I didn’t grow up with the kind of life people post on social media. There weren’t family dinners, school awards or people telling me I could be anything I wanted. I entered foster care when I was a year old, and for most of my life I assumed I would never be the kind of person who made it to college.
School wasn’t something I cared about. By eighth grade, I had already given up on trying. I was angry, tired and convinced I would always be the one who fell behind.
My twin sister, Isabelle Ramos, was the opposite. She was the athlete, the student, the one teachers noticed. People saw her as the “smart one,” and I got used to being the loud, difficult one who didn’t have her life together.
But even though we grew up in the same situation, we experienced it differently.
“Growing up with you was rough because we were so different,” Isabelle Ramos told me. “I was more involved in school. You weren’t seen the same way I was.”
For a long time, I didn’t care. I didn’t see a future for myself, so I didn’t bother building one. But everything changed the day I watched Isabelle Ramos walk across the stage and receive her master’s degree. I was sitting in the audience, and instead of feeling jealous like I used to, I felt something else for the first time.
I thought, “Why not me?”
That moment was the start of my reset. I enrolled at Citrus College, not just to take classes, but to start over. I joined The Clarion, I got involved in Extended Opportunity Programs and Services, Guardian Scholars, Rising Scholars and the NextUp program.
I started working with foster-youth organizations like Foster Nation X, the Community College
Foundation and Stacks UP. For the first time, I felt useful. I felt like I was becoming someone.
My grandma, Tina Logsdon, noticed the difference immediately.
“I’ve seen you more organized with your day-to-day work,” she told me. “You’ve changed the way you contribute to the community.”
She remembers the version of me before all of this, the one who didn’t try, didn’t plan and was barely working.
“Five years ago, you were living in a garage with no motivation,” Logsdon said in a text message. “Now you’re using your brain and going back to school. I’m so proud of you.”
My sister is proud too, even if she admits people don’t always see me clearly.
“People underestimate you because you’re loud and outgoing, so they don’t think you’re serious,” Isabelle Ramos said. “I wish they could see your intellectual side.”
I’ve learned something this year: Being in foster care doesn’t make us weak. It just means we had to learn how to survive before we ever got the chance to grow. I used to think my past was a barrier, but now I see it as the reason I’m strong enough to keep going.
College didn’t fix my life, but it gave me something I never had before proof that I could build one.
Now when I think about my future, I don’t say “if.”
I say “when.”
