Education is supposed to be a right. But in reality, it feels like a gamble, one where your location, your passport or your peace determines whether you graduate or get forgotten.

Sometimes, I feel guilty for even comparing my reality to war zones. But maybe that is the problem: we have gotten so used to dysfunction that we forget it is not normal. That it should not take a crisis for the world to care about how fragile learning has become.

I have learnt to be resilient, but I am tired of having to be. Resilience sounds noble until it becomes your only option. Until every semester feels like survival and every lecture comes with a silent prayer: "Dear God, pease let this one hold, because I cannot waste transportation fare just for it to not".

 Still, we keep going.  I keep going. Not because the system is perfect but because I know what education can do. I have seen how one degree can change a family's story, how one scholarship can open a lifetime of opportunity. And even when the world is on fire, there is still something powerful about choosing to learn. About saying,"I'm still here even in the midst of all these chaos, still learning, still evolving, still becoming". 

So yes, some study in bunkers. Some study in fear. Some study after fleeing their homes.  And some, like me, study in systems that are cracked and chaotic, hoping that somehow, we will make it through.

Maybe we are all just degrees in the crossfire but we are still degrees in progress. And that has to mean something too.