The Soul of a Nation Is Taught, Not Bought

I have doubted many things in my life, and I have faced the weight of circumstance and resistance from those who could not see what I saw. Yet through it all, I never lost faith in America. I believed, as generations before me did, that this nation was not built on ease but on effort, not on entitlement but on endurance.

My faith in America has never been blind. It has been tested, questioned, and rebuilt, and that is exactly what makes it real. I am, in every sense, living the American dream. I have known the uncertainty of a paycheck that barely stretched to the end of the month and the quiet pride of earning every opportunity that followed. My journey has not been linear, but it has been blessed by freedom, the freedom to fail, to learn, to begin again.

Education, to me, is the soul of this country. For generations, people have crossed oceans to sit in our classrooms, drawn not only by excellence but by liberty. I have seen that spirit firsthand in my own pursuit of learning. I often joke that I would have made the worst receptionist in the world because doing what I love was never about routine; it was about education. Learning gave me direction. It gave me purpose. It taught me to think for myself and to believe that knowledge could change not only my life but the world around me.

Our universities remain beacons of hope and innovation, where minds from every nation gather to ask hard questions and imagine better answers. When we neglect them, we neglect the very heartbeat of progress.

I have seen both the brokenness and the beauty of this country, and I still believe. The American dream has never been a guarantee. It is a promise renewed each time someone chooses to learn, to work, and to care. That promise is ours to keep, or to lose.