THE HOOD SCHOLAR

Sitting in my apartment at 2:00am, writing a letter to my uncle in prison, I receive a phone call from his son (my lil brotha'). Which is weird because I haven't touched base with him for a few months, and I haven't written my uncle for a few months. Both of these happening at the same time, in the middle of the night, is a weird coincidence.

Anyways, I stop writing the letter to speak with my lil' brotha'. My lil brotha' (Robert P.) tells me that my uncle and I were right (about school). He now wants to come to school, and he wants to get on the ball; but I know he has some unseen obstacles. One, the neighborhood he is in; two, his mother's, at times, shaky support. I know that I will need to be his rock in his educational transition. Getting him in a GED program in LaGuardia is my next goal, but he has to be on the ball and do all the hard work himself. I will give him what he needs to accomplish it, as far as the financial support.

However, I am in the middle of my transfer process at Kaplan. They want me to ultimately go out of state for college, and I predict they will keep telling me, "You need to take care of yourself before you take care of anybody else". However, behind decisions are consequences, and taking care of self would not have me in college in the first place. The only Patterson males living are my uncle (serving time), my lil'brotha (mentioned above), myself, and my six year old nephew; my being a high school dropout (in college) makes me the most likely to succeed in the cold cruel world.

WTF.