It's a rare occurrence to catch me out in public, at school or even at home in anything other than my red and white University of Houston apparel. I mean, I pretty much wear it nonstop. I remember a time where I swore that I would never become one of those college students who couldn't go a day in their life without mentioning what school they go to.

Yet, here I am. But, can you really blame me?

After high school, I didn't have a plan for my future. I had spent all of my senior year too wrapped up in things that didn't really matter and didn't devote any time to thinking about what my life would be like once I left those hallowed halls that I called home for four years.

So, as I watched many of my classmates pack up and head off to all of the universities in Texas, I sat in my room and postponed any realization that my life now had to change.

I enrolled at Houston Community College in the fall of 2013, and I wasn't exactly all too excited about it. Even though I knew that it was a post-secondary education, all of the stereotypes of it not being a "real college" overtook my otherwise rational thoughts and I felt ashamed.

I didn't want to go to school there, but I didn't have any other choice. I loathed the person that I had been the year before for ruining what I thought to be my only chance to live a normal university experience, and it showed in the way that I treated my courses.

My grades at HCC were far from stupendous. They were mediocre at best and, despite my knowledge of this, I let myself believe that it was all that I was capable of doing. At the end of the day, I was at this second rate school—or so I thought—so why would I need to provide first rate scores? I decided that simply gliding by was the only option and stuck with it, while slowly beginning to lose all motivation that I could have had to even go to college along the way.

As the months went by, semesters came and went. My grades went from mediocre to less than that to even less than that, and at one point, I really didn't know where my life was headed. Or where I was headed.

I tried to re-motivate myself with the help of friends and family telling me that I had potential and that I was better than what I was doing, but it seemed like it just wasn't working. My head wasn't in the right place, and I kept seeing old classmates of mine enjoy their college experiences while I was dreading every day I had to go live mine.

It was undoubtedly a very dark and confusing time of my life.

Then, things started to click.

I remember taking the first class that I was actually interested in, Cultural Anthropology, in the spring of 2016. I had been at HCC for three years at this point, and it felt like it was never going to end. Yet, once I got my feet wet in the coursework for this class, I started to forget about the weight pushing down on my shoulders and began to enjoy going to college.

It was such a new and different feeling, and it was both shocking and enthralling. I now had a taste of what it must have been like for everyone that I saw posting about their college experiences, and I wanted more of it. I knew that the only way to get the full excursion was to get myself out of HCC and into U of H.

So, I started to care.

Slowly but surely, my grades began to rise back to the mediocre level that they had originally been at, and, eventually, they ended up getting me a spot on the Dean's List in Spring of 2017.

My friends and my family were so proud of me for finally living up to the potential they knew I had all along, and, more importantly, I was proud of me. I now saw that I was capable of doing so much more than what I had been. And I now saw that the light at the end of the tunnel did exist: My transfer to a university.

In Fall of 2017, I applied to the University of Houston as a transfer student to be admitted for the upcoming spring semester with a major in Creative Writing, and I applied for graduation from Houston Community College—two things I thought would never come.

About a week later, I received notice that I was accepted for both and it was an invigorating feeling. I was finally going to be able to live the life that I had waited for and I was more than excited.

I immediately took to the school's website and bought myself my very first University of Houston t-shirt and vowed to wear it, along with any ones to come in the future, as often as I could. I mean, I had truly earned it.

Now as I'm nearing the end of my second semester at U of H, I look back on the days spent at HCC and feel detached from the person that I was. I'm now able to say that I enjoy school, even with all of the time-consuming essays and the stress-inducing projects.

I've found my niche here, and I am thankful for having persevered through that dark point in my life because it taught me how to be the me that loves school and learning again. So, if I wear red and white a little too often, don't judge me—I'm just proud that I finally get a chance to.