opinion

First person: How former homeless kid made it

Northside resident Melody Smith Jones grew up in Southern California. This is a shortened version of a letter she sent to President Barack Obama in December – what she calls her adult take on a letter to Santa – just weeks before he announced his plan to provide two free years of community college. Jones works at Perficient Inc. as a strategic adviser to health care leaders. She also has a blog, HerOwn.Net.

I grew up poor, and my family was homeless for large portions of my childhood. When I was 12 years old I was sitting at a public bus stop bench, and my mind was filled with thoughts much bigger than me. The city where I lived at the time – San Marcos, California – had just one junior high school so quite suddenly I became even more fully aware of the limitations that bonded me to a life of poverty.

I sat on that bus stop bench, and I reflected on the middle-class experiences of my classmates. I wondered what made their life so very different from my own. Why was I hoping for food when they were hoping for concert tickets? That day on the bench I decided that the difference between their families and mine was the education level of our parents, and I made a promise to myself that I would get a college education.

That was a much harder proposition than I had imagined. I illegally went to a school in a different city in order to have access to a higher-quality education. I also had to constantly work well ahead in the syllabus because it was only a matter of time before another tragedy would strike that would put me behind at school. For example, during my senior year the realities of homelessness caused me to catch a fever that escalated to 105 degrees. I was finally taken to the emergency room but, by the time I got well again, I was many weeks behind at school. I was really lucky this happened during my senior year because the ripple effect could only impact my senior year grades after I already submitted my college applications. When people ask about my success I often explain how much of it was based on luck because I've become perilously close to losing it all time and time again.

I was the first in my immediate family to make an attempt at college, even though I was quite intimidated by the cost of attending. I was accepted into all six colleges that I applied to, but I was afraid to attend them because I knew that, without a net, if I fell while in college it would be hard to pick myself up again. When you grow up in poverty you become very well acquainted with heartbreak early in life and you spend the rest of your life behaving in ways that those in the middle class don't quite understand to avoid that heartbreak again. It would cost $13,000 to attend school for one year; my entire family was living on $7,800 per year at the time.

Instead I entered the community college system in Southern California, where I could attend for $11 per credit hour. This was back in 1998, but it is still a reasonable $46 per credit hour today. While I attended community college I was also working full time. This was only possible because the community college offered courses in the evenings and weekends and they had many locations, making it easier to get to class.

Once my general education credits were out of the way, I needed to find a traditional four-year school that I could attend for my bachelor's degree while still working full time. The University of Massachusetts offered a way for me to finish a liberal arts degree online. If online education had not become an option in the 2000s then it's very possible that I would still be working at near minimum wage today. Although it gave me flexibility, getting my degree online still meant 4-5 hours of sleep per night for the marathon six total years it took me to obtain an unimpressive liberal arts degree. This, at best, qualified me to work as an assistant answering the phones at a law firm. Quite frankly, I only got that job because I could "look the part" even after a childhood spent in poverty. I remember when one of the attorneys fired a recruiter for sending a candidate for a secretary position who had a Southern accent.

The only reason that I am not answering phones still today is that I found the MBA program at Xavier University, which I could complete during the evenings while I worked. However, the cost of that education – $60,000 for tuition alone – was a huge gamble for me. I will say that education was worth every cent I paid (and am still paying) for it. The upside to now having a career in business as an ex-homeless kid is that I have found my hustle to be far superior than other job candidates. I thank the culture of poverty for filling my life with so many values, such as the power of a strong work ethic and the beauty of authenticity, that contribute to my success.

Unfortunately, I don't I feel my story would be possible today in the city of Cincinnati, where more than half of our children are living in poverty. Even if a child is willing to commit acts of civil disobedience like I did in order to get a quality high school education, options for obtaining a four-year degree while working full time are not available here. At our local community college, Cincinnati State, students have to pay $148 per credit hour before the cost of fees, books and transportation are factored in. Cincinnati State does have articulation agreements with many four-year colleges, but you would be hard-pressed to find a four-year university that offers the entire program during the evenings and weekends. The University of Cincinnati degree programs all have some on-campus component, and those classes are taught during the day. Xavier offers a program for a weekend degree in liberal arts, but that comes at a cost of $635 per credit hour. That leaves us with online degree programs, which do not fare well in the marketplace.

It is my belief that had I been raised in Cincinnati or Hattiesburg, Mississippi, or many other cities across this land, then my dreams as an ambitious 12-year-old on a bus bench would not have become a reality. If quality education was available to all from kindergarten on through college at an affordable price, then the income inequality in this country would be a fraction of what it is today. Instead we allow the middle class to believe that those of us who grew up in poverty stay there because we are lazy or make bad decisions. In fact, the real values we learn growing up poor would make us succeed in spades in this middle-class life that is child's play in comparison to our reality.

I am not asking for much. I am only asking that every child in this nation be afforded the same educational opportunities that are afforded to your own daughters without the barriers that exist today. I ask for measures to secure education for anyone who wants it because somewhere in Cincinnati right now there is a little 12-year-old girl who is also filled with hope on this Christmas day in spite of the tragedy she sees all around her. This world will be better if a hope that strong is able to survive and fill this world with greatness.