Melissa Blake is a freelance writer and blogger from Illinois. She covers disability rights and women's issues and has written for The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Glamour and Racked among others. Read her blog, So About What I Said, and follow her on Twitter. The views expressed in this commentary are solely hers.

(CNN) When I started college at 19, I was timid and unsure of the big world ahead of me.

Fast-forward two years later and I felt like a different person: More confident, more self-assured and more determined than ever to pursue a degree in journalism after a high school hobby grew into a full-fledged passion.

Melissa Blake

The positive changes were remarkable, and I credit much of my transformation to one thing: My education at a community college.

Sadly, though, community colleges don't hold much value, at least if you listen to President Donald Trump. Last week, during a speech at an Ohio training facility for construction apprentices, he spoke of his desire to return to the days of vocational schools while simultaneously underscoring the valuable role community colleges play in society.

"I don't know what that means, a community college," Trump told the crowd in Richfield, Ohio. "Call it vocational and technical. People know what that means. They don't know what a community college means."

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