Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 12, 1993 TAG: 9309120299
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HOLLY WESTER THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium
My hands tense, I close my eyes and think about the year I have spent at my local community college because I was only an above-average white girl in high school. I did not play sports. I was not valedictorian. So my chances for a scholarship were limited.
I remember a spring day at Kellam High School in Virginia Beach in 1992, my graduation year, when seniors gathered in the auditorium to applaud classmates who had won scholarships.
I sat with my friends and clapped but wondered why the same few people were getting up for one grant after another. I imagined I was in a TV game show audience with the announcer saying "Holly Wester, come on down!"
I thought about the bunches of scholarships I had applied for. I deserved recognition. After earning average grades my freshman and sophomore years, I started taking school seriously.
I joined the school newspaper my junior year and wound up in charge after the first issue. I spent hours researching, interviewing and writing. I spent my scarce free time studying and earned straight A's.
My senior year, I became editor-in-chief of "The Roundtable," won state awards for writing, and kept up my 4.0.
I logged 20 hours a week doing newspaper work during lunch, class and at home. I took it seriously, like it was my future.
I also joined the high school correspondent staff at the local newspaper. Before long an editor wrote me a college recommendation that called me talented and enterprising.
I just was sure there would be a surprise for me at the end of the year in that auditorium. But I was wrong. All my work looked only like this on paper: Holly Wester, editor of high school paper and straight-A student.
After the assembly, I applied anyway to Marshall University, George Mason, and the University of North Carolina. My journalism teacher, Karen Johnston, helped me with the application fees.
Then I did get a phone call. Joan Deppa, a professor at Syracuse University, had heard of me from the local newspaper editor.
She told me a really impressive essay would help me get admitted. My wonderful English teacher, Lynn Adams, spent many afternoons helping me write it. Into it I poured my desire to go to a big university known for journalism. I explained about how my parents saw no need for college and would give me no encouragement, much less the $21,400 a year for Syracuse.
That essay worked because it was from the heart. I got $12,000 in loans and grants.
Overjoyed, I bragged to friends, family and teachers that I would be one of the Orangemen.
Then my parents asked where I was getting the other $9,000? They are, by no means, living below the poverty line. But hey, if they did not want me to go, they surely were not going to pay for it.
It's just the way they feel: "You can be a working girl for the rest of your life, Holly. We did it and so can you."
I thought every parent's dream was to send their kids off to college. I'm an only child, and it's not like my parents would have to sell their house and boats to send me to school.
But working is all they know. College is a foreign, outer-space thing. My father, who has been in the Navy for nearly 30 years, is a command master chief. He dropped out in 10th grade. My mother has a high school diploma. She's a customer service representative at the Navy exchange.
I was humiliated and depressed. When teachers and friends asked, "When are you leaving for Syracuse?" I said, "I changed my mind."
I'm going to Tidewater Community College, and I cannot say I am the happiest camper on campus. I juggled three jobs to pay my first year's tuition and books. I kept that 4.0 average, though.
But my parents have agreed to help with next semester's tuition, and I'm still working for the newspaper and at my part-time mall job.
Someday I will be at Syracuse. On my own.
by CNB