Chyiah Johnson

Jasmine Hilton
Thu, 30 Apr 2020 02:26:45 +0000
Hilton-SP2020

Chyiah Johnson, a first-year in criminology and criminal justice studies, was one of the few students in her sophomore class in high school to earn a spot in Ohio State’s Young Scholars Program, which serves students from the nine largest urban public school districts in Ohio. Keeping up with academics and playing sports became her outlet as she grappled with tragic shootings and gun violence in the streets around her.

“My mom had me when she was 15, so I was always with my granny.”

“While my mom was growing up, my grandmother was on crack cocaine. My mom witnessed a lot of things during that. Since my granny was on dependent drugs, she wasn’t aware of what my mom was doing all the time, which led my mom to doing anything she wanted to do. That’s how she got pregnant.”

“My granny also had two kids around my age, so they were my uncles, along with my older uncle who was out of the house. She stopped doing drugs after my younger uncles were born. The reason why I was at my granny’s house so much was because my mom and her didn’t get along too well due to their past, and my mom worked a lot.”

“Growing up, I was always getting good grades, and my uncles, they didn’t really care about school except for sports. It was always an image portrayed on me to be the smart one and do good in school, even though we were all in school.”

“I was bad in elementary because I felt like if I got good grades, ‘What can y'all do to me?’ I had a sense of entitlement to do what I wanted because my only job was to do good in school, so since I was getting good grades, I behaved the same way in school like I did at home. I was just being loud and said what I had to say openly, whether it was rude, mean or funny.”

“I was in one school from kindergarten through seventh grade. Mostly, all of my childhood friends had a perception of me as being rude and tough, so I carried that mentality with me throughout the neighborhood.”

“I grew up around gangs, and even some of my family members were involved in them. One time, I witnessed all my friends being taken downtown for carrying guns and shooting. That’s what made me realize that lifestyle was not for me.”

“After that, I was just working on myself and staying in my own lane.”

“During that transition, my uncle — the older one who moved out of the house — was murdered. He meant a lot to me, on a deeper level that most wouldn’t understand. So I was going through a rough patch. Around the time he died, it was really bad. I was acting out.”

“A few months after that, one of my old friends got shot five times, and he was left paralyzed. He was my age.”

“Without time to grasp the other two, another friend had died, like a really close family member. He was killed by one of our friends after school.”

“I took these experiences that I went through and made a two-way pass. I realized that how my mom turned out, and some of my friends turned out, was because of the similar mentality they held about life and doing whatever they wanted.”?

“When my mom told me to do the exact opposite of what she did, I realized that I could have a better outcome.”

“I went to a new school, got into playing sports, and my grades were doing really well. My sophomore year, my counselor invited me to apply for the Young Scholars Program at Ohio State, which usually starts in the sixth grade. I got accepted, and maintained above a 3.0.”

“Going to college, I came in with an open mind and was just ready to start. It’s a whole different atmosphere.”

“When you see people, like, in the morning, up and going to class, it’s like, ‘Dang, everybody is here to go to class and get a degree,’ which is not the same at home.”

“I came from where they came from. For us to have two totally different outcomes, it’s kind of crazy. Like, your mom wanted the same thing my mom wanted for me. However, we’re doing two different things.”

“But I love my community. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else other than where I’m from. I don’t have nothing but love for my community. They made me who I am.”