Looking back, I see that public school teachers are not just educators but civic soldiers on the frontlines of democracy. They told me I was smart and could be anything – an overreaching statement in a country that has proven to be a plutocracy rather than a meritocracy but one that I believed. Armed with the education and encouragement they had given me, I boldly set my eyes on college, graduate school and the sort of vocation no one from my family had ever known: to get paid for my ideas and creativity rather than for backbreaking or unfulfilling labor.