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A Dream Too Big - Caylin Louis Moore

Cathy Amaya '18 M.Phil. GRD '22

On February 6th, Caylin Louis Moore came to STM to talk about his journey from Compton to Oxford University, detailed in his book A Dream Too Big.

Growing up, in Compton, CA, Caylin faced insurmountable obstacles, due to his environment and what was expected of young men in his community. Caylin described how already in elementary school, his friends didn’t speak about what college they would attend. Instead, they talked of the gangs they would join and what would happen in prison: their only future options being a life of violence lived in and out of cages. But with an inspiring level of mental fortitude, optimism and humility, Caylin became a Rhodes Scholar and is currently deciding between top-rated Ph.D. programs in sociology.

 

Caylin’s talk was particularly touching for me. As a daughter of Salvadoran immigrants who spent her childhood in a low-income Florida neighborhood, I understood what it meant to be limited by the expectations of your environment. The adults around you reflect what you can see yourself become. If all the adults you know speak about their labor-intensive jobs for minimum wage, how can you know there is anything better? And—When you do start dreaming about the future and your community consistently tells you those goals are too hard, and that you should stay at home where your family needs you, how do you build the courage to leave?

 

We both, astonishingly, experienced life-changing moments with our third-grade teachers: Caylin’s teacher told him that she saw greatness in him; my teacher told me I could become an engineer. These tiny moments transformed the way we saw ourselves and it is hard not to see God’s grace shattering the boxes we’d been put into. It is not just education, but educators, that make incredible differences in their students’ lives. When no one else believes in you besides God, having that one supportive voice gives you something to hang on to. Why did I end up applying to colleges outside of Florida and studying chemistry? My two high school science teachers stayed after school almost every day to give their students a safe and quiet place to study because they believed in us.

 

Having been gifted with the blessing of higher education, the bigger question now for both Caylin and me is: What will our responsibility to our communities and families be? I trust God will continue to guide us. Simply knowing that Caylin defied the odds will be an inspiration for countless others and that, I feel, is the importance of his story. By sharing our struggles and triumphs, we can rise, lift each other up and share the gifts God has given us with the world. And with continued blessings and hard work, our respective journeys will continue to defy the statistics.

 

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