Help Take Tayo Back to School

TLDR; I'm Tayo, like Hi - oh!

​(It means joy!)

I'm a Social Science major driven to become a housing rights lawyer. I've had to work with mental illness most of my life, and a period of crisis led to me dropping out and needing to pay back a semester of college. I'm fundraising so I can get my transcripts to continue my education and one day help my communities and larger world like I've been helped myself!

​And if you'd like the longer read, you can find my story (with pictures!) at TakeTayoBtSchool.weebly.com, or read on below:

Thank you, I'm not the best at asking for help. Lucky for me though, I'm great at talking about myself!

​I'm just terrible at picking what to say. Either way, I appreciate you.

I've always loved listening to people's stories. As I got older I realized it helped me understand myself better too, not just them.

I've been blessed enough to receive a lot of help in my life, even when I wasn't able to ask for it. I'm blessed enough to be in a position now where I can ask, because of the hard work of the people around me. Listening to their stories. My own hard work. And a little bit of luck.

​I started college as a Technical Theatre major because I believe humans are storytellers & story learners, and took an Intro Sociology class as a Humanity. I was reading through the options when I saw the description, "integrate social reality and individual life experiences." I didn't know everything that meant (if anyone does) but I knew I wanted to know more. I found a course and field that looked at the world around me and asked why, even if it was uncomfortable. How and from where. And where we might be able to go.

​I decided I wanted to fill the rest of my General Education requirement with Sociology. Maybe if I could understand why we tell what stories we tell and how, I could write ones that meant more to people. Stories had changed my life and inspired me, I wanted to find ways to do the same for others.

​My second Sociology course was Intro to Social Problems, because I got caught by a description again. It promised to look at the causes and possible social & government solutions to poverty, alienation, crime, war, and the general issues that keep us all up at night. I think it really delivered. I wasn't handed easy answers, but I was taught to have complicated conversations. To look at the numbers we use to measure human behavior and get something useful out of them. To hold out hope that we might be able to make a kinder world​​. They had me.

Growing up, I had felt like my life was cut up into different pieces of "me." Even though, and except that, you couldn't look at one piece without thinking about the others. Sociology offered me different tools & languages to look at, understand, and talk about the structures & systems that affect us based on those pieces. How, why, and because of what & when.

​I never thought I'd get to go to college, let alone for something as "brainy" as Sociology, but there I was switching majors again. More than just an opportunity to go to college, I saw an opportunity to turn sadness & anger into sadness, anger, & hope. I think love is an action more than a feeling. And I think a lot of actions with good intentions don't end up being loving. And I think doing your best to know what you're doing does makes a lot of the difference.

​After I came out as transgender at sixteen, I didn't have stable housing or a chance to graduate high school. I think what I experienced was done with the best of intentions, but not the best information or methods. And with Sociology, I could also see the larger story that mine fell in.

​Throughout my life, I got to experience a lot of blessings in the acts of kindness of strangers, friends, and family. I've been able to experience love at work, love in action, and then was no different. Putting in my work too, I got my GED, a Technical Theatre scholarship, and a chance to put my own love & gratitude into action.

The professors, conversations, and ideas I got to experience in my Sociology classes taught me that we ​know a lot about our own lives even if we can't always put it to words (or to "fancy enough" words). And that there's a lot we don't know about each other's lives until we ask. And that we can ask. And that I can think and keep thinking I know something before I ever begin to start understanding it.

As I learned, I learned to start with what I know. I saw members of my communities in situations I didn't have to face because people had helped me. I wanted to help, and I felt like now maybe I could. That a lot more people wanted to than just the ones I had gotten to meet.

I started taking classes that helped me learn more about some of the pieces that had affected me - race, class, sex, gender, sexual orientation. I wanted to help make sure no kid ever had to worry about where they slept that night, or if it might hurt them or someone else, especially not because of the pieces of ourselves that we don't choose.

I spent a lot of my life in Florida, but it had become a much more loudly divided place than it was when I moved there the first time in elementary school. And a much more expensive one. The end of a lease matched up with a group of friends moving to Albuquerque, and when I looked there was a lot that drew me to the city. Including the University.

Not only was there an opportunity to finish my Bachelor's (Sociology with a Human Services concentration and Gender Studies dual major), but the Public Policy Master's was a path forward in the work that I want to do (and come back after, Arizona is hot).

After a rushed together goodbye and an 1,100 mile trek on my moped before its circuits melted (and I was rescued), I landed in Albuquerque and was able to start a semester at the University of New Mexico.

I was engaged with my classes. I saw a campus that put their actions where their thoughts are. I was able to access programs that gave me the tools I needed and guidance on where I wanted to go.

Unfortunately, I also had a history of a couple diagnoses like Major Depressive Disorder (recurrent)™ deciding to come derail my plans. I had been accepted to UNM provisionally, waiting on final transcripts from the University of Orlando, which I attended online in Florida, before the same Thing™ had happened.

I didn't think that would be a problem until I realized by failing those classes (as a Dean's List Scholar during my Associate's), I lost that semester's FAFSA qualification and owed UCF $1736.25 before I could get those final transcripts.

That amount of money not being something I could find any time soon, I decided to work on The Depression™ instead. I focused on therapy, worked with a doctor on finding the right medications, graduated from a DBT program. I was ready.

But I was still broke.

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And I was still blessed enough that I had found an entry level job as a phone interviewer for social science surveys. That I built family and connections in the new place I called home. That I could live my life fully as myself and build something of my own.

I'm at a point in my life where I feel ready to grow my skills and knowledge again. To expand my ability to help people. And like most people, I just need a little help myself. Things come together in life, and they fall apart, and I continue to work towards my future even with a body, brain, and world that frequently have other plans. And I appreciate anyone willing to work towards it and our shared future with me.

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Any contributions will go towards paying off my school debt and future education and living expenses like college tuition, food & housing, textbooks & class supplies, and any other research or academic expenses. And every cent helps.

Buy me a coffee to get to work, and I'm glad to count your blessing.

Thank you