Marcela EIF Student North Dallas High School Class of 2005 Northwestern University Class of 2009     It’s funny the way things work out. I was eleven years old when I had what I now refer to as my great epiphany. My fifth grade class took a field trip to Southern Methodist University and it was on that day that I decided I was going to attend a university. I remember telling my fifth grade teacher my exciting news and she just gave me a worried smile and replied “it’s a nice dream.”    My name is Marcela Castillo. I am nineteen years old and come from a loving, supportive, working-class family who has fought to provide the best for their children. I graduated third from a class of 284 seniors at North Dallas High School—a majority minority school that embodies the stereotypical views of a public urban high school with a high drop out rate, low academic performance on standardized tests, and gang related violence. After being accepted to Boston College, Emory, SMU, Tulane, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M-College Station and the University of Texas at Austin, I decided to take a $43,000 dollar a year offer to the eleventh ranked school in the nation—Northwestern University. Just recently I was filling out a questionnaire that asked about my pet peeves.  I sat there for a couple of minutes thinking about what really gets to me, and my thoughts went back to that fifth grade field trip to SMU. Why do we segregate children between those who are constantly told to “reach for the stars” and that “the sky is the limit” and those to whom we give the worrisome smiles and comments like “only dream within the possibilities” and “stay within the lines”? Throughout all of my struggles, I have continued to believe that a person’s will is the greatest weapon in combating presumptions, labels, and what have become classical stereotypes. I am a fighter and I refuse to become a sad cliché. I am proof that the sky indeed has no boundaries, no yellow lines that say “do not cross,” and no limits. As an organization, Education Is Freedom is the support system behind students with such willpower.  It conveys the notion that education is a right for everyone. I can summarize what Education Is Freedom means to me in one memory. Here I was taking all Advanced Placement classes; I had straight A’s, was president of my senior class, voted most involved, was well liked by all my teachers, vice-president of the National Honor Society, captain of my dance team, and there  in my advisor’s office none of this mattered. At the time, Education Is Freedom was a fairly new pilot program in its second year at North Dallas.  I was in the program and I met the counselors, but quite frankly I knew very little about it. Upset, I walked into the office of the EIF counselor at North Dallas and over a foot high stack of paperwork, I found my angel on earth, Ms. Maria Montez. Ms. Montez had never filed forms such as the College Board’s PROFILE, which is the equivalent of the FAFSA form for private schools, but we filled them out together. She handed me scholarship after scholarship, provided me with a mentor when filling out the Gates Millennium Scholarship, and stood by my side as I made long distance calls to FAFSA and College Board when they notified me of problems with my application. In April, she photocopied every single acceptance letter that I received, and embraced me with hugs of joy. Never once did she question my choices. She only advised me and provided a hand to hold. This is Education Is Freedom. Education Is Freedom strives to remove barriers and dismantle stereotypes by providing college assistance to promising students. The program’s staff is made up of compassionate, dedicated, and passionate individuals who find joy in students’ successes. It is their conviction that education should be a right, and they are committed to creating the opportunities that guarantee this right. I’ve worked at the local EIF office in Dallas for the past two summers now and I see daily how these are the individuals that create change in the world. I am currently a history and international studies double major and business institutions minor at Northwestern University. I’m Rush Chair for my sorority, publicity chair for the Hispanic Student Affairs advisory board, an ambassador for the undergrad admissions office, a member of College Democrats, on the Northwestern boxing team, and alumni/community liaison chair for the Northwestern Class Alliance. This July I will be leaving for a six-month study abroad program in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I’m planning to apply for an internship with the United Nations in December. Upon my graduation from Northwestern, I intended to pursue law school in hopes of one day practicing international human rights law. I’m now thankful for all the worrisome smiles I received. Thank you for the concern, but I’m great.  Happiness is chattering in my ear. It was December of my senior year, and I was beginning the application process to the various colleges and universities I had set my heart on. I walked into the office of my senior advisor and as she looked over my paper work she noticed that out of the ten schools I had completed applications for, only three were located in Texas and eight out of ten were private. Not only that, but I had not filled out my scholarship application to a community college of my choice. I was scolded for my choices. She only gave me four application fee waivers to submit along with my applications, and denied me further assistance in filing out the detailed scholarship and financial assistance forms for private universities. I also thank Education Is Freedom for its principles and convictions, but even more for practicing those principles. Education Is Freedom has fundamentally affected me and will continue to affect the success students like myself experience in their journey to obtain a higher education. I was sitting in a sociology class titled “Problems in Cities: The Urban Awareness” last week and one of my professors was explaining his theory on how education segregates societies. He explained how there is a gap between those from low-social economic classes and the wealthy. The wealthier you are, the more likely you are to have a higher education and vice versa. I thought, if anything, education provides equalization in society. I raised my hand and gave my opinion and after I was done he asked if I had any statistics to prove my view. I smiled and said I am one. Education has provided me with opportunities I would have never otherwise have had. Education truly is Freedom.  It gives me the freedom to think, to live, and to be anything I choose to be.