Seventeen and already written off

I got suspended from high school junior year for being high in class. Not a huge shock — half the school was using something. The difference was that my mom's arrest record was public knowledge in our small town, so when I got caught, I wasn't a "good kid who made a bad choice." I was the inevitable result. Teachers had been waiting for it. They practically nodded.

The guidance counselor told my grandmother, who was raising me, that I should "consider alternative education paths." That's code for: we've given up, and we'd like you to take the problem somewhere else. I was seventeen. I had a 3.4 GPA. I'd been on the honor roll the semester before. None of that mattered once the label landed.