{"id":1062,"date":"2020-04-30T02:04:39","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T02:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/?p=1062"},"modified":"2020-04-30T03:33:05","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T03:33:05","slug":"kendra-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/2020\/04\/30\/kendra-white\/","title":{"rendered":"Kendra White"},"content":{"rendered":"

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”]\u201cI grew up in Racine, Ohio. It’s a really, really small town, so very rural Ohio. I\u2019m basically in the middle of the woods with a short two-lane road in front of my house. I graduated with 58 people, if that puts it in perspective.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDrugs are really bad in my town. Stealing, theft for drugs, and getting their fix is a really bad situation. That\u2019s what most of the crimes and stuff here are. So you\u2019re not surprised when someone else gets arrested for those types of things, which is very sad. But it\u2019s what happens and it\u2019s kind of something we\u2019ve all grown up with and just gotten used to, which is something no one should ever get used to. But you do when you live in a small town that no one ever gets out of.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy county is low-income, so the schools don\u2019t have the same resources as some schools in a higher economic area. Application fees were a big deal and finding waivers was something that the seniors struggled with in my community because we were all trying to find a way to afford it. A lot of people don\u2019t go to college. I am first generation, so I\u2019m the first in my family to go to college.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was the only person in my graduating class to go to Ohio State. Everyone was set on me going to Ohio University in Athens. I just was not ready to stay in this hometown. I was ready to get out and experience something different.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone knows your life story because you\u2019ve grown up for 18 years together. So coming to OSU, I got to be the person I actually wanted to be. And that was really exciting for me to be able to take the summer before my freshman year to get to know who I was, and get to know what I wanted people to see me as.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI missed the early admission deadline by one day because I didn\u2019t know you had to pay to send in your ACT scores from the ACT website, so I missed a full-ride scholarship.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was so sad about missing out because that was the only chance of me getting to OSU, I thought, because I didn\u2019t think I was gonna be able to take out loans. I was really stressed about that. And finances have always been a really touchy topic in my house, which is normal in my community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAdmissions options came through, and I never got deferred from OSU. I never got sent to a regional campus. I was admitted to the Columbus campus. I cried out when I got the admission letter. I was so excited.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was told that I wouldn\u2019t survive in Columbus because I\u2019m from a small town. And when I was applying to schools, my guidance counselor in high school was helping me and he said, \u2018Don\u2019t be surprised if you don\u2019t get in \u2014 you\u2019re underrepresented as an Appalachian student.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know what Appalachian was, and I didn\u2019t know we were underrepresentative. I was really confused about all of it, so I kind of did a little bit of research, like, \u2018Oh, this is really cool. Like this is another part of my identity that I just discovered. So I see it in a sense that people are like, \u2018Where are you from?\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, southeast Ohio.\u2019 And they\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, I could tell by your accent. I\u2019m like, \u2018I have an accent?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI mention it once in a while if it comes up in a discussion. I try not to mention it because I feel\u00a0 people have a stereotype of Appalachians to be rednecks and hillbillies. So I try not to mention it, unless it comes up, and it\u2019s a conversation. I can explain this isn\u2019t what Appalachia is. I get to use that identity and kind of make people understand that Appalachian isn\u2019t just all backwoods and rednecks. We\u2019re real people who have a real life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI pull back and forth at myself. Do I want to come back and try to improve my hometown? Or do I want to stay out and be able to help in a different way in a bigger city like Columbus?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I\u2019ve thought about coming back and working once I get my higher-ed degree and working maybe at a community college, or even in my high school some way, helping out here. I could probably touch more people\u2019s lives and help more students if I\u2019m in a city where I have more resources to help those students.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Kendra White, a second-year in psychology, was the only student in her graduating class to attend Ohio State. From Racine, Ohio, an Appalachian town struggling with disparities such as poverty and the opioid crisis, she had to push past opposition and doubt about coming to Ohio State from her background.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4076,"featured_media":619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"

\u201cI grew up in Racine, Ohio. It's a really, really small town, so very rural Ohio. I\u2019m basically in the middle of the woods with a short two-lane road in front of my house. I graduated with 58 people, if that puts it in perspective.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI want to be able to use my Appalachian identity, my first-generation identity, my low socioeconomic status identity, in a way that shows people I come from these barriers, but I\u2019m still here, and you\u2019re able to do that, as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"coauthors":[13],"class_list":["post-1062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hilton-sp2020"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/files\/2020\/04\/IMG_9297-2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1062"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1125,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions\/1125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}