Marketplace American Public Radio / Sept. 16, 2013
Raven Gribbins shows up for her first day at Penn State Greater Allegheny — outside Pittsburgh — in shorts and flip-flops, her blondish-brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. It’s not hard to find her dorm. It’s the only one on this campus of 700 students.
“Aw, my name’s on there,” she says as she spots her door.
The room is standard issue. Cinderblock walls. Mini-fridge. And Raven and her dad, Michael Gribbins, are like any father and daughter doing the college dropoff thing. They bicker over where to put the TV and how to make the bed. Only this is totally new for the Gribbins family; Raven’s parents and grandparents didn’t finish high school.
The Gribbins brought support. Raven’s high school basketball coach Joe Saylor, a family friend, comes to her defense.
“She’s not in the Navy,” he says about the bed. “That’s probably the best it’s going to look for a long time.”
You can feel the worry in the room. A few years ago, college was a distant possibility for Raven. She grew up in poverty, in Cincinnati’s Lower Price Hill. She wasn’t much of a student and got in a lot of fights. Her grandmother mostly raised her while Raven’s parents battled drug and alcohol addiction. Her father has since turned his life around. And, in her last couple years of high school, so did Raven.
“Everybody used to tell me all the time, like, ‘you’re not going to make it through high school, you’re going to have a baby by 16,’” she says. “I’m glad to prove all them wrong.”
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