9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.: classes.
6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.: study, work, or TA duties.
11:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.: sleep.
Four to five hours a night.
For four years.
The week before I left for college, Victoria posted photos from her Cancún trip with friends—sunset beaches, margaritas, laughter.
I was packing my thrift-store comforter into a secondhand suitcase.
Our lives were already diverging.
And we hadn’t even started yet.
Every night before sleep, I whispered the same thing to myself.
This is the price of freedom.
Freedom from their expectations.
Freedom from their judgment.
Freedom from needing their approval.
I didn’t know then how right I’d be.
And I didn’t know that somewhere on the Eastbrook campus there was a professor who would see something in me that my own parents never could.
Freshman year—Thanksgiving.
I sat alone in my tiny rented room, phone pressed to my ear, listening to the sounds of home: laughter in the background, the clink of dishes, the warm chaos of a family gathering I wasn’t part of.
“Hello, Francis.”
Mom’s voice was distant, distracted.
“Hi, Mom. Happy Thanksgiving.”
“Oh. Yes. Happy Thanksgiving, honey. How are you?”
“I’m okay. Is Dad there? Can I talk to him?”
A pause.
Then I heard his voice in the background—muffled, but clear.
“Tell her I’m busy.”
The words landed like stones.
Mom’s voice returned, artificially bright.
“Your father’s just in the middle of something. Victoria was telling the funniest story.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Are you eating enough? Do you need anything?”
I looked around my room: the instant ramen on my desk, the secondhand blanket, the textbook I’d borrowed from the library because I couldn’t afford to buy it.
“No, Mom. I don’t need anything.”
“Okay. Well, we love you.”
“Love you too.”
I hung up.
Then I opened Facebook.
The first thing in my feed was a photo Victoria had just posted: Mom, Dad, and Victoria at the dining table.
Candles lit.
Turkey gleaming.
Caption: Thankful for my amazing family.
I zoomed in.
Three place settings.
Three chairs.
Not four.
They hadn’t even set a place for me.
I stared at that image for a long time.
Something shifted inside me that night.
The ache I’d carried for years—the longing for their approval, their attention, their love—it didn’t disappear.
But it changed.
It hollowed out.
And where the pain used to be, there was only quiet emptiness.
Strangely, that emptiness gave me something the pain never had.
Clarity.
Second semester, freshman year: Microeconomics 101.
Dr. Margaret Smith was legendary at Eastbrook.
Thirty years of teaching.
Published in every major journal.
A terrifying reputation.
Students whispered that she hadn’t given an A in five years.
I sat in the third row, took meticulous notes, and turned in my first essay expecting a B-minus at best.
The paper came back with two letters at the top:
A+
Beneath the grade, a note in red ink:
See me after class.
My heart dropped.
What did I do wrong?
After the lecture, I approached her desk.
Dr. Smith was already packing her bag—silver hair pulled back in a severe bun, reading glasses perched on her nose.
“Francis Townsend,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Sit down.”
I sat.
She looked at me over her glasses.
“This essay is one of the best pieces of undergraduate writing I’ve seen in twenty years,” she said. “Where did you study before this?”
“Nowhere special. Public high school. Nothing advanced.”
“And your family? Academics?”
I hesitated.
“My family doesn’t support my education,” I said. “Financially or otherwise.”
The words came out before I could stop them.
