I didn’t grow up with a roadmap to college. I grew up with the blessing of a grandmother who loved me fiercely and did everything she could to keep me safe, fed, and hopeful. She was the one who first heard, through school and church conversations, about a program called TRIO, a critical resource for first-generation students like me. I was 13, a ninth-grader, when she signed me up for the program and that decision changed my life.
Keiara Skipper
The summers were transformative. For six weeks, we lived in the dorms at Southern. We ate in the cafeteria, sat in on real college classes, and learned how to navigate a campus. That immersion made college feel not only possible, but familiar. I can still remember walking across the quad one evening after a study hall and thinking, “I belong here.” Living that life as a teenager didn’t just inspire me to attend college; it helped me picture myself finishing.
TRIO also held us accountable in ways that built strong habits, those in which I still rely on as a leader till today. In the program we had to turn in report cards, keep our grades up, and show up for Saturday programming, even when it clashed with extracurriculars. If we met those goals, we earned opportunities like the end-of-year college and culture trips. I was the first freshman chosen to go, a bus winding from South Carolina to New York and all the way to Nova Scotia, Canada. As a kid from my community, being told “you’re worthy of this” and then being placed on that bus was a lesson in effort, discipline, and earned pride.
Mentorship was the program’s heartbeat. I lived in the dorm with a mentor named Ms. Bruno, who took time with us as individuals, pushing us when we needed it, talking to us like our futures were non-negotiable. Many of our mentors were strong Black women who modeled professionalism and joy. They didn’t just advise; they embodied who we could become. Their voices echoed when ACT prep got hard, when FAFSA forms felt like a foreign language, and when application fees looked like a stop sign instead of a speed bump.
TRIO knocked down barriers, one by one. The biggest was knowledge, how the higher-ed system works, what steps come first, and how to pay for it without burying your family in debt. TRIO staff sat with me through financial aid forms. They helped me compare colleges and deadlines. When I graduated, TRIO even covered my first summer of college courses so I could start strong. That kind of scaffolding, the right help at the right time is the reason I persisted to graduation.
