There are certain memories that stick out in Technicolor against the hazy grey of misremembrance- people, places, conversations all eventually fade into some sort of cerebral abyss, but snapshots of importance can be recalled as well in 30 years as though they had been experienced in just the previous 30 seconds.

I have a memory like this. I was 18, and we were in the final week of preparation before my debut as the Mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper in Steel Valley Senior High School’s production of Anyone Can Whistle. I was just days away from committing to The University of Pittsburgh’s main campus (thank you very much) to study biology with an emphasis on pre-medicine. As we had dinner, my parents, Kelly, Spikey and I, my mother offered to play me a voicemail on our now-obsolete landline’s answering machine.

As we ate the meal my mother had prepared for us, I heard the voice of an admissions advisor, informing us that I’d been awarded a golden ticket- formally known as the William V. Campbell Family Endowed Scholarship, and that it was redeemable for four years of undergraduate education at Duquesne University: tuition free.

I did what most teenagers would in this situation. I bowed my head over my mother’s cooking and I burst into tears. That was the very first action of an incredible life-changing journey, one that I’ll be on until, well, I’m not.

From a genesis at a kitchen table in Munhall, Pennsylvania, I would go on to graduate from Duquesne University with a 4.0 GPA, two degrees (English and Public Relations, go figure), and a one-way bus ticket to employment in New York City. I am quite simply living my dream, the one I’d imagined in that frilly pink bedroom at an age that’s decidedly too young to be making that kind of decision. Bossy, loud, and incessant- I’d tell anyone who would listen about that dream: I’m going to get out of here, you know. I’m going to leave the Steel Valley, and I’m never coming back.

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