My alarm went off at 4:30 every morning. By five, I was at a campus café called Lantern Coffee, tying on an apron while half-awake students shuffled in for drinks and breakfast sandwiches. I learned orders faster than names. Smiling became muscle memory.
Classes filled the rest of the day—economics, statistics, writing, political theory. I sat near the front and took careful notes because I could not afford to miss anything, not even once.
At night I studied until my eyes blurred. On weekends I cleaned residence halls for extra money. Most days I slept four hours. Some days, less.
While other freshmen went to football games or late-night parties, I memorized formulas during lunch breaks and hunted down cheaper used textbooks online. I learned which library corners stayed warm in winter and which vending machine on the third floor sometimes dropped two granola bars instead of one if you hit the buttons in a certain order.
Small victories mattered when everything else was held together by effort.
Thanksgiving came and campus emptied almost overnight. Parking lots cleared. Dorm windows went dark. The whole place grew so quiet it felt abandoned.
I stayed.