17 Oct
2026
Some people think wanting an education is about grades or money. For me, it was about a promise and a hope I would not let go of, even when my health and my circumstances kept getting in the way. At eighteen I had no home and seizures I could not control, and I still wanted to be a student.
My grandfather, Arnold Burkett, raised me in Jamaica until I was six. After I moved to South Florida, he called me every month. He kept encouraging me to do well in school and to listen to my teachers, because they were the ones who would help me learn so I could get a good job.
In the summer of 1995, when I begged to stay in Jamaica, he told me again that he wanted me to go back to America and finish school. I promised him I would. That promise stayed with me.
I had good moments. In my first year of middle school, another boy and I scored the highest in the school on the writing part of a state test, and it gave me "bright inspiration to become a writer."
But I also changed schools more than once, and by high school my seizures were getting worse. I collapsed in a school hallway once and woke up in the hospital. Back at school, everyone watched me, because nobody knew when the next seizure would come. Another time I had a seizure on my first day back and was hospitalized again.
In October 2005, when I was eighteen, I had a seizure in the cafeteria at Broward Community College. I did not remember what happened until I later read the reports.
I included some of my hospital notes in my memoir Neglected But Undefeated. A note from October 19, 2005, described me as a pleasant eighteen-year-old with a seizure disorder. It said I was not a student but wanted to be one, and that I was having some problems getting accepted. Another note listed me as homeless. It said I did not smoke or drink, and that I was planning to get my GED.
Reading those notes now, I see a young man with no home, a brain lesion and seizures nobody could control, who still had school on his mind. The notes do not tell how that plan ended. They capture one moment. But I am proud of what that moment shows.
A few months later, on January 30, 2006, I had brain surgery to remove a tumor. Afterward I lived for a while in a complex by a highway with no car, no job and no money. That is when I started thinking, writing and reading my roommate's books, something I had never liked doing before. That reading and writing turned into my first real book.
Before the surgery, my therapist and psychiatrist had told me to believe in myself and go for what I wanted in life. Long before that, my language arts teacher had told me I was the only person I should thank for my writing score. Both messages pointed the same way: the work was mine to do.
Learning does not always happen in a classroom. Sometimes it happens on a couch, with a borrowed book, when you finally have the quiet to take it in.
Maybe you left school because of illness, money, family problems or a life that simply would not settle down. If you want to go back, here are some ways to start:
The hospital notes said I wanted to be a student. I want you to hold on to that kind of wanting. Circumstances change. Health can improve. Doors that are closed today can open later. What matters is that you do not let go of the hope.
My grandfather believed school could change my life, and his words still push me today. You can read the whole story, hospital notes and all, in Neglected But Undefeated on my Books page. If you have been thinking about going back, make that first call this week.
Account
Cart