Teresa Land

The cliche of overcoming the "small town life" is completely overdone but I'm going to do it again, hopefully standing out a little from the others.
I was raised in your typical small town, everyone knew everybody and everything about you. A small town where everyone's actions were embedded into "religious values" or so they would like you to believe.

I grew up on farm that my father helped tend to while my mother worked a full time job while also raising six children. I remember them struggling to survive living paycheck to paycheck. We were considered "middle class" but it felt as if we had nothing at times.

I was raised in a family and a town where you had two options after high school graduation: entering the workforce or becoming a parent. I wanted neither of these two things. I watched my parents struggle to make it by. I watched my father work sunup to sundown everyday. I watched my mother raise six children while holding a full time job. I watched my two oldest siblings fall into the cycle of the dreaded future. I knew that I did not want that so Athens was my escape route.

I am the only person in my family, immediate and extended, that has gotten out of the small town we were raised in and continued on to college. Actually leaving that town will always be my proudest accomplishment because leaving is allowing to me discover myself and my purpose in life. I found myself wanting to give a helping hand to the community that I would call home for the next four years; a helping hand to affect lives in a way that did not force a child to believe in things he/she did not want to. So I turned to education; I became involved in the educational system. I turned to bettering the children of the next generation.

And while I will always be grateful for my upbringing, I know that there is more to life. I was born to do and be something greater than the town had to offer me.