I dropped out of high school two weeks before the start of my senior year. It wasn’t planned. A few failed classes turned into a quiet slide out of the system. Like too many students, I fell through the cracks.
A few weeks later, I got a job with a mobile veterinary clinic serving low-income neighborhoods across the mid-Atlantic. We’d set up in strip mall parking lots and Tractor Supply back rooms, vaccinating and microchipping dozens of pets each shift. I was 18, wrestling 120-pound German shepherds and coming home with dirt and blood on my scrubs. One day, a bite sent me to the ER for sutures up my side. Still, I loved it.
Then things slowed down. As my friends applied to college, one thing became increasingly clear: Without a degree, the road ahead would be narrower, steeper and far less forgiving. Finishing school felt like the difference between having choices and getting left behind.
So I hit the books. I relied on public libraries and free online resources that entire year. I earned my GED in the basement of a community college and spent the next few months reading whatever I could get my hands on: vintage paperbacks, old textbooks, open-access PDFs. Eventually, I started poking through Supreme Court opinions. The more I read, the more engrossed I became. I was captivated by the stakes of it all, especially the idea that law, when done right, could be a support system.
