Choice Blog Week 7A huge influence on me has been my friendship with Kelly. I met her at the beginning of 11th grade. She was a skinny girl with huge hair, an overachiever in every sense of the word. I was new to the school and quiet and about to go through some of the worst years of my life. Our friendship started off normally, with a shared English class and working on a class project together. However, near the end of that year, after a lot of personal turmoil, I was kicked out of my house. I was 17 and my mom and many of the people I had grown up with completely disowned me. I spent the whole next year living in the basement of my dad, who had a new, young family and really didn’t have time for a problematic teenager. I spent my Senior year skipping my classes and feeling like nothing mattered and that everything in life was basically either corrupt or irrelevant. During this time, Kelly, perfect grades, President of the National Honor Society, Kelly stayed my friend. She was my friend when I failed Pre-Calc, she was my friend as I spent my art class smoking in the darkroom, and she was friend even when I got suspended. Her family offered me their spare bedroom and let me come over and spend hours with their daughter, although it was clear that I was not a good influence. Most of all, Kelly was my friend after high school. I was in Colorado, and I remember calling Kelly from the pay phone in a small town in a big, dusty, empty plain that I had been driving through for what felt like days. I told her I wasn’t going to college, that I was going to travel and “be free”. She told me that was ridiculous and asked me what my Social Security number was. Kelly, of course, had a full scholarship to Wayne State, and she decided I was going to go there too. She filled out my application, and I got in. That fall, after I had run out of money from being free, I moved in with her at her grandparent’s house and took my first three college classes, which ultimately changed my life. I was a poor student those last two years of high school, but college was a completely different experience. I found that I loved my college classes. Instead of being forced to take something I hated, I found that I got to study poetry, and art history and politics. Over time, I gradually learned how to love any class that I took by putting my mind and heart in it. I graduated from Wayne State Summa Cum Laude and went on to get my Master's degree from a prestigious, selective program at the University of Michigan. I don't know if I would have done any of this if Kelly had not helped me get onto this academic path. The year after I got kicked out, I felt like I would never trust anyone again. Kelly’s friendship showed me that, even when we are betrayed or abandoned by our own families, we can, if we are lucky, still have people that love us unconditionally, even when we are being stupid, or destructive or selfish. She not only got me to go to college, but she showed me that family is more than just being related. That I could and should trust people again. That I could choose my own family. 22 years later, we are still friends. I think I made a good choice.
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March 2018
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