get into Washington so I can make a difference.

“You’re A.P. results are in Lanie.”

“Okay mom I will be right down to look at them just leave them on the table and once I get off the phone I will be down to look”

I got off the phone and I began to feel very sick. Once I got downstairs I noticed there was also a letter from Washington University. I knew that the letter was either telling me I was fully accepted or I was rejected and must attend another school. I opened the letter from College Board; the testing company who administers the A.P. test. I was sick to my stomach after reading the scores. My hard work went to nothing I knew I had not been accepted to Washington after reading my score. I only got a 3, one point away and my dreams are gone. I just should have been like the other girls in my school, just like my momma, my sister, everyone in East St. Louis. I should have fallen into the streets but I didn’t I tried to make a difference but it all goes to nothing. I didn’t get the score needed to get in so I know what the letter says.

I begin to cry and just walk to my room with both letters in my hand. I was just about to throw the letter from Washington University away because there was no point and torturing myself by reading the letter that said I was not accepted and that I should try for another school. I was up for the challenge ahead of me by attending Washington University but I guess I just didn’t prove it to them.

But something within me told me to just open the letter and I did. And to my surprise I was accepted. And on top of that I was given a full scholarship. My dream was fulfilled I was going to make a difference in my family. I was going to break the generational curse that was put over my family. I was the first to even be accepted to college so that right there was a start.

With this given to me I am going to hit the ground running and make a difference in St. Louis High. I plan to become a teacher and I going to come back here and teach. I am not going to leave my “people” they need me more than the students at Liberty do. This is my roots, I am going to come back here and be someone’s inspiration someone’s motivation to see that just because we don’t have as much as Liberty we can make something of our life. We just have to try and be determined.