Below is a piece written by a current Takoda Prep student:
Ava Criollo
“Takoda Prep is somewhere that’s always made me feel very welcomed since the beginning and has been very convenient for me to get to. The location is great, it’s right next to Taco Bell and Holiday and also the train station. It feels good knowing how close it is and it should never change its location.
The voice it gives me is that we’ll graduate no matter how long it takes. It gave me a lot of hope when I just wanted to stop with everything and bury myself in a deep hole of depression. Here however I never felt better about graduating than I did at Roosevelt. It actually feels more realistic here. I put my all into my assignments and no matter how many times I left here feeling like I’ll never be finished I always came back. Because every time I enter this class I feel like it’s a new opportunity to get further and closer to graduating.
And now that the feeling of being done is very close, I am ready to prep for my fall semester at MCTC. I am ready to start prepping for the real world, real things, bills, car payment, anything. I have a lot of fear and a lot of doubt but it’ll never stop me from doing things that need to be done to ensure that I have a good life and that I give my mom a good life for the rest of her years.
Every time I did not go to school like I should have. I felt the pause in my education, my time, and my future. It did not feel good, but it did show me that I should stop for nothing and nobody. I know how much dedication I have and it is up to me to show it. When I leave Takoda Prep, I’ll always remember the summer I started. We were doing my favorite thing, spray painting, but this time it was legal. It was an amazing experience especially working with real spray paint artists. The best part was that they let me pick some colors to keep out of their spray paints. They were new and one of the best spray paint brands I’ve been wanting since 9th grade. Those were the easiest credits to recover ever. And when I leave I’ll know there’s a piece of me still there that I can come back to remember.”