Written Word (M.S.) Grand Prize Finalist- Andre

COLLEGE

Why should California leaders save me and my peers a spot in college? So that I can become a lawyer or doctor or the first black president? Or so that I can get a good job and be rich? I do want to be rich but those are not the answers. The answer is simple but also complicated. All you have to do is go outside, turn on the news or pick up a newspaper for the answer. Poverty, racism, drugs, gangs and the homeless are some of the real reasons. Education is supposed to be the cure for all of those things. College is our future and it should be guaranteed for everybody.

I don't always like school and sometimes I get bored and would rather play video games or something. College isn't something I think about right now but I listen to my parents (don't tell them I said that!) and I know that it is important.

I want to tell you something that happened to me. Last Thanksgiving we were visiting New Jersey. We took a short cut to avoid traffic and got lost in a neighborhood my Grandma didn't know. We were driving along when I heard loud noise, BANG, BANG, BANG. I heard my mom shout "those are gunshots." I saw five or six guys with guns shooting at each other. My mom pushed me down in the seat and shielded me. My dad drove fast and got out of there but my Mom wouldn't let go of me for a long time. My neck hurt after that.

My mom cried for a long time after that. She told me that what made it so sad was that the shooters were boys who looked like me. Maybe just a few years older, too. She said that everybody has to take responsibility for their own actions but that there is a bigger thing that is to blame for violence like that. SOCIETY. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that, "People who have a stake in society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it."

I don't think anybody should feel that way. Maybe education can give everybody even those boys that stake. We owe it to society and society owes it to all of us. This is why in six years I will see you in college.