A Different World

Every day it came on, I was there. Sitting in front of that television, watching Black people go to college, fall in love, argue, laugh, figure life out, and somehow I already knew that would be me. You couldn’t tell me I wasn’t going to an HBCU. Couldn’t tell me I wasn’t going to walk through those campus doors like I belonged there. Because in my little nine-year-old mind, I already had my future planned. I was going to work in the medical field or criminal justice. I didn’t know exactly what that looked like yet, but I knew I wanted to help people. I knew I wanted my life to mean something. And don’t get me started on Gilbert Hall. You couldn’t tell me I wasn’t living there. In my mind, that was my home away from home. I’d walk those halls in my imagination, go to class, meet my friends, join whatever sorority I decided was mine, and experience the college life I watched play out on my television screen. I wasn’t just watching A Different World. I was watching a possibility. I was watching Black excellence play out right in front of me. And Freddie— she was one of my favorites. Free-spirited, loud, passionate, unapologetically herself. Maybe that’s why I connected with her. Or maybe I was never just one character. Maybe I was a little bit of all of them. A little Lena, thinking deeply, questioning everything, trying to understand the world around me. A little Charmaine, loud, funny, and probably a little too much when I got excited. A little Gina, because sometimes you have to laugh through life before life makes you cry. I was just a little Black girl watching grown Black people build lives I could actually imagine for myself. And nobody had to tell me Black excellence was possible. I saw it. Every day. On my television. I saw Black professors. Black students. Black friendships. Black love. Black ambition. Black people taking up space in places the world told us we didn’t belong. And somewhere between the laughter, the drama, the lessons, and the campus life, I started dreaming. Not little dreams either. The kind of dreams a nine-year-old girl holds onto so tightly that she doesn’t realize they’re becoming the blueprint for her future. Years passed. The little girl in front of the television grew up. And maybe my path didn’t look exactly like the one I imagined. I didn’t become the girl walking through Gilbert Hall the way I pictured. I didn’t get to live every scene I watched on television. But I did something that little girl would be proud of. I kept going. I graduated with my Bachelor’s in Psychology. And now, I’m sitting in grad school, pursuing my Master of Science in Criminal Justice, still carrying that same little girl’s desire to help people. Still dreaming. Still becoming. Now I dream of standing in a courtroom as a Criminal Law Attorney, or sitting behind the bench as a Family Law Judge, using my voice to advocate for people who may not know how to advocate for themselves. And sometimes I think about that little girl watching A Different World every day, so certain about the woman she was going to become. She didn’t know the road would be different. She didn’t know there would be detours. She didn’t know she would have to figure some things out along the way. But she knew one thing. She was going somewhere. And maybe that’s what A Different World gave me. Not a promise that my life would look exactly like theirs. But permission to imagine a life bigger than the one I could see in front of me. So thank you to the show that let a little Black girl see herself in a world she hadn’t entered yet. Thank you for showing me that college could be mine. That excellence could be mine. That ambition could be mine. That my Blackness wasn’t something I needed to shrink. It was something I could build with. And now, years later, I’m still building. Still learning. Still dreaming. Still becoming. Just like I always said I would. Maybe I didn’t end up in the A Different World I imagined at nine. Maybe I created my own.