Frankly speaking, how about you walk a mile in my shoes and tell me how it feels. Because seriously, it hurts. This same high top, standard issued, canvas colored boots I’ve been wearing, have taken me many miles. Overnight. You see, last Christmas while you were asleep, tucked away quietly beneath the red and white comforters on your queen sized bed, I had been walking. But no, not that casual stroll through the park in the middle of the night. No, I had been walking non-stop for eleven hours. For me, there was to be no exchange of gifts, no warm cup of hot cocoa, no sweet serenade of carols to lull me to sleep. There was just the long road to where I would live now. For I was no longer welcomed at my mothers’ house. Age 18 and I’m kicked to the curb on Christmas. No money, I had spent it all on the trip to visit my mother in the first place and with no way to get back to where I stayed in Virginia, I was virtually homeless in Texas. So I won’t even begin to tell you how I managed to run from half-breed German Sheppards as I lugged my duffle bag down the dark curvaceous asphalt of Interstate 30 and Highway 180. You couldn’t get me to relate how I collapsed on the side of the road, exhausted, attempting to flag down passing 18 wheelers on their way to Grand Prairie, Texas. No, that would be too much for me to say. Besides it wasn’t really THAT bad. It did stop raining, unlike that time in basic training. Oh right…I forgot to tell you that…

I, Shamsuddin Muhammad, no matter what negative connotation my name seems to imply, am an American soldier. A-mer-i-can. Look it up. It’s true. I’m not kidding. I enlisted just a few weeks before I graduated from high school. Which is to say I had already been previously accepted to Texas A&M University. So in case your still wondering why I’m writing an entry essay and not my thesis for third period Psychology, it’s because my chance to better my education had been wiped off my plate, into the sink and down the drain. Just days before I would be set to attend Texas A&M, my recruiter would come to me and in a voice that expressed what I’m sure was his deepest concern was, “Your going to basic training next week.” And as if all the air had been sucked from the room I gasped a more profound “WHAT?!?” Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details, but lets just say 9 months later a new me had been born. A tougher me. Faster me. Better equipped. I think. At least that’s what I had been told. Now almost a year to date since that time I can try this again. College that is. 
Can’t you see me, walking the quiet corridors to the library, taking small steps, not really rushing, as if trying to absorb the sunshine that is campus life? Can’t you hear my calm breaths as I paw over the great works of William Shakespeare and Langston Hughes, staring inquisitively at the example prose of the great Maya Angelou given to me by the English professor who I’d just met that day? Can’t you feel my heart racing excitedly…Tha Thump, Tha Thump, Tha Thump…as I open the new Chemistry book I bought from the bookstore across the street? I want to be there more than anywhere else right now. I want this to be my Christmas. I want to snuggle warmly into the fine arts of Leonardo Da Vinci and lay between the pages of notes from Einstein’s many calculations. Let me wake up to a morning like no other; where my imagination can grow and thrive in the meadows, the fields of knowledge, with the other imaginations, and be happy. Let me conquer the great minds of disbelief as I too challenge the reasoning of man and persuade his thoughts of future progression. But, there is…one thing…I need your help. I need you to see that I make it through the doors of your majestic institution. I need you to help me prove that I am worthy of such an honor. I need you. And together we can change the world. For the better.
Yes, I have walked many miles in my shoes, myself. And its time I set course for a new journey. Its time I set quest for Aggieland.