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September 2014, I was freshly 18 years old and started college at UMass Amherst. I was scared shitless and regretting my decision to do this the second my dad and two sisters left my bedroom. I was on my own and I was going to fake it until I made it. I got my first of three concussions within two weeks of being at school and I’m fairly certain my father wished he called this whole thing off right then and there… I would soon acquire three more and dozens of hospitalizations over the next three years. I roomed with Kara, a girl from New Jersey whom I had only met once. I realized on our first night that she would be a forever friend. Even though she came to my state and made fun of the way I said things, pointed out when I said “wicked” and liked New York sports teams, I’ll love her forever. I battled body image issues a lot this year, even though I have been chronically insecure of my body for as long as I can remember. I threw myself into the gym and tried to ignore the hateful voices in my head when I ate more than lettuce and yogurt. My sister called me one afternoon in November and told me she was pregnant, I was going to be an aunt. Two of the most important people in my life lost someone they loved and cared for in tragic ways. I tried to heal heartbreak and realized that wasn’t possible. I learned how to watch someone mourn when you can’t ease the pain. I started looking for shooting stars more often and held the people I cared about a little closer. I drank too much. I started to unravel and I didn’t like the way I was treating people. One snowy Saturday morning in February I walked to an info session on campus and signed up to take classes at The University of Hawaii at Manoa in Fall of 2015. My sister gave birth to a beautiful baby named Kevin on August 10th. My father drove me to Logan Airport on August 20th and I boarded a 14-hour flight to Hawaii. It was the first time I had spent more than a few weeks away from home. It was the first time I had even been on a plane alone.

I went to Hawaii and lived with six strangers, three of which didn’t speak English. In that tiny apartment, I met two of the greatest people on earth, Sabrina and Alyssa. I know I’ll somehow reunite with these ladies soon because I owe them a lot. I got caught in a wave on Big Island and herniated a disc in my back and earned one more concussion as my head banged against the sand trying to break free of the rip tide. Two days later, spinal fluid was leaking out of my nose and I was hospitalized in the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life. I woke up at 4 a.m. surrounded by Hawaiian nurses telling me I was being discharged. I called a cab and some nice man from the mainland drove me back to my apartment as I laid in the back unable to sit up straight and on enough pain medicine to take out a large animal. I got stung by a sea urchin night swimming at Waikiki and called my dad, not realizing it was 3 a.m. back home. He called hospitals in Hawaii trying to figure out if it was poisonous. I swam in waters with beautiful sea turtles, I climbed mountains and lived as freely as a person could. My brother came to visit and slept on my floor for a week. That meant the world to me. I loved every second of all of this, even the shitty parts weren’t shitty. I spent four months extremely broke in paradise finding out who I was and what I could handle.

I came home and fell in love. For the first time in my life I actually felt like someone else in this world understood who I was, despite all my bullshit baggage, and fostered my potential. I had someone who was forcing me to learn how to love myself.  I was still figuring out how to be the Devin I wanted to be back inside my stressful world and he helped more than he’ll ever know. I got Lyme disease in March, which knocked on my ass for a few months.  I finally saved enough money to buy my own car, a 2004 white Monte Carlo that I fucking loved. Things at home were rough that summer. We spent a few weeks homeless, in between rentals, frantically moving in and out of hotels in July of 2016. My friends and my boyfriend kept me sane and that Monte Carlo held everything I owned for those few weeks. You learn a lot about loyalty when you’re stripped of the most fundamental structure in a person’s life. You also learn what true appreciation is.

I started junior year living off-campus. I worked hard to support myself as I always have. My younger sister started as a freshman at Wheelock and was now the second person in my family to go to college. She’s doing amazing at school and I’ve seen her grow into an independent person in the blink of an eye. I was driving on 495N at 6:30 a.m. when the first snowfall of the season was hitting. The roads were a mess and my car started to spin out when I tapped my breaks going downhill. I saw headlights coming in my rearview mirror and I had no control of my car. I put my face in my hands and screamed. My car was pushed 20 feet down the road, my trunk didn’t exist anymore and my car was totaled. I had only put my seatbelt on two exits beforehand. I spent a week on my couch, in pain and a bit depressed. I did all my finals from there while my parents took care of me and my boyfriend brought me snacks and happiness. I finished the semester with a 4.0 GPA. The last semester has been a lot of hard work, pushing through 20 credits of classes and applying for hundreds of internships. In the midst of it all, I’ve been having a lot of medical issues and it has taken a severe toll of my mental strength. My life doesn’t slow down even though my body has stopped functioning properly. My brother got in a horrific accident and my anxiety skyrocketed thinking about the idea of losing him. My nephew said his first full sentence and grew to the size of a toddler before he’s even had his second birthday. I got hired as a public relations intern for a PR firm in Walpole and I now have enough credits to graduate after this summer is over. I officially earned Dean’s List every semester here and I’m graduating this semester with a 4.0 as well. Some people think I’m giving up my senior year experience by doing this. I’m actually really excited to get started on what’s next.

Through it all, my three best friends and I stayed as close as ever. Our friendships haven’t waned despite over a decade worth of this nonsense. They never left. I’ve watched them grow into amazingly strong woman and we endured a lot together. They traveled new countries, drank a lot of booze, spent too much on ubers and had experiences that will shape them forever. They’re all so intelligent and beautiful and I can’t wait to see what they do with their lives. I owe these girls everything and I hope one day I can repay them for what they’ve done for me.

I wasn’t even supposed to be here. College wasn’t in the cards for me and I had no guidance about how to even apply. That is not to say my parents aren’t extremely supportive, they just didn’t know how to help. I’d never want to undermine how hard they work to give us all they can. All I knew was I was smart and I wanted more for myself than what I could’ve gotten elsewhere. I didn’t miraculously end up here, graduating almost a year early, I worked my ass off for it. I spent almost every month waiting in line at the financial aid office because they were telling me I didn’t have enough money to keep going. I almost left. Every single loan I have is in my name and my estimated family contribution is almost nothing on FAFSA, and they still tried to say I made too much money as a part-time student working three part-time jobs to receive the aid I needed to keep getting an education. I didn’t give up because it was this hard. Things worthwhile will never come easy. I didn’t want my situation to keep me in a place that would only become a life of cyclical hardship. I don’t know if my degree will get me out of where I am but I know it will, at the bare minimum, be a tribute to myself for trying. It will serve as tangible evidence, to myself, and to my family, that if you want something bad enough, you just have to figure out some way to go get it.

My fifth-grade teacher once told me I was going to crash and burn one day because I was filling in a week’s worth of a reading chart in class right before I passed it in. He thought that because I was “cutting corners” that I would never make it life. He figured this behavior was indicative of laziness, a personality trait that would lead to my demise. I didn’t think his words traumatized me or anything, but I still think about them to this day. The day of my high school graduation I almost wanted to contact him…just to tell him to shove it. But I refrained. I guess this post is a way to vocalize what I might have said to him if I ever had the chance. Yes, I cut corners. And guess what? Sometimes you have to cut corners to ensure survival. For some people, cutting corners is the only way to make it to the finish line before one too many obstacles pile up and the entire road gets blocked.