When I was a kid, my mom gave my younger brother and I a notebook in the summer and told us to write about our day everyday. We hated it. It was summer time, we should have been playing outside but my Nigerian mom was not having that. Everyday, we’d write our thoughts, a story, a play by play of our day, or a book report. As much as I hated the idea initially, each day I grew deeper and deeper in love with it. I’ve kept every single notebook I’ve ever journaled in since then — including the one my mother gave me that very first day.

My Junior year of high school my mom had “the talk” with me. She asked me where I wanted to go to college and what I wanted to major in. I had no idea. Truth is, I hadn’t taken the time to really consider what I wanted. I would daydream about being a songwriter or a filmmaker; imagining myself on stage in a black sparkly dress — but those things felt like fantasies. Impossible.

“You’re going to Kennesaw State and you’re going to be a nurse,” she told me. And that is what I did, until I failed my first round of science classes and realized it might be time to dream out loud.