An Education

Kati Nash: Eyes on the prize

For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, no matter what, Bryan Adams High School senior Kati Nash is going to college.

Growing up in a single-parent home, Nash is no stranger to financial struggle, which is why she is determined to earn a college degree to create a better life for herself.

“It used to make me so upset,” Nash recalls, “because we had no money and all this stuff that needed to be fixed and paid off. We’ve always needed more than we have — not wanted more, needed more.”

During her senior year, Nash wanted two things: to be a cheerleader, which she accomplished and then funded by working parttime for East Dallas sculptor Frances Bagley, and to be accepted to college.

“Neither one of my parents went to college,” Nash explains, “and that’s why I’m pushing so hard to go to college. It’s always been my dream. My whole family has known that, although I don’t know if they knew that I was serious.”

As soon as her senior year began, Nash was the first one in the college prep room applying to as many schools as possible, says Amina Igen, the college advisor at Bryan Adams.

“She would come every lunch period, to the point where her teacher allowed her to be in here during her fourth period,” Igen says. “She applied to seven schools. She applied to FAFSA [Federal Student Aid]. Everything about her is very focused and determined.”

Nash doesn’t have a lot of family support for her college dreams, says Laterica White, a counselor at Bryan Adams. “She struggles a lot with family dynamics,” White says — particularly of jealously from family members who didn’t go to college. “But I think it made her more driven.”

Nash began the school year full of vigor. Once she figured out how to navigate the college and scholarship application system, she also began assisting Igen during fourth period by helping other students apply for college, Igen says. At times Nash even encouraged students who otherwise might not have applied. “She’s very respected by her peers,” Igen points out.

But at the time, Nash had no idea what kind of year was coming down the pike.

At the beginning of the school year, Nash found out she has Type 1 Diabetes. She missed a lot of school, but she didn’t let the accompanying sickness keep her down for long.

She continued working for Bagley to pay for her senior expenses and even pitch in with expenses at home like bills or rent, and she managed to keep up her grades as well.

Then her grandfather was diagnosed with cancer in early 2014, and doctors gave him six to eight months to live.

Nash was close to her grandfather, who also lived in East Dallas, and she visited him frequently before and during his battle with cancer to take care of him and play with his dog, or just hangout and talk. Nobody’s perfect but, in Nash’s opinion, he was as close to the perfect grandfather as a man could be.

When he exceeded the doctor’s time limit, his grandchildren grew hopeful.

“He would end up in the hospital and it would scare us so bad,” Nash recalls. “We’d be like, ‘Oh my gosh, this might be the day.’ It was really stressful.”

He took a turn for the worse around Thanksgiving. When he began losing weight, the doctors told Nash and her family that he probably wasn’t going to pull through.

“That’s when I stopped going to school,” Nash says. “I would skip school to stay home and help take care of him because everybody worked.”

Nash had already missed several school days because of her illness, and now the missed days were starting to pile up.

In February, a week before her 18th birthday, Nash called her mother when school let out. Her mom didn’t answer. When her mother finally called back, Nash said she wanted to see her grandfather.

“She said, ‘You can’t,’ and I said, ‘Tell me what’s going on. I want to see him.’ And she said, ‘Kati, he just died.’ I was crying already, and I just started crying even harder.”

Nash had to miss two more days of school for her grandfather’s funeral. During the funeral, Nash’s dad called with more bad news: Her cousin had died in a car wreck.

“All the cousins on my dad’s side are really close,” Nash explains.

When Nash returned to school after her grandfather’s funeral, she told her teachers that she had yet another funeral to attend. The school almost didn’t let her miss school for her cousin’s funeral because she had missed so many days of school already, but Nash desperately wanted to be with her family.

“I’ve lost people, but it’s never been family members all at once,” Nash says. “It has been really hard.”

Her friends — all with the best intentions — kept telling her their stories of loss, but Nash was emotionally spent and wanted to be anywhere but at school. She had missed so much, however, that instead of taking some time off to recoup, she had to make up dozens of hours worth of missed time if she was going to graduate on time.

“She almost didn’t graduate this year because she spent so much time out of school,” says Shelby Lott, the community liaison with Bryan Adams High School.

Reeling from the loss and the snowball of missed school days, Nash briefly considered not going to college and moving to Malakoff, Texas, to be with her dad’s family to help take care of her cousin’s young daughter.

“I thought I wanted to be down there with them,” she says. “But then it hit me: No, you’ve got all this stuff going with college. If I move to be with them, I won’t do it. If I move down there, I’ll be miserable. It’s a trap.”

She dropped out of cheer and track and threw herself into making up for missed time. She had to coordinate with each of her teachers by being at school early or staying late — whenever her teachers were available and willing to meet with her.

“I haven’t been able to focus on any extracurricular activities because of my family and because I’ve been doing college stuff,” she explains. “I got to the point where I decided, ‘I don’t care about anything else. I want to get my college stuff done. I want to get through high school, and I want to leave.’ ”

In March Nash fulfilled her final makeup hours. Even better than that, she received an early admittance scholarship as well as an academic scholarship to Prairie View A&M, where she plans to study psychology and then go on to law school.

“My life-long dream is to be a judge,” she says. “I want to be someone who helps people.”

White, who works with hundreds of students who are struggling through difficult home lives, insists she’s never met anyone like Nash.

“She’s exceptional,” she says. “I’ve never met a student with her drive. She’s so focused and driven.”

Igen has a similar opinion: “She has been through a lot, and I think that’s what drives her.”