I should start by saying that school and being a student was a painful experience for me. As a high school student, I was asked to leave one school and had to drop out of another. Over those two years, I experienced periods of depression, anxiety, desperation, and most prominently alienation. I felt unrooted. It was this dark period of time in my life that shaped my views on education and forced me to reflect personally on my life in order to grow, change and improve. Looking back I can see that I always enjoyed learning, I was seeking a connection with a community, digging deep for meaning in a life that did not seem particularly meaningful. It was not until the third school that I experienced what I was looking for.