Trigger warning: Mentions of sexual assault.
My name is Brittany Davis. I’m a 24-year-old student from Cincinnati, Ohio, and a senior at ĂŰŃżappUniversity majoring in with a minor in Education. I am currently studying abroad in Florence, Italy, with Education Abroad and will be graduating Fall of 2024.
To say my life has been arduous would be an understatement. I have known loss since 9-years-old losing my dad, losing someone special to me every year since then, and being a child of sexual assault. I grew up with my mom as my sole provider, and my grandfather as the one in my life as my father figure. Through countless years of bullying and torment, I was lucky to have them as my support system, and I owe a lot of my success to my grandpa, Gary.
My education journey began my senior year of high school in 2018, a time when everything was changing and some things were coming to an end as my classmates and I were coming into adulthood. Right before my graduation, my mom and I were kicked out of our house and moved in with one of my mom's closest friends.
This was a change I wasn’t looking forward to and it caused trouble that would soon spiral out of control.
I started ĂŰŃżappUniversity the following fall as an American Sign Language Interpreting major. Excelling in the social prospects of college, I was in REC (Resident Engagement Council) within the residence halls and made great friends, but the one thing that lacked was my academics. I had passed all of my classes, but the GPA requirement for my major fell short and I felt that I had failed at everything. I was then kicked out of my major, left my elected position as Social Media Manager for Kent Interhall Council (KIC) and dropped out of Kent State.
Returning home that summer, I felt at a loss. Where I was staying, the electricity was turned off, so I moved in with a friend for the time being. I tried to go back to school at a local community college Fall of 2019. With my inability to drive, I had to find my way to school in a suburban area with no public transportation, so I dropped out of that school as well.
I began hopping from job to job, finally settling at the front desk of the Holiday Inn at the beginning of 2020, not knowing the pandemic would start in just a few months. I tried to do online school during that time, and yet again, dropped out of college. I thought 3 strikes and I was done, that I was going to be working at a hotel front desk for the rest of my life.
In the early months of 2021, after working at the hotel for 15 months, I had a friend who learned about teaching abroad and researching teaching English as a second language. The idea called to me, and I began researching it as I had always wanted to be a teacher, but previous teachers steered me from that path. The idea of going back to school scared me as I felt like I had failed too many times and that I was unable to get that same connection I had when I first started at Kent State.
Since I was only kicked out of my major and not on academic probation/released from the university, I began researching the TEASL program at KSU. This is where I learned there was a study abroad program within my major and saw myself more and more finishing my degree at Kent State.
Muhammad Ali once said, “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”
With the idea that I would only fail if I didn’t try, I applied back to the only place I felt like I belonged and got accepted. I began researching everything I would need for my classes, excited to be back in the college scene and starting my sophomore year. Just weeks before I was to leave, my aunt passed away, sending my grandpa into a health episode and landing him in the hospital. Within a week of that, my cousin passed away. Our family was in shambles, grieving the loss of two family members.
I visited my grandpa in the hospital the following days after we laid my cousin to rest and I told him I was going to Italy to study abroad, going back to school and telling him I was going to bring him with me to see the world. That was the last conversation I had with him as he passed a few days later.
Coming back to Kent State, I was determined to make my grandpa proud. I was .2 away from making the Dean’s List my first semester back and then became a Resident Assistant (RA) the next semester. In the semesters following I gained many connections; continuing my RA journey, joining the Black Squirrel Mafia club and an online Overwatch community where I met life-long friends and an amazing boyfriend, having a radio show on campus for two semesters, and finally making the Dean’s list two semesters in a row.
As the weeks went by, I prepared myself for my second to last semester to study abroad. I had met my roommates throughout my social abilities in school; Aine I met in my Italian class, asking her to study abroad the same semester with me; Abby, who I met in the Black Squirrel Mafia club who also had the desire and love of cultures to study abroad and asked her to live with me; and Zoe, who I met in my major and became friends rather quickly.
We all became inseparable, and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of friends to experience a foreign country and amazing culture with. Zoe and I teach at a local high school and university, and the students make the experience worthwhile as we see a different side of Italian culture that we wouldn’t have gotten as normal study-abroad students.
The advice that I can give is one tattooed into my skin: hope is something you give yourself, and just because you’re on a different path than others doesn’t mean it is the wrong path. I will be graduating college at the age of 25 after dropping out of three different universities only because I didn’t give up.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, ĂŰŃżappUniversity offers support services as well as mental health resources. You can also call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.