In school, I was very nerdy, but I was being abused and neglected at home and couldn’t do homework and projects sometimes because my mother wouldn’t allow me to. But I’d do well on tests. I often didn’t eat lunch so I’d have time to do homework that I couldn’t do at home. My teachers thought I was too arrogant to do my work and that I wanted to get by without putting in effort. I was often picked on by my teachers who thought I deserved it (one in particular hated me).

We had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and she asked me what I thought about the slave owners in the book, and I was kind of naive and just said they seemed nicer than other slave owners. My family was very evangelical and I was kind of brainwashed for a while. I also would just try to say what I thought my teachers wanted to hear in assignments. But she kind of flipped out at me and, from then on, treated me like I was a terrible person. At one point, she told me all I’d ever be is a teen mom like my own mother. She thought she had me all figured out. She didn’t even stop to find out why. I struggled getting into a good college and struggled in undergrad because of the abuse and trauma in my life. But I eventually went to grad school and became a professor. She was inspiration for the kind of person I NEVER want to be.