Shifting The Course Of Life

I have had an e-mail saved in my inbox for three years now. It's not a long e-mail, funny or especially informative, but it inspires me. In some ways, it has shifted the course of my life just a little bit.
My first semester at Baylor, I needed a job. Not realizing that campus jobs fill up quickly, I found only a job posting for a community service work-study job with Waco Reads, a non-profit organization committed to enabling children to read so that each one may reach his or her full potential. 
I began spending three afternoons a week on a hard cafeteria bench with fourth- and fifth-graders in an after school program at a nearby elementary school run by the McLennan County Youth Collaboration. I was paired to work one-on-one with Ana on her reading, writing and math skills.
During my hours with Ana, I learned of her struggles with school, her family and the troubles inflicted by normal politics of pre-teen girls. She was older and larger than the other girls in her grade, having been held back in school a few times, and often felt out of place. An uncomfortable cafeteria seems like an unlikely place for a 12-year-old and 20-year-old to become friends, but in those precious hours that's just what Ana and I became. We teased each other, laughed together, learned from each other and tried to help one another understand each other's worlds - only a geographical mile apart, but very different places. 
Ana was tricky, and she didn't like her homework. She would never have her notebook paper or a pencil, and I finally realized she wasn't being forgetful ... she was trying to stall her homework time. Whenever I called her on something, she would look up at me with a half-pained, half-smiling expression and say, "But, Miss!" After a while, her whine became more of a joke than a complaint.
Besides Ana, I came to know most of the older students in the after-school program. They all wanted attention from a Baylor student, and they all wanted help with homework. That's how I learned Ana wasn't the only student who struggled with school. I heard the students rattle off the lyrics to every popular rap song, but struggle to memorize the threes multiplication table. The children I met read below their level, could not spell, and many had parents who spoke little English. To my surprise, just being able to finish the TAKS test was a struggle and passing to the next grade was a real fear for many of the children.
There were afternoons of frustration for me as I tried to help Ana memorize her multiplication tables for the 20th time or spell what I thought was an easy word. But I learned that change doesn't come easily or overnight.
As her tutor, I suddenly found myself rejoicing when she passed a test or got an A on the story we had worked on. After three semesters together, I saw small but noticeable changes in her self-confidence and attitude toward school. She became more certain of her ability to sound out and spell words.
Through my time at the elementary school, I was exposed to a part of Waco that is easily ignored but once seen, not easily forgotten. The school I worked at was less than five minutes from where I lived, but it might as well have been in a different city. At Baylor, students are told they can be anything they want, and most believe it. They have all the tools they need at their disposal. 
It's not that way in Ana's world. Once, a fourth-grader told me he didn't like Dallas because his dad said there were roads only rich people could drive on. Later, I realized he had been referring to the toll roads. This is the environment the children I worked with knew, a world with limitation and dead-ends, where most of the roadblocks revolved around money.
When I think of Waco, I think of Ana. My time with her was some of the best and worthwhile I spent during college. She made me appreciate the quality of my education and thankful for my parents, who took the time to read to me every night as a child and encouraged intellectual creativity. 
I came to Baylor expecting to be shaped, but I didn't realize it would come through a work-study job or that my greatest teacher would be a 12-year-old. Because of my experience with the students, the school and Waco Reads, I want to go into the education field and shape education policy to provide students like Ana with the opportunities and possibilities that I had growing up. And maybe, just maybe, I'll get more emails like this:

Miss Meghan,
I jst wantd you to know I pased to the 5th grade.
 

MERCHANT is a senior from Plano, Texas, majoring in journalism and international studies. She is a recipient of the Carmage Walls Journalism Scholarship.