< Thoughts on Education and Employment.
The trajectory of my academic ambitions was altered irreparably after hurricane Katrina landed in 2005; I'm glad your experience of college was a positive one, and I've sometimes wondered whether mine would have been had I gone. Rather than pursue academic education in the standard routes, I ended up taking a few technical certifications which netted me a job in an industry within which individuals across the global diaspora participate.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." - Mark Twain
Your story very much reminded me of that quote. It's no accident that people harboring the most negative view of All Those Others are generally people cloistered in their little segregated corner of the world.
I'm sorry to hear about that... I was in the 7th grade and two states away when that happened, so it didn't affect us much up here. I can't even imagine how horrible that would have been. We did see a lot of National Guard trucks on their way down to New Orleans afterward though.