In honor of Founder's Day, undergraduate students are invited to participate in an essay contest. This year, social work major Starleina Murphy '23 was selected to present her essay during Simmons' annual celebration. Read her contest-winning essay below!
I come from a protracted line of resilient women. Each braver than the next, each tougher. Though carrying the burden on through one toxic cycle to the next until the carousel eventually stops. I want to say that it stopped with my late grandmother, or even my own mother, but it ended with me. Generations of women doing more of their share to ensure that their future legacies live on. My grandmother being my greatest example. The kindest soul, so generous and empathetic to everyone despite society telling her otherwise. My mother who took the role of only parent so literal she molded three incredible kids, by herself. Traits that I am proud to have carried out.
We were all raised in poverty. Some decades more severe than others. My mother was raised in the projects. And I also grew up in low-income housing but the drive to break the cycle of poverty began with me. I understood that it was the one determining factor that kept the women in my family from thriving to their fullest potential outside of their parental roles. A generational curse that I vowed to bury along with the idea that every Murphy woman eventually drops out of school and never looks back.
I am in no way the first to drop out of high school, I am however, the first to go back. If I had listened to the voices so long ago that told me I would go nowhere in life, that I would end up pregnant at 16 and living off government aid, then it is quite possible I could be. The voices were deafening for an exceptionally long time. So much so that I followed through on some of the darkest moments of my life. I acted out of spite, behaved despicably and even drafted my own book in the form of a juvenile record. They called me a “flight risk.” A danger to flee when the authoritative figures were infringing on my adolescent freedom. But like the negative voices on what I would call the “evil” side of one shoulder there were good ones. Voices telling me that I can change my own future, if only I could see my own potential.
I am in no way the first to drop out of high school, I am however, the first to go back.
The generational gift of the women in my family, was the undeniable love they have for their children. So, when I found out I was pregnant, I knew that love would only get me so far in life. I thought back on both the negative and positive voices and chose to start a new path. This was the day that I decided to go back to school. Nobody but my children’s father and my own mother believed in this dream. Everyone else figured that like my other attempts at normalcy and redemption, it was a fluke. I have since proved everyone wrong, though heavily unimportant as the main goal was to prove myself right. I am capable of greatness, and I am worthy of a life outside of society’s judgment from which I was raised. Now it is time to take my past, my mother’s, and my grandmother’s past and rewrite the unspoken rules set in place for women in poverty everywhere. To women forced to work for an unlivable wage that their only choice is to survive off government assistance. To open the doors closed on them for so many years. To finally break through the only path they had.
My drive and determination run heavy within me. I would like to see this demographic of people thrive. I would like to see changes in how society looks at someone swiping their EBT card in the supermarket or handing over their WIC coupons for formula to feed their babies. I would like to see change. Some of the most resilient people on the planet are mothers first. Some of the most resilient people on the planet are living in subsidized housing, taking public transportation to a job that would replace them in an instant if they had to call out over lack of childcare.
To finally break the generational curse of poverty by allowing those born into it, better recourses, less judgment, and more open doors. As a new student of Simmons, it is my duty to share that I am heading into this school as a woman who was once a high school dropout, turned G.E.D scholarship student, to graduating top of my class at my local community college.
It is my advice to the faculty, peers and families affiliated, that when you see students like myself, those of us with a heavy past — focus only on our determination for better. Understand that we have a history, but that we can be some of the most enthusiastic, hardworking, and go-getting individuals you will ever come across.
Simmons has been an unbelievably beautiful experience for me thus far. The faculty, my personal advisors and department heads alike have done more for me in the few months as a student here than I have experienced in a long time. Resilience within the Simmons setting would mean to be the good voice on students’ shoulders. To stand behind the students as they hit challenges and provide them with the right resources and tools to ensure that they make it to their goal of graduation. Care for us as individuals and as one Simmons family. Believe in us.