Around 2000, I was one of the students in what I remember as Project 2000, a program that helped open the door to graduate school for students like me. At the time, graduate school did not feel like an obvious path. It felt distant, expensive, and meant for other people. I knew I loved writing and learning, but loving those things and imagining a future in higher education were not yet the same thing.
What that program did was make graduate school real.
It helped with the practical barriers that stop so many students before they even begin. It helped pay for GRE costs. It helped with application fees. It helped me think seriously about where I could apply and what kind of future might actually be possible. Those kinds of expenses may sound small to some people, but when you are trying to build a life and stretch every dollar, they can be the difference between applying and giving up before you start.
That support mattered more than I can say.
I remember the process of applying to schools as both exciting and intimidating. Every application felt like a statement of hope. Every envelope, every form, every test score carried the question: Do I belong in this world? Programs like Project 2000 did more than provide money. They gave students encouragement, structure, and the sense that someone believed we had a right to aim higher.
Because of that help, I applied to several graduate programs and was accepted to more than one MFA program, including Oregon State. That changed the course of my life.
It is hard to overstate what that moment meant. Getting into graduate school was not just an academic achievement. It was a turning point. It gave me the chance to deepen my writing, to study seriously, to imagine a life in literature, and to begin becoming the person I would later be. Without that opportunity, I do not know that I would have become the writer and teacher I am today.
When people talk about educational opportunity, they sometimes speak in abstractions. They talk about access, equity, pipelines, and outcomes. I understand those words, but I also know the human side of them. Opportunity can look like someone helping you pay for the GRE. It can look like someone telling you that your application matters. It can look like the simple but powerful act of making graduate school possible for a student who might otherwise have been left out.
That is what this program did for me.
I cannot help thinking about all of this in light of the condition of the Department of Education today. The department remains in place, but after sweeping layoffs, efforts to dismantle parts of it, and reports of reduced civil-rights enforcement, it is hard not to feel that the country is turning away from the kind of public investment that changed my life. I know firsthand what these supports can do. They helped me get to graduate school, and in doing so they helped make my life as a writer and teacher possible.
I think often about how many lives are changed not only by talent or hard work, but by timely support. There are students everywhere with ability, discipline, and vision who still need someone or something to help bridge the gap between promise and possibility. I was one of those students. Project 2000 helped bridge that gap for me.
I carry that history with me now in the classroom and at the writing desk. Every time I teach, every time I write, every time I try to encourage students to believe in their own intellectual and creative futures, I know I am also honoring the people and programs that helped me get here.