Who Can I Blame? No Money, No Education. The world I was born in because I'm African American.

Today, is not a good day. And It is never a good day when your dreams are ripped from you, by things you can't control, and people you can blame because they are directly responsible for that dream being taken from you.
I'm a true believer in the idea of free will, and how there is always a choice. I can either be really upset, or try to find a way around the problem. However, the problem is so huge at this point, I can't even see how anyone can get out of this social infection in the black community as a teenager, who has busted her ass every year only to be put under the glass ceiling because of others' failure to try too.
Today, I found out that I cannot take any of the Advanced Placement courses that I need to get in my top school, NYU. Why can't I, you ask? Because, the small fraction of people in my current honors classes would rather do nothing their senior year, and go the route of pure laziness, than keep trying, because they all have the same plan. To attend community college, or maybe even do nothing. Most of them might not even graduate. In fact, only 33% of my graduating class plan to go to college. I'm at a defecit here in Trotwood, the black community that is deteriorating at its core, since every business closes down slowly but surely, or moves to where business will be better. There is no mall down the street, and most of the shopping is done 30 minutes away. All the schools the come to play us in sports, have scholar athletes attending the most prominent educational schools in our great state of Ohio. Where will our athletes go? Sinclair? No where? Its a strong possibility that the latter of the two will happen. The future is sad for me, and no matter how hard I try to rise above from the ashes, like a phoenix, I simply die out, like a sparkler left on the grass on 4th of July.
So whats in store for me in my senior year? AP English, Senior Project, and Calculus. The only truly at its core, classes that focus on my academics. I mean, I am an art student, planning to major in Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts, but of course, what sorts of writing classes do we have here? Mystery and Crime Literature, where I can spend time reading books that I think are cheesy, with a teacher who will give me an A as long as I show up and do tests. Drama, which nobody in the class knows any of the great plays like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, or Macbeth. Drama, with people who only watch movies with guns, action, or ghetto lives involved. It'd be a waste of time. Hmm, it seems the past three years at this high school have been a waste except for a few choice teachers who taught me lessons I couldn't learn anywhere else, because they can see the lethargy, and the useless students who don't try because they don't have to. Who don't want to succeed because they don't think there is anything awaiting them outside these walls but children, welfare, and prison. Any other classes listed in my course catalog are off limits, because no one will sign up for them. The same reason that kept me out of advanced composition this year, and stuck me in Academically Ready for College, a class that only gave me time to study, since most of the work for Accuplacer, I knew it a long time ago.
So whats the problem here? At its essence, I've been forced under the popular vote of easy living and lack of challenge because they just don't want to, and figure they can just get by. Work for dollars, and only get change. A sad misconception of many African Americans, who don't try. For those of us who do, you will forever fall under the glass ceiling until we wake up.
My other problem is money. The proverbial paper, that only has value because the government says it does. Harvard University give this program every summer, an offer I have jumped on twice, and everytime it happens, I don't have any money to go. Always 3,000 dollars short. Not to mention money for other things when I get there. I guess, I'm supposed to pull it out of thin air. Because the fact that I'm living on the edge of poverty with my parents is not apparent to a university who needs lots of money, more then they need to educate America's youth. The problem with higher level. They want your money, they don't want you. And so I try to think of last resorts, like selling my acoustic guitar, and old mint condition yu-gi-oh cards, that the right buyer might take for a large amount of cash. Yet, I still go to bed, knowing that on May 31st I'll have to send the same email I sent last year, stating I cannot attend because I can't afford to.
And does anyone see the broken soul inside of me, that has lost another part of her dream to change the world with words? I need help, I need an education. I need the best writers in the world to teach me the craft, past the talent I already held. How will I get this help? With the green 20 dollar bill in my wallet? Will it ever stretch far enough to get me there? Or should I do what the rest of my schoolmates are opting to, and going to cheap instate schools, and settle for what I can afford, and never go 30 miles away from my house, and attempt to be a writer in Ohio. A writer in Ohio. I tend to laugh at the idea of living in an apartment in Kettering thumping away at a lap top, writing a New York Times bestseller, or an Academy Award Winning Film. You can write anywhere, but with no connection whatsoever to New York or Hollywood, I might as well go to Wright State and become a neuroscientist like all my science teachers suggested. But again, the money will be stretched? Will again I be forced to go to bed knowing I'll send the letter, saying I can't afford to?
Everyone may say, get scholarships, you're smart. Yet, everytime I turn around there are students at private schools getting SAT scores of 1900, applying for the same scholarships, eventhough their parents could afford it but do not want to pay, and win on sheer numbers alone. Or maybe they did more things outside of school like National Honors Society, or Junior Statesmen, or worked with politicians in the summer. While the only academic form of academics at my school is an Academic Team that had no recognition whatsoever, because our education with its lack of focus, had us in last place in everything we did. You see, I'm at my witts end. All of this knowledge, and its still not even enough. Its still not even close to where it could have been.
So will I shake my fist at anyone? I have no right in the end. I was born to a mother and father who tried their best, and came about with a semi-middle class/poverty income. My father a wounded veteran, my mother a factory worker, whose job is leaving. My African American, single mother at 19, and then me, the unplanned pregnancy that I'm greatful she decided to keep me. And bless my father for staying there for me, no matter how much he disliked her. Lord knows they tried to give us four kids the world, but unfortunately its still not enough. Still not, enough money in the bank, to feed the rich people of the world, who are money hungry, and don't hold a single value in the look in a teenager's eyes when they realize they have succeeded. Don't hold a single happiness in knowing somebody in the world isn't working a job just because they have to, but are there because they want to be. Another life not made miserable by their obligations, but instead happily greatful for their passion providing money to them.
So here I am, a depression worse than death, because my dreams were stolen from me by a school full of slackers, and a college that can't read between the lines of "I CANT AFFORD 10,000 dollars." If there was a person in this whole entire world who could see how hard I've worked to be something more than just another black girl, having babies, and working from paycheck to paycheck. How hard I've worked to break that proverbial ceiling. How much blood I've spilled to be a perfect student. How many tears have fallen in my failure, only for the cries of joy when I succeed. How many people I have helped with their tests, homework, and papers, because I wanted them to succeed too and rise above what is expected for them. Isn't that worth giving up your luxury cars and huge houses for? Isn't that worth giving up your 8 figure incomes for? Isn't that worth dying for?