{"id":1007,"date":"2020-04-30T01:35:37","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T01:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/?p=1007"},"modified":"2020-04-30T03:42:06","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T03:42:06","slug":"essence-robinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/2020\/04\/30\/essence-robinson\/","title":{"rendered":"Essence Robinson"},"content":{"rendered":"

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”]\u201cI grew up in a single-parent household with seven other siblings. There\u2019s eight of us total. So it was hard for my mom. She can\u2019t really help me financially. So it\u2019s like, I have to take out loans to pay for stuff. And then I don\u2019t really like taking on loans just because I know that\u2019s gonna mess up my credit in the future. But I had to do what I had to do just to graduate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, growing up and having a big family, I was connected with a lot of people. Growing up, we had programs throughout the summer and I was fortunate enough to go. Nowadays, there are fewer programs \u2014 and some don\u2019t even exist anymore \u2014 to help children stay involved, and it\u2019s creating a cycle where it\u2019s like, if these kids aren’t involved in programs, they get involved with the wrong crowd; they get into gangs. It\u2019s a cycle we need to break.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe year I came here, I was a sophomore. I struggled, like, really bad. Coming here with no scholarship and no support, I didn\u2019t know where anything was or where any resources were. I wanted to take a year off, but my mom told me to keep going because it\u2019s like, \u2018You\u2019re almost done.\u2019 She motivated me to literally keep going because if it wasn\u2019t for her, I probably wouldn\u2019t still be here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who took AP or [went to] private schools, they have better resources, so they have a better advantage at succeeding in college, whereas, like, for me, I didn\u2019t have that. I couldn\u2019t afford tutors. So I have to go out and push myself to find resources and stuff like that to help me succeed in college.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would have wanted somebody to help me in high school in the areas I struggled with. Because I know I struggled a lot in high school, and I would push it off because it\u2019s just like, if nobody\u2019s going to help me, I\u2019m going to just graduate, ease by, because I didn\u2019t think I was going to go to college or get accepted or anything.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, I felt like I had a learning disability. It didn\u2019t dawn on me until I came to high school. I would stay up hours doing homework. None of it made sense. I started looking up learning disabilities, and I looked more into dyslexia. I was looking at the symptoms, and all those signs pointed toward the things I was struggling with in school. I saw people had to pay to get testing done, and I knew that my mom was still trying to go to school and take care of all of her kids. She couldn\u2019t pay for it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of my teachers thought I had dyslexia. Even when I came to college, my one professor, she asked me, \u2018Are you dyslexic?\u2019 and I said, \u2018No.\u2019 But then, I brought the subject up to my therapist, and she said that because I was in school, they would pay for it. After she said they would pay for it, she set up an appointment. When I went to go get my evaluation done at Younkin [Success Center], they told me that it looked like I was under a lot of stress, and there could be a small chance of a learning disability.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI told my mom what was going on. I felt like they focused mostly on my stress because I was working two jobs. But before college, I wasn\u2019t working two jobs and I was still struggling in school. They didn\u2019t really see my learning disability. I felt like, for me, I wasn\u2019t getting heard.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAfter I learned that, I went to talk to my mom and my therapist, who told me to get a second opinion. Now, once I finish school, I\u2019m going to get a second evaluation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like coming to college is like an escape for certain people, so it\u2019s like, if you don\u2019t accept them and then they come from a low-income background, that\u2019s probably like their only way of getting out of their community. How are people who don\u2019t have all the advantages supposed to succeed?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDo I feel like I succeeded? Hm. I feel like I could have done better in college overall. I feel like if I would have started off with the right help, I would have been better off.\u201d<\/span>
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Essence Robinson, a fifth-year in human development and family science, began her Ohio State career at the Mansfield campus. Transferring to the Columbus campus in her second year proved to be challenging, as she came with no financial support or knowledge of resources on campus. Robinson was also confronted with the struggles she faced in her past throughout school, including an undiagnosed learning disability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4076,"featured_media":623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"

\u201cI grew up in a single-parent household with seven other siblings. There\u2019s eight of us total. So it was hard for my mom. She can\u2019t really help me financially. So it\u2019s like, I have to take out loans to pay for stuff. And then I don\u2019t really like taking on loans just because I know that\u2019s gonna mess up my credit in the future. But I had to do what I had to do just to graduate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cFor me, growing up and having a big family, I was connected with a lot of people. Growing up, we had programs throughout the summer and I was fortunate enough to go. Nowadays, there are fewer programs \u2014 and some don\u2019t even exist anymore \u2014 to help children stay involved, and it\u2019s creating a cycle where it\u2019s like, if these kids aren't involved in programs, they get involved with the wrong crowd; they get into gangs. It\u2019s a cycle we need to break.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cAfter I learned that, I went to talk to my mom and my therapist, who told me to get a second opinion. Now, once I finish school, I\u2019m going to get a second evaluation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cDo I feel like I succeeded? Hm. I feel like I could have done better in college overall. I feel like if I would have started off with the right help, I would have been better off.\u201d<\/span><\/p>","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"coauthors":[13],"class_list":["post-1007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hilton-sp2020"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/files\/2020\/04\/IMG_2264.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1007"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1134,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions\/1134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}