I started college at 16 with nobody in my family who'd ever done it.
I believe nobody should miss out on college just because no one ever showed them how. Not the kid whose parents never went. Not the adult going back at 35. Not the mom who wants to help her son but was never helped herself. The barrier was never your potential — it's that nobody ever explained the door to you.
I'm not a counselor or some expert with letters after my name. I'm the oldest of seven, I grew up lower-class, and I had no one to ask — so I learned it the hard way. Which classes count, which ones waste a whole quarter, how the money really works. I got plenty of it wrong before I got it right. I walked out with my Associate's degree before I even finished high school.
Here's what doing it alone taught me: almost none of it is hard once someone shows you the order to do things in. The system doesn't hand you a map — it makes you go find one. So I drew mine. And I made it for the people the system usually leaves to figure it out alone.
If I could, you can.
— Landyn