At Mills, my main priority is to graduate and handle my responsibilities, and so I’ve been accepting that throughout this process, and I’m staying focused without letting other people distract me from my goal. I actually found out that you can make your own major here and get your master’s in five years, so I’m meeting with a few of my advisers to figure out what courses I need. I'll take sociology, public policy. When I get my master’s, I’ll be doing it in Business Administration — I aspire to create an organization to help foster youth navigate the system. Right now, I’m taking environmental science, computer science, psychology, “Fundamentals of Grammar,” “The Technique and Mystery of Singing,” and swimming. I don’t know why I decided to take six classes in my first semester! I’m also in the poetry club, the Black Women's Collective, and CAN TAY, a foster-youth club that two other kids and I made.

I tend to hang out with upperclassmen a lot. The freshies I hang out with are super down-to-earth and enjoyable to be around, though just a handful. I’m 19 right now; in two months, I’ll be 20. I think maturity-wise, I had to grow up super fast. I kind of connect with upperclassmen on a better level.

At the beginning of the year, I made a lot of connections that were pretty strong, but then after that, when people started smoking weed and drinking, I automatically felt a disconnect. After you connect with someone when they’re sober, you can’t really connect on the same level when they’re drunk, because they're not on the same level. Being sober here has been kind of difficult in that sense. But I’ve been there, done that with drinking. I don’t really want to relive that life again. To relax, I go out to eat with friends (a lot), go on hikes, go to the beach, listen to music, write poetry, and talk, talk, talk.

Currently, I live in a residential hall. Thank god at Mills, we have the option of having a single dorm, so I have a single dorm, and I have a balcony. I’m around people all day; we eat together, we pretty much have to share the bathroom together, we go to class together. I need Shay time at the end of the day, and so I’m glad that I have that. Plus, I sleep outside on my balcony!