I met Rashema Melson in the middle of her sophomore year at Georgetown University. She’d made national headlines the year before when she graduated as valedictorian of her D.C. high school class after spending several years living in a homeless shelter. It was a feat that landed her a full ride at Georgetown—and saddled her with a lot of pressure. “I can’t fail, I mean what would I do?” Rashema said as we talked in her dorm’s common room, weeks before finals. “Do I want to believe that I didn’t work hard enough or there is something more that I could have done? I just—yeah, no, I can’t fail.” 

After our conversation, I kept tabs on Rashema through her video blog—which is how I found out that just months after we talked, she left Georgetown. She married a longtime boyfriend in the military, and transferred to a new school in Tennessee to be closer to his base—hundreds of miles away from her old life in Washington D.C. He was in the car with her when I called recently to find out how she was feeling about all of her big life changes. But our call quickly took an unexpected turn, and Rashema told me she’s considering a return to Georgetown. “Why run away from what I’m destined to do just because people are showing me that they’re on my side?” she said. “When I had all these people in my corner, I didn’t know how to receive that.”