Hailie

“My experience isn’t everybody else’s experience and everybody else’s experience isn’t mine.”

By Students of NYC

April 26^th, 2023

“The second we got on campus at University of Tampa, I knew. My grandpa, he paid literally while we were walking off the campus. He was like, I'm paying your deposit…we could do it on your phone? I'm like Yeah, I can. He's like, Okay, good, I'm paying it right now. I see you going here. I see you doing well here. You're going to do great.

It's going to be really different, because I grew up in New York. So it's like, I grew up in a Hispanic and Black community, so it's kind of hard. Going there, it's going to be weird at first. But I feel like I will settle into it and still do my best out there even though it's not where I grew up. I know where I came from. I know my history. Well, I know some of my history. On the tour, I made sure, I was like, does this school block culturally responsive classes? He didn’t know himself, but he asked a student and he told us no. I was so happy about that because I want to minor in African American studies. So, it's like, I can keep learning about it and then still learn about other people too. Because my experience isn't everybody else's experience, and everybody else's experience isn't mine.

I want to be a lawyer, honestly. Law, to me, is something I feel that I could go far in. It's been something I've been setting myself up for since I was young.