Illustration: Blair Kelly
I think I know words and their power. I think I know the Garden State. But my college-essay students give me an education in both. Most of them are high-achieving high school juniors in Camden and Newark applying to the most prestigious colleges in the country. When I found out that one of them got a full ride, I jumped for joy—as high as I used to when I was a cheerleader in South Jersey.
I grew up not far from Camden, surrounded by piney woods and a lake too polluted for swimming. I never noticed all the material things we didn’t have until we moved to a North Jersey town full of fancy foreign cars and a neighborhood with its own park, swimming pool, and a clean pond full of ducks. Whether in impoverished Browns Mills or affluent Morristown, I roamed freely—to the polluted lake to catch minnows in Browns Mills and to the movie theater and record store on the Morristown Green.
Prior to college, I never really considered my early wanderings as a form of freedom until one Camden student wrote about why she wants to be an engineer. Her parents worry about her safety in Camden, where she has lived since kindergarten. So she never goes anywhere alone. Independence is her goal. She comes from a long line of working artists, an inherited passion and ability. She is also excellent at math. Engineering is her way of combining both skills and making this family trade her own.
Another student wants to go into health care to prevent any more deaths like that of her mother, who went into the hospital with chest pains but was sent home without a diagnosis and died soon after. Her essay was about navigating this great loss and the depression that followed. When I asked how she came out of the depression, she said she started meditating and journaling. Those are also my go-tos, but we practice them differently. I like to sit quietly or walk. My student likes to follow guided meditations on YouTube. I write down my thoughts and feelings in a journal. She uses hers to organize her time and keep track of assignments. Routine and clarity keep her depression at bay.
It took me years of therapy and self-help to realize what my student came to intuitively. The answer is not out there, it’s in me. But lately, even as I use my go-tos, I’m full of doubt. Two years ago, my first book was published and my marriage ended. Some days, I struggle to move forward between the opposite poles of joy and grief. My student who lost her mother now has a new stepmom and siblings. Her takeaway? Embrace both the heartbreak of losing her mother and the happiness of a new family every day.
There are two words I have come to value: resilience, the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; and inspire, from the Latin inspirare, “to breathe into.” The courage that my students show on the page and in their lives is humbling. Their stories breathe life into me.
Dionne Ford is the author of the memoir Go Back and Get It.
