Here at Delaware State University, there is a spot by the Education and Humanities building. Hidden underneath metal bars, in the darkness, there is a plant, protruding from the black hole abyss. A place where there is no chance of a plant surviving. A lot of people walk past this plant on a daily basis, but it stood out to me and I decided to snap a picture of it. As I stood there, a thought came to me:

There I was standing in awe of this perfect image that was before me. An image that made me relate so much to what this beautiful plant was going through symbolically the same situation that I was in. A lot of people have walked past these metal bars that we call our country. People walk by this plant defying all odds to receive the sunlight of education. Even though the obscurity of judgement and the policies of the government who make us, Dreamers, anomalies in the eyes of the public figure put us in darkness; we, like this plant, make an undying effort to live and shine through the metal bars of America, land of the free and home of the brave.

I am a Christian Dreamer that is striving for greatness and someone who is driven to make a change in the world. A multitude of people that go to college pursues a higher education for the money, fame, or materialistic items. Not all, but many. I have two influential people who have shaped the way I am. Two distinct artists from completely different backgrounds. Lecrae, a Christian rapper, describes an anomaly in one of his songs as a “deviation from the common rule, somethin' or somebody that's abnormal, and doesn't fit in.” Furthermore, he describes us as, “the odd, the outcast, the peculiar, the strangers,” because we are students who were not expected to be here pursuing our dreams.

Tupac Shakur was in the same situation that Lecrae describes. In his poem, The Rose That Grew From Concrete, he describes anomalies preserving by, “keeping [our] dreams, [we] learned to breathe fresh air,” and not die in the obscurity. This demonstrates that we are here to make a difference in the world. We are where we were not meant to be to shine light on everyone who believes we are here only aspiring to do simple things. In the words of Lecrae, “we are exactly who God created us to be, anomalies.”