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COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN Shoe store owner dreams about what could have been — without the store

By Anthony Schick July 1, 2012 | 6:00 a.m. CDT

Laura Fennewale tries on a pair of boots with the help of Jody Paschal, owner of Gidley's Shoe Store, in downtown Fulton. Fennewale would later come back to buy the boots along with another pair of shoes. | Dak Dillon

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Gidley's Shoe Store, located in the brick district in downtown Fulton, is one of few remaining stores in a once-thriving downtown. Jody Paschal purchased the store from Helen Gidley three years ago.

Today, many of the surrounding stores are closed or are open reduced hours each day. | Dak Dillon

Vanessa Gillette looks in the mirror at a pair of black dress shoes she's trying on at Gidley's Shoe Store in downtown Fulton. Gillette came into the store searching for a pair of shoes to wear to a family graduation. | Dak Dillon

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Jody Paschal, owner of Gidley's Shoe Store, waits near the store entrance for the next customer to arrive in downtown Fulton. Paschal estimates he sees more than 30 customers a day in the store. | Dak Dillon At age 34, Jody Paschal is a business owner on a changing path. With three years under his belt as owner of Gidley's Shoe Store, Paschal is facing a changing business landscape. ! Dak Dillon

FULTON — A decade before a shoe store claimed Jody Paschal, he swore it never would. He stood there, alone and illuminated in the quiet dark, on the stage of William Woods University's Dulany Auditorium, in the world of Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie."

His character, Tom Wingfield, was a conflicted young man, yearning for more than what was laid in front of him. Paschal never felt such a connection to a role. He dressed in a navy blue peacoat and khakis — his own clothes.

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The stained glass of the chapel-turned-theater let in just enough light for him to see the faces of 200 audience members. Left of stage was Helen Gidley, who owned the shoe store where Paschal worked part time in high school

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and, now, college.

He paused, prolonging the silence before his monologue denouncing a career in the shoe industry. He took drags from Tom's Herbal Gold cigarette as the lines came to him. It tasted of burning hay.

"You think I'm in love with Continental Shoemakers? You think I want to spend 55 years down there in that — Celotex interior! With fluorescent tubes? Look! I’d rather somebody pick up a crowbar and battered out my brains ..."

Paschal spoke Tom's words as his own. He remembers hearing, from offstage, a friend of Helen's murmur: "Did you hear what he said?"

Fourteen years later, Jody Paschal is the owner of Gidley's Shoe Store. Storefronts had been closing left and right in downtown Fulton when he bought the store from Helen Gidley on April Fools' Day three years ago, with little more than a handshake. He had never taken a business course, but he promised himself he'd better the store and his life.

Many of those included in both Generation X and Generation Y see personal achievement underlying the American Dream, according to a 2011 MetLife study. At 34, Paschal could belong to either of those generations based on overlapping definitions of the two. By contrast, the vast majority of their parents, the baby boomers and the Silent Generation, claimed the American Dream was about opportunity for all, according to the study.

"I thought I'd be much further along in life at 34 than I am," Paschal said. He is grateful for the opportunities he's had. He owns a home, a business and has a college degree. "But I just thought I would be further along financially and personally at 34."

Paschal is in the minority of those in his generation actively working toward better financial security. He's among the 21 percent who hold a second job and the 14 percent with their own business. And he is one of the nation's half a million small-business owners under 40 — just 15 percent of all small-business owners.

Reality sets in The first year he owned Gidley's, 2009, had its moments. There were fun times basking in the newness of small-business ownership. He moved the store to a new location, just a few blocks up Court Street on Fulton's main drag, and family and friends flocked to the Brick District to help out. Paschal's older sister, Angie Pezold, recalls at least 30 people were there. His dad and

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brother-in-law tore down walls and put up new ones. Fellow downtown business owners lent scaffolding and tools. He remodeled and repainted and made Gidley's Shoe Store his own space.

"There was lots of excitement, and some exhaustion, to go along with it because it was such a big push to get it done," said Pezold, who still remembers the smile on her brother's face that day. "You know, there were a lot of different emotions that day."

In year two, reality set in, along with the sleepless nights.

The recession and its stingy credit market have added a new challenge to operating a small business. Researchers from MU and Purdue University have found that more and more smallbusiness owners now pour household savings and personal assets into their businesses, at untold risk. In small towns, where small-business owners feel a social responsibility to survive and to contribute to the community, it presents a major strain.

Paschal is no exception.

He put a house he inherited from his grandparents up as collateral on a $45,000 loan from Callaway Bank. Paschal wouldn't give specific numbers but says he has sunk enough of his own money into Gidley's in the past three years that he could have bought a second house.

"My big fear was, well, what if this doesn't work out and I lose my house?" Paschal said. His loan officer and local businessmen assured him that the loan wasn't too big to pay off.

Paschal drew up business plans, complete with sales projections, to apply for the loan. Three years later, Gidley's has yet to reach one of those projections. Nor has he fully paid for the store; he still writes Helen Gidley a check every month. His last payment to her should come before the end of this year.

"A lot of people who have businesses like this have second jobs because you have to keep putting your money back in the business," said Paschal, who also works as a server for a friend's catering business a few times per month. "But you still have your personal bills to pay."

Paschal said he couldn't sell the store now if he wanted because of a poor market and the debt he's carrying. The only way he could come out on top financially is if the store closed because he would profit off the going-out-of-business sales.

But when Paschal bought Gidley's, it was to prevent exactly that.

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A push to keep the store alive Decades ago, Missouri was a hub of the shoe industry, with St. Louis at the center and smaller cities like Fulton supporting outlying factories. That's all gone now. Gidley's used to offer nothing but American-made shoes, Paschal said. Now he carries a lone model of New Balance running shoes among hundreds of imports.

In the 1960s, Fulton had at least seven shoe stores. Gidley's is the last of them. In fact, Gidley's is the last original business left on Court Street. It has existed, in some form or another, since before World War II, when a man named Cecil Garrett began stocking new shoes to sell out of his repair shop. The gray wooden horse Garrett built, complete with a crude paint job and real leather saddle, still stands in Gidley's next to the cash register. Paschal rode that horse when he was a kid, back when his mother, father, two sisters and he would buy their shoes at Gidley's.

When Helen Gidley lost her lease and decided that, at 79, she was too old to relocate a store, the only two options she saw were closing or selling to Paschal, who by then had managed the store for several years. Paschal said Gidley was more grandmother than boss to him.

"I felt very responsible for keeping it going," Paschal said. "Not only for the people of Fulton but for the other businesses downtown. If one business closes it's a huge hole in the business district, because it's one less thing for people to come downtown for, and it's one more vacant building."

Paschal can poke his head out of Gidley's front door and see a half dozen of downtown Fulton's 18 empty storefronts, most of them victims of the recent Great Recession. Two jewelry stores are gone and nothing took their place. A cafe is gone, and a restaurant and a furniture store.

When Paschal looks at the brown brick shell of what used to be the furniture warehouse, he imagines a microbrewery, complete with an expansive tap room and a mezzanine, with top-level apartments above it.

"You know, I can see the potential in things," he said. "But that would cost you a million dollars."

Dreams of the big stage From childhood, Paschal was full of varied talents and interests. He had a knack for pulling pranks on his sisters, like the time he unloaded on his older sister a jar of grasshoppers he'd collected. Or the time he was mad at his sisters and tied all their doors together to trap them in their rooms.

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He was a talented baseball player, said Pezold, his sister. In high school, he was involved in the Future Business Leaders of America, where he first toyed with the notion of owning his own business. He acted often in high school, too. But Paschal was unsure of what he wanted to do after graduating, so he took a year off before college and continued working at Gidley's in that time.

He later attended William Woods University, where he majored in theater. At the beginning, he dreamed of moving to New York and making it big on the stage. But by the end of his college days, Paschal had decided against New York and planned to stay in Fulton as a theater teacher.

"He grew up here in a smaller community, and at that point he wasn't ready to make that leap to a giant city," said Joe Potter, who has directed Paschal in several plays at William Woods, both as a student and community member. Paschal has become an honorary member of the Potter family, sometimes joining them on vacations. "Of course he was young, too, when all that was going on. He wasn't ready to commit to all that."

Potter said students usually fall into one of two categories: Those who want to pursue theater as a career and those who pursue it as a hobby. With Paschal, though, he couldn't really tell.

"It wasn't so much hard to figure out what he was all about," Potter said. "It was just a matter of finding out where he was headed next."

Paschal said he felt an obligation to stay near Fulton and realized he could be happy performing on a smaller stage. Almost all of his friends and family are here; they get together at least once a week, and Paschal makes a point of seeing his nephews' soccer and basketball games.

Paschal ended up teaching speech and theater at North Callaway High School for two years before quitting. While he taught, he worked at Gidley's on weekends and during the summer.

He loved his students and still keeps in touch with a few of them on Facebook. But he disliked many of the other aspects of teaching — school politics and bureaucratic policies such as the Missouri Assessment Program that he thought missed the mark.

Now, though, he misses it and wishes he never left. If he wasn't trapped in the shoe store, he said, he'd like to go back to teaching.

That's a big difference Paschal sees between people in his generation and his father's: People don't have the loyalty they once did toward their jobs. They're always looking for the next best thing. And sometimes the next best thing isn't always the next best thing. It's like a friend of

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his, who also made a drastic career change, told him: "You know, Jody, it's the same old grass.

It's the same old grass."

Almost half of generations X and Y surveyed in the 2011 MetLife study said earning a higher living standard than their parents was critical to their American Dream. The outlook for that is getting bleaker and bleaker, though. Fewer than half of Americans expected today's youth to achieve a better standard of living than their parents, according to a Gallup poll from last spring. That's the most pessimistic response for that poll in more than three decades.

At the time Paschal was entering college, that year's version of the same poll showed more than 60 percent of Americans expected their generation to have a better life than their parents.

Paschal's father, Walter Paschal, spent a lifetime as a pipe fitter and welder after serving in Vietnam. Then more than 20 years at a local bottling plant and another 25 at the Fulton State Hospital.

"By the time my father was 34, he had three children, two jobs, had fought a war and built a home. I'm nowhere near any of that," Paschal said. "I think about that all the time."

These are the things Paschal said he wants in life — a stable job, a wife, children and a role in his community. He has achieved at least one.

Community man By mid-March of his third year owning Gidley's, Paschal is a well-known community voice. The store helped with notoriety, but he's helped himself along the way. He created a Facebook page for Gidley's that has a loyal following. He hosts a ladies' night every month and serves cocktails.

He also has a stable of customers held over from Gidley's younger days, who have remained faithful to the store and have come to know Paschal.

Paige Piper drove 26 miles from Mexico, Mo., to buy shoes from Gidley's, as she's done for the better part of a century. She and a friend struggled through the glass front door — it sticks — and shuffled toward a pair of high heels with crisscross straps and open toes. The shoes are silver, like Piper’s hair.

She tried them on and fell for them, with Paschal's urging.

"How much?"

"60."

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"That's too much."

"For a woman of your means?"

"Too much."

Piper glanced at her friend. "Don’t let your daughter see those," her friend said.

"I think they're fun.” She reclined in the chrome-piped chair and extended a leg toward Paschal. "Do you think they're fun?"

"I think they're fantastic," he said.

"That's awfully expensive."

He offered 20 percent off. She bit.

"I know she enjoys the art of the deal," Paschal said after the sale. "I wouldn't have given just anybody 20 percent off. But she's a good customer."

Soon after Piper left, Paschal closed the store early and headed to a charity dinner for the United Way, attended by prominent local figures. Since becoming a business owner, Paschal has become more and more vocal in civic conversation. He opposed a downtown smoking ban, though he doesn't smoke, because he thought it was too intrusive. He opposed a downtown beautification project, because he didn't want anyone cutting down trees without a firm plan to replace them. He used to worry that by being so outward with his opinion, and wearing his Republican leanings on his sleeve, he might drive away some business.

But he's past that now, looking ahead to bigger things and adamant that a shoe store won't claim him.

"I just have some big decisions to make in the next six months to a year," Paschal said. "It seems like the right time. In your 20s, you think, 'Oh, I have all the time in the world to figure out what I'm going to do with my life. Then you hit 30 and you say, 'Well, I'm 30 now and I need to make some big decisions.'"

Going for it The first of those decisions came last month, when he decided to run for political office. A few local officials approached him about running for Callaway County assessor, and Paschal saw it as the right opportunity to advance his career and become more involved in the community.

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"He is very active citizen, so politics doesn't surprise me," his sister said. "I can see him in the political world."

County assessor is the stable kind of job, with community prominence, that Paschal wants. But it leaves the future of his small business — a gamble in itself — in question.

Paschal knows he couldn't run Gidley's as he does now if he became assessor. He'd have to hire a full-time manager and a part-time worker, and they would consume the salary he now draws from the store. Anything extra would have to be plowed back into the business.

Helen Gidley, who still works in the store, has issues with Paschal running for office. He's noticed it. She thinks he might be taking on too many different things. For example, Paschal sits on the board of the National Churchill Museum in Fulton. He's on the social committee at the Fulton Country Club. He's a member of the Fulton Chamber of Commerce. He volunteers as a member of the portfolio review board in the William Woods Theatre Department and continues to act in local theater; he's preparing for a role in an upcoming performance of "Our Town." And there is his part-time work for his friend's catering business.

One evening this past spring, he helped cater the Lincoln Days Dinner for the Callaway County Republicans. That is where one of the local commissioners approached him and confirmed his running for county assessor. Minutes later, the master of ceremonies was calling Paschal to the stage for an impromptu speech.

There he stood, alone on the stage at KC Country Hall in Kingdom City. He faced a crowd of Callaway County's most influential Republicans — local officials, state representatives and senators.

Paschal had flecks of mashed potatoes, pork loin, corn and green beans smeared across his white dress shirt and black slacks — he was at the dinner as a caterer, not a candidate.

His hands shook.

He stated his name. He stated his purpose. He apologized for his attire.

"I wasn't expecting to give a speech," he said. "But like all good Republicans, I'm out working."

The room welcomed him, and he relaxed. He made promises, but not too many. He asked for their support. He played the part. Then he walked back to the kitchen to wash dishes.

That's how Jody Paschal, seven months before the election he hopes will change his life,

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declared he was going for it.

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COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN Adjustment to college, adulthood tough for circle of friends in West Plains

By Simina Mistreanu July 2, 2012 | 6:00 a.m. CDT Culture of poverty persists in south-central Missouri.

Samantha Price leans on a car after the boy she had a relationship with ignored her at Putnam Student Center on a Tuesday afternoon in the parking lot of the student center in West Plains. "I am a Baptist," Price said. "I believe in the Bible, nothing but the Bible. I believe in salvation through grace.

I know I am living wrong, and I know it is not right." | Pinar Istek

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Heather Hopkins lies on the bed at her friend's house on a Sunday in early April. | Pinar Istek

Tacompsy Rawson sits outside her dorm on on a late spring day in West Plains. | Pinar Istek

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Tacompsy Rawson, left, paints the fingernails of her friend Samantha Price in front of their dorm on April 1. | Pinar Istek

Samantha Price, left, and Heather Hopkins hold hands on their way back to a party that they attended earlier in the afternoon in early May in West Plains. | Pinar Istek

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Samantha Price, left, Tacompsy Rawson and Heather Hopkins hang out in the back yard at a friend's house in late March. | Pinar Istek

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Heather Hopkins watches a presentation by one of her classmates in the Student Success class on May 7in West Plains. | Pinar Istek

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Samantha Price prepares to play violin on May 7 at her dorm room. | Pinar Istek

A note from Samantha Price's younger sister hangs on the wall of Price's dorm room on May 7 in West Plains. Price hardly ever spends time in her room and finds it boring there. | Pinar Istek

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Samantha Price attempts to check the results of a lottery on May 7 at the computer lab of her dorm. | Pinar Istek

Samantha Price texts one of her friends after she wrote "family forever" on her hand on May 15 in her friend Katie Wallace's car at the parking lot of Putnam Student Center on the Missouri State University-West Plains campus. Price said the family is very important for her and what she wrote on her hand shows that. | Pinar Istek

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Heather Hopkins gets a cigarette lit by a friend before she goes to the post office in West Plains. | Pinar Istek

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Zack Reynolds, left, and Samantha Price watch "Troy" on TV, while Reynold's roommate sleeps on the floor on May 16 at Reynold's West Plains' home. Price and Reynolds had met recently. | Pinar Istek

Samantha Price, left, texts on her phone while she hangs out with her friend, Drake Mann, at the Hub, a coffee shop and Internet cafe. At the time, Price said she thought that Mann was cute, and since then they have been spending more time together. | Pinar Istek

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For Samantha Price and her friends at Missouri State University-West Plains campus, the temptation to spend time with friends often distracts them from other goals and their studies. Editor's note: This photo gallery has been re-edited to more fully capture the lives of the four young women featured in the story. !

Editor's note: This story is part of the American Next, a special project exploring the hopes, fears and changing expectations of Missouri's next generation in challenging times.

WEST PLAINS — There was a party at the dorm Friday night. The kids got together, had some drinks and then went off to join the West Plains night scene. They danced at the club and came back to the dorms after 1 a.m. Some of them went to bed. Others had more drinks and talked the night away. They ended up in rooms other than their own, on couches, in restrooms, in showers, in beds. When they finally woke up Saturday around noon, they showered, grabbed lunch at the cafeteria and updated each other on the previous night's events. They lingered over cigarettes and stories. Then they went back to their rooms to kill a few hours until Saturday night and the next party.

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Among the partiers: Katie Castello, Tacompsy Rawson, Samantha Price and Heather Hopkins, a tight clutch of friends at Missouri State University's West Plains campus, a two-year junior college in the heart of the Ozarks. All are caught up in the drama of dorm life and the distraction of college classes. All are trying to find a way out of West Plains and into their dreams of well-paying jobs, loving families and bigger cities.

Katie wants to graduate from college, then work at something she's passionate about while she builds a family. What that something is — she's not sure yet.

Tacompsy wants to move to a big city — maybe Atlanta, where there are plenty of professional black men to meet — attend beauty school and have her own nail salon one day.

Samantha wants to become a paramedic with a fire department and someday own a restaurant.

And Heather wants to become a psychologist somewhere far away from south central Missouri.

These are the kind of goals — vague, romantic, idealistic and unformed — common to college-aged kids everywhere. But for these four, dreams of the future play out against the realities of the past and are underscored by a background etched in profuse poverty,

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indifference to education and lack of discipline or ambition. These four young women typify a demographic handicapped to fail: millennials who grew up in the central Ozarks, an area with high rates of unemployment and meth addiction and low rates of advanced degrees. They were raised in families where welfare was more common than steady work.

Now it's their turn, their time to try to shake off the inheritance of poverty and inertia to build happy, independent lives for themselves.

On a Saturday in early March, the four friends sprawl on blue couches in the dorm apartment Katie and Tacompsy share. They tell their stories, interrupting one another with laughter, encouragement and bursts of Facebook news. They are sweet and sassy, funny and frustrating, maddening and, at times, tragic.

They believe in one another and support each other's dreams of better lives. It's what they all say they want. But none of them are sure they know how to make that happen. Over the next three months, as they tried to make it through the school semester with passing grades and the promise of decent jobs, those hopes would repeatedly be challenged and re-tailored by an environment of low expectations.

March Samantha, 17, is the youngest of the four and the only one who didn't grow up in Missouri. Her family moved from Yucca Valley in southern California a few months ago when they bought a house in Alton. They saw it online and decided they could afford to buy, after renting in California. Her stepfather is disabled after a forklift broke his back years ago, and her mother stays at home and, with the help of government assistance, cares for the four youngest of the couple's combined 10 children.

Missouri still feels strange to Samantha.

"Everybody waves to you, but they won't talk to you in stores," she says. "In California they won't wave to you on the street, but they'll talk to you in the store. You talk, and you're best friends. And you exchange numbers, and you hang out later that night."

Everything feels new to Samantha. She is dealing with her first semester in college, her first time away from her parents and her first time getting close to a boy, who'll later act like nothing happened. She has found an anchor in the other girls, especially Tacompsy, who has her back.

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But moving here didn't change Samantha's goal: To become a paramedic and, eventually, run a restaurant. She hopes to join the Missouri National Guard to help pay for college, and expects to enlist in late March.

Samantha is trying to figure out who she is, Tacompsy says.

As for herself, Tacompsy drawls: "I was born a poor black child." Her send-up of Steve Martin in "The Jerk" sends her friends into peels of laughter. But the truth is, Tacompsy was born poor and black, to a 14-year-old in St. Louis. She was adopted by a white couple from Mountain View, a town 30 minutes north of West Plains. A few years later, the couple adopted Tacompsy's biological younger brother.

Tacompsy was the only black girl at her high school in Mountain View. Heather and Katie went to the same school, but they didn't hang out together back then. Tacompsy's father was a detention teacher at her high school; he kept a close eye on her at school and didn't let her go out much at night. Her mother had a job in Springfield during the week, and commuted the two hours home on weekends. Tacompsy recalls often being left in charge of her brother, having to cook and do laundry. She left home when she was 17, first living with a boyfriend, then with several other friends until she started college a year later. She says she hasn't been home since she first left.

Earlier this year, Tacompsy found out she was pregnant. She had spent a night with a young man during Christmas break. He freaked out at the news, and she hasn't decided what she'll do. She says she wants to keep the baby, but being a parent would make it harder to strike out on her own. She has her sights set on beauty school and then Atlanta, where there are more young black people.

"That has been my dream since I was little," she says. "I don't really know what's going to happen, but I do know that I'm going to make it there sometime."

Katie, 20, lacks that certitude. She also grew up in Mountain View, after her family moved from St. Louis to take care of her grandfather. She had hoped to go to college in Springfield, but her ACT scores were too low. Now she does her general studies at MSU-West Plains, just like the other girls. She is supposed to graduate in May but doubts she'll make it. She dropped credits because she had a hard time adjusting to college, then an uncle died, and then she fell further behind. She considers graduating next year or the year after.

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pay her for that. She considers event planning because she likes to shop. She wonders about being a flight attendant, but she is afraid the plane might crash. She likes baking cakes, so she might go into culinary arts.

"Everyone keeps telling me that I need to know what to do with my life, but I don't know how I'm supposed to know, or how I'm supposed to decide," Katie says. "I've taken those career quizzes, and they don't tell me anything. So I don't know."

She says she's dating a 27-year-old man.

"No," the other girls interrupt. "Not dating. No!" Anyway, the man told Katie to Google it. Google life. It wasn't very helpful.

She has worked at fast food restaurants in Mountain View and as a sewing operator for a Nike manufacturer in Winona. But now her family is pressuring her to choose a stable career, even though neither of her parents were much interested in advanced education. Lately, Katie has had anxiety attacks and doesn't leave her room very often.

Heather often keeps Katie company. The two have been friends since childhood. Although Heather doesn't officially live in the dorm, she's always there, often sleeping on the couch in Katie's living room. Heather spent her early childhood in Springfield, until her parents got divorced when she was 4 and her mother moved to West Plains with her three children. A few years later, they moved to Mountain View, where Heather finished school. Her mother, a single mom who for long time raised the children largely with the help of government assistance programs, didn't impose many rules — Heather could stay out as long as she wanted and sleep over at friends' houses. So when Heather was a teenager and her mother married a man who set an 8 p.m. curfew, Heather rebelled.

"I would always go to my friends' house because they weren't allowed to come over, so that's how it started out," she says. "I always wanted to be with my friends. I didn't want to be stuck at home."

Friends' parents took her in. In middle school, she went on a trip to Florida with a friend's family. Her track coach became a sort of a mother figure and helped Heather get a scholarship at Hannibal-LaGrange University. She went there for a year but lost her scholarship when she was caught smoking weed. So last fall, her coach arranged for her to go to a college in Humboldt, Tenn., and play basketball. Because she enrolled too late, she wasn't allowed to play basketball the first season and soon lost interest in school. She left after a couple of months and

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came back to live with her mother. She enrolled at MSU in January but can't wait to move away and be on her own.

Heather, now 20, is interested in a career in psychology and raising a family. She says she knows she could be a good mom — she learned from her mother how not to raise children. But she is not sure how she would provide for them.

"My mom kind of settles, and she doesn't push herself very much. We lived paycheck by paycheck, and we didn't get to do much of anything," Heather says. "That's my biggest fear. I don't want to end up like that."

All four friends separately echoed some version of that perspective. Tacompsy said she thinks that if you didn't have a great family growing up, it will make you want your own family even more, to be the best mom you can be.

Katie's parents always told her school was important but didn't model that in their own lives.

Samantha's family is the most important thing in the world to her but, she says, are also an example of what not to do. She needs to know that "I'm doing something with my life and not just sitting around, being a bum.

"A lot of my family is like that. They depend on the government. I don't want to be like that," she says. "I want to do something with my life and make a difference in somebody's life, anybody's life. One of my fears is actually to die without making a difference."

Living down to expectations Heather has class at 8 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Waking up is not fun, especially after a late-night party, so she easily talks herself out of it. Then she wakes up at 10 a.m. and hates herself for not going to class. Sometimes, when she's sleeping over at the dorm, the girls lure one another back to sleep in the morning, only to feel bad a few hours later because they missed class again.

The work ethic of Millennials — people born between 1980 and 2000, give or take a few years — has been studied, debated, dissected and judged. They have been portrayed in the media as the trophy children of baby boomers, a demanding nightmare for employers, the entitled members of a lost generation.

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schedules, a promotion within a year and more vacation and personal time. Back when the economy was booming, the dark joke among employers was that Millennials expected to become CEO in a day.

Now young people's expectations have slumped with the economy, but the discussion continues about their values. Work ethic, by most measures, is not at the top of the list.

According to a 2010 Pew Research Center study, Millennials were the only age group that didn't cite work ethic as a trait that identifies their generation. What they did list: technology use, music/pop culture, liberal/tolerant and smarter. Only 5 percent mentioned work ethic as a core trait of their generation; that's almost four times fewer than baby boomers and half as many as Gen Xers.

Heather echoes the surveys: "I lived my life always doing what I want, and now I want to be successful, and I don't want to be struggling. But it's really, really, really hard to make myself do stuff. I have no willpower. It takes everything I got to wake up in the morning."

Tacompsy shrugs at her lackluster performance in school. She's only "bullshitting around here," she says; none of the classes at MSU interest her or will set her up for beauty school. Yet she has strong opinions about education.

"Growing up in Mountain View, Missouri, we are screwed from the very beginning," she says.

"For the whole time you go from elementary school to high school, you really don't have to do anything. To pass high school, you just show up and you're good."

But all of a sudden you're in college and expectations increase tenfold. You don't know how to meet those expectations because you never had to before.

MSU tries to address that reality in part by offering remedial classes in subjects such as English, math and reading to help students perform at college level. Nationally, 58 percent of two-year college students enroll in at least one remedial class, according to researchers at the City University of New York. At MSU-West Plains, about 70 percent of freshmen, including returning adults, take at least one remedial class, said Mirra Anson, director of developmental education.

Katie, on the other hand, hasn't found college expectations to be very challenging. She turned in an English paper three weeks late, and it was accepted. The lesson she took away: That's the way things work.

Samantha doesn't reflect much on the rigors or failings of her college education. She started

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only two months ago, and it's as new and strange as everything else in this state and in this dormitory.

But Heather, who is on her third college experience, offers a blunt solution: "Government should cut people off."

Her theory is that because of welfare programs her mother wasn't forced to go out and get a job. If her mother had been forced to work, Heather would have grown up seeing someone work hard and understanding the benefits of that work. Now she sees the downfalls of not working — but she admits she doesn't know how to prevent them for herself.

Geography and poverty South-central Missouri is one of the most beautiful regions of the state. The Mark Twain National Forest covers much of the area, and the locals take pride in the clear swift rivers, perfect for canoeing and fishing.

It is also the poorest region of the state, with an average wage of $510 per week in the first quarter of 2011, according to the Missouri Department of Economic Development. Even the residents of southeast Missouri, called the "Bootheel" and known for its striking poverty, earned on average $100 more per week; workers in St. Louis made nearly double.

The unemployment rate in south-central Missouri was 9.2 percent in February 2012, compared with a state average of 8.4 percent.

A national study published in 2002 listed south-central Missouri as one of the regions defined by persistent poverty since 1959. Wendell Bailey, a former Republican congressman from Willow Springs and former state treasurer, said he thinks nothing has changed. Last year, Bailey launched a program aimed at fighting poverty and increasing the quality of education and prospect of jobs for young people in a 10-county area in the region. He gathered leaders from 31 communities, set up a nonprofit and a 10-year plan to chip away at the underlying problems.

Bailey's aim is to change the "culture of poverty" in the Ozarks. "When you are immersed in poverty, it's generational," he says. "The parents are on food stamp programs, and children are on food stamp programs. The same way with education: When parents drop out and children drop out, it becomes a culture that's accepted to drop out of school. In fact, it's expected."

It's also likely that a 17-year-old girl who drops out of high school and gets a job at a fast food

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restaurant will still be working there when she is 27, because her employment options are limited by her lack of a high school diploma, Bailey says. "That creates its own expectation of failure because that's where you come from and that's where you remain."

Bailey's efforts may offer some new hope to children born during the next decade. But for those already here, the effects of being born in poverty will haunt them into adulthood. It all starts at birth, says Laura Speer, associate director for policy, research and data at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a Baltimore-based nonprofit that supports disadvantaged children across the country. A child born into poverty is more likely to be born early, have a low birth weight and have developmental delays — and less likely to have access to quality health care. By kindergarten, the child is already behind the curve and likely to remain there throughout the first years in school.

The effects of poverty compound over time, Speer says. The child is more likely to drop out of high school and become a teen parent, and less likely to go to college, get a good job and raise children who have the skills to succeed.

Growing up in poverty weighs heavily against young people's motivation, she says, adding that it's difficult to believe that you will be successful if nobody around you is.

"Even for the ones who are motivated, there are always barriers that people have to overcome.

The ability to overcome those barriers a lot of times has to do with people in your support system," Speer says. "So it's easy to give up if you don't have adults around you who can help you move past those barriers that come up in front of everyone."

Early April Another Friday night. Another party at the dorm. Someone brought alcohol, which all the kids drank with Coke. Then they started doing stupid stuff, like writing all over a guy's arms and legs because he fell asleep with his shoes on. Then they went to the club. On the way there, the young man who Samantha had hooked up with got arrested for an unpaid ticket. The others made fun of him, wondering if the cops would let him go on Facebook at jail.

Heather, Tacompsy, Samantha and Katie typically hang out with maybe 10 or 15 people from the dorm, all of whom they consider friends. In total, there are about 60 students living at the dorm, all in their own little universes. There are the volleyball girls, who mostly hang out with one another or with the basketball boys; they have their own table at the cafeteria. There are the people who don't live in the dorms but might as well because they are there 24/7; Heather is an example. Then there are the good girls, who party sometimes but not too much, go to 17 of 24

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church but not all the time and have sex but not too often. A minority of the good girls are the good Christian girls, who don't drink alcohol and don't hang out with boys. There are the shy girls, who never leave their rooms except to go to class or the cafeteria; they spend their days playing cards and watching anime movies. Then there are the weird boys, who look and act creepy and are avoided by girls. Heather, Tacompsy, Samantha and Katie would fall into the category of bitches because they tell it to people straight and like to have fun. Except maybe not Samantha, who until recently was a good Christian girl.

Losing your virginity is a dorm event. When that happened to Samantha and everybody found out, she cried for two weeks straight. Then she got used to it. It's part of dorm life.

On this Saturday in early April, Tacompsy wakes up around noon, her eyes smeared with last night's makeup. A couple of weeks ago she had a miscarriage, which made her sad but also answered the question about keeping the baby. She doesn't know what caused the miscarriage, but she suspects the stress and panic attacks that she's had recently.

About the same time, she got a message on Facebook saying: "Hey, you can be a model!"

"Dude, are you legit?" she wrote back.

Turns out he was working in the porn film industry. His offer: $1,500 for three hours of shooting. Tacompsy asked for some time to think. The man referred her to another agent. This one worked for Ordinary World Models, an agency in New York that, according to its website and job postings, supplies fashion models for print and TV commercials but also for soft and hard porn magazines, such as Playboy and Hustler, and for websites. He invited Tacompsy for a two-day shoot in Boston in mid-April.

She posted on Facebook that she might have a shot at Black Entertainment Television (BET).

When friends asked, she said she had lost the baby, so was in shape to model. She wasn't sure what she should do.

"I was really considering doing the porn," she says. "I mean, $1,500, that's a lot of money. But $1,500 for three hours of humiliation that other people are going to see — I don't know if that's worth it. But with $1,500 I could get out of here, I could go out and maybe get a car, I could go out and I could go to another city as soon as I wanted to."

What she had to decide was how far she would go to get away from West Plains and out of the trap she feels she's in.

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"Around here you grow up in one of the small towns, and then you either get stuck in that small town, you get married, you have kids, and you stay here for the rest of your life, or you go to Springfield, and you stay there for the rest of your life," she says. "You look around and it's just like, wow. Some people haven't noticed that they've been here their whole lives and have never left this part of Missouri and probably never will."

Tacompsy didn't follow up on the modeling offer. But when she pictures herself five or 10 years from now, she doesn't see herself in south-central Missouri. She imagines herself enjoying life in a big city, grasping new opportunities, going to beauty school and finding a good black man in Atlanta. That's why she's decided to drop out of school come May. Samantha has her own things to figure out. In late March, she went to St. Louis to enlist in the National Guard. She took the drug test and the breathalyzer and everything went fine until they weighed her, measured her body mass index and told her she was three pounds over qualifying weight.

Samantha went to the bathroom and cried and tried to vomit. She came back and got weighed again. She was told to come back in late April and try again. Back in West Plains, she is on a diet, which consists mainly of avoiding junk food.

Between the National Guard experience and the last month in the dorm, Samantha grew discouraged. She stopped going to class, earning mostly Ds and one C. She got carried away by college life and her first experiences with boys and alcohol. One night she got drunk and told Tacompsy she hated black people. Tacompsy wanted to jump at her throat, but she understood Samantha didn't mean it, so instead she took care of her through the night.

"Since my mom and dad aren't here anymore, I started to rebel," Samantha says. "They are not here holding the umbrella. I'm going to put the umbrella away for a little while."

Samantha says she wasn't pressured to start drinking or experimenting with boys. Actually, the other girls warned her against that. But it looked like fun, and she wanted to try it.

"Sam was a really good person when she came here," Heather says in a separate conversation.

"And I'm not saying she's a bad person. But she saw the way that we lived and all of the mistakes that we've made, and she kind of felt like it would be cool to do some of the stuff that we did. And it's not. And I tried to tell her a million times."

As Samantha's morals dropped, so did her confidence in her dreams. She doesn't want to open a restaurant anymore — someone told her it's hard and most restaurants die within five or 10

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years. She still wants to become a firefighter and paramedic. Maybe.

Most students come to college with their dreams intact, says Dennis Lancaster, an assistant professor of letters at MSU-West Plains and Samantha's favorite teacher. Somewhere along the way they realize it's a lot of work, it's going to cost a lot of money and they might need to leave the comfort of what they know.

"They feel limited. They put the limits on themselves," Lancaster says. "They might not be ready to leave this area."

Early April, continued It's Saturday night, and the girls are going out. Katie is not with them. She just got back together with one of her ex-boyfriends, and she's with him in Mountain View. She stopped talking to the 27-year-old guy friend who wanted her to Google life.

In the last month, Katie's plans have turned upside down. While she was planning on graduating in a year or two, now she wants to speed it up and be done with school this summer.

She needs one more credit to graduate and plans to take a one-week art class in the summer.

She also needs to pass history this semester, where she is facing an F for not showing up.

Back in March, she had no idea what she was going to do. Now she's decided to go to culinary school in Springfield and live with her boyfriend. She got a job waiting tables at Colton's Steakhouse in West Plains, and hopes to transfer to their restaurant in Springfield.

Things seem to be lining up for her. Except for one credit in the summer and that F in history.

Back at the dorm, the girls are getting dressed for the club. Tacompsy changes from her leopard print top into a simple, black one and freshens her makeup. She keeps on her silvercolored necklace, which reads "I love Boys." Heather puts on jeans and a flowered top.

Samantha doesn't dress up because she is underage and won't be allowed in the club.

Heather's phone rings. It's her boyfriend, Tommy.

"Where are you at?"

"I'm at the college."

"Stay there, I'm coming to pick you up."

Heather leaves with him. The girls comment on how possessive Tommy is. Tacompsy goes to 20 of 24

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the club with another friend. It's fairly quiet. The volleyball girls hang out with the basketball boys at the bar and a few people dance to rap music. Tacompsy goes back to the dorm after about an hour.

The next morning, Heather comes down hard on herself for not standing up to Tommy the night before. They had been together for about three months. It was all good at the beginning; they were best friends. But then Tommy started having trust issues, so Heather decided to make their relationship official and declare publicly they were a couple — the first time she's done that with a boy. It only made things worse. Tommy started suspecting Heather of cheating on him every time she went out without him.

"I don't know how to make the kid trust me," Heather says. "I don't even know why I want to be with him, honestly."

On top of that, Heather has been kicked out of the house in West Plains where she was living with a friend. In Heather's version, the friend got upset that Heather was never home, hanging out at the college all the time. Now she has no clue where she will stay. She considers moving in with her father, but that would be weird because they haven't lived in the same house since she was a toddler, before her parents divorced.

"Right now sucks," Heather says. "Eventually it will be OK but right now sucks really bad.

Money is a big deal, and I hate it because my family is not rich. Whenever you're a child or an individual going out into the world trying to do something for yourself, whenever you start out it's not easy, especially if your family doesn't help you at all. I don't have any support to fall back on. If I fall it's all on me, and it's a million pounds, and it sucks.�

She wants to leave, go to a four-year college and mostly go far away from home, to a place where nobody knows her and nobody judges her. But ever since she got suspended from the college in Hannibal, Heather feels she started digging a hole into which she sinks deeper and deeper.

"I feel like I'm making a huge leap because we are really low class, and I have this expectation from myself way higher than that, and for my family way higher than that, and so it's really, really, really frustrating because I'm 20 years old, I want to get this going," Heather says. "But I'm stuck, and I feel like I'm stuck forever."

The ways out It would be easy to watch how these girls party, skip classes and make random, questionable

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decisions and not see much beyond that. It would be easy to chalk them up as irresponsible members of a "lost" generation. It would be easy to miss their warmth and their kindness, how they take care of each other, how conscious they are of the effects of their decisions and how terribly they struggle.

What would be harder would be to ask how the lives of these girls, and others like them, might have been different had they been born in a different family, in a different place or in a different culture.

Grown-ups and officals offer their solutions.

For Sheila Orchard, who worked for 25 years as a middle school and high school counselor in the local school district until she retired two years ago, it's making tiny steps in helping students define their goals and the path to achieve them. The first step is to convince them to get up and go to school every morning as part of the "big life plan." Programs such as the Missouri A+ Schools Program will pay for students to attend certain colleges if they graduate high school with a minimum 2.5 GPA and 95 percent attendance rate.

For Dennis Lancaster, the MSU-West Plains professor, it's engaging students in one-on-one mentoring, sharing his own experiences and showing them that somebody cares about their struggles.

For Wendell Bailey, the ex-congressman, it's a strategic plan to increase the quality of education and convince businesses to offer more and better jobs for students and parents.

For Laura Speer at the Casey Foundation, it's early education and mentorship — finding successful individuals to serve as role models for the young and help them overcome barriers.

At a more macro level, parents need access to better paying jobs, even if that means going back to school or, in the case of immigrants, learning better English.

"Unless there's real commitment to the next generation there's no telling what's going to happen," Speer says. "It won't be good, though."

Early May There was a party at the dorm Friday night. The kids reveled in the early summer weather and the approaching end of the semester. Some of them stayed in their rooms and prepared for finals week. Others had already given up, walking away from college life. Still others counted the remaining hours until they could be out of here.

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One Sunday morning, a young man swung by to pick up Tacompsy and her things. She was finally getting out of West Plains. But her destination was not Atlanta or some big city. It was Springfield, where she would live with the young man and another roommate. She gave up the modeling idea and now she needed another plan.

Tacompsy's early departure fits the predominant trend at MSU-West Plains, where only 27 percent of the students graduate from the two-year program within four years. Another 23 percent end up transferring to other colleges before they finish their degree here.

Katie also left, in April — not to Springfield, as planned, but to Birch Tree, a town 45 minutes northeast of West Plains. Her boyfriend, Michael, has a house there, which he received as a graduation present from his parents and where he moved after he got a job as a McDonald's manager in nearby Mountain View. Katie moved in with him, giving up her plans of attending culinary school in Springfield and graduating from MSU-West Plains in May. She failed several classes toward the end of the semester because it was hard to keep up with school on top of moving and going to work. She quit her job at Colton's Steakhouse after two weeks, instead taking a job as a cashier at the Walmart in West Plains. But she quit that because commuting was exhausting and expensive. Now she has a job at a Mexican restaurant in Mountain View.

She doesn't like it very much, but it pays the bills. She and Michael are discussing marriage.

Samantha was inducted into the National Guard in late April. She also got a job, as a cashier at McDonald's in West Plains. She starts mid-May and will work there until mid-August, when she goes on a 10-week boot camp with the National Guard at Fort Leonard Wood. She will then spend the rest of the fall and winter in South Carolina, where she'll get her training as a mechanic with the National Guard. She failed all of her classes this semester, and she doesn't know if she'll come back to MSU. She plans to get her training as a paramedic and become a firefighter, her long-time dream. The complication is that she will need to return to Missouri because her family is here and she doesn't want to live apart from them for too long.

Heather also has decided to try to enlist in the National Guard. "I've been going to college for two years, and it didn't work out so well, so I need a plan B," she says. Meanwhile, she'll be in West Plains for finals week. And before finals week, there are parties.

Sunday is usually Sober Day among the girls' friends (after Margarita Monday, Tequila Tuesday, Wine Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday, Fun Friday and Super-fun Saturday). But on this Sunday in early May, they use the S for Single and find a theme for their party. On Friday, Heather's boyfriend, Tommy, broke up with her, so she joined the others at a friend's house.

They played beer pong, a game in which each team tries to throw a pingpong ball into the other

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team's plastic cups. Usually, if the ball gets inside, the members of the opposing team drink from the cup. In this case, the garage floor where they were playing was too dirty, so they used cups with water and kept their drinks on the side.

The party started in the early afternoon. By 9 p.m. the game was old and the girls were tired.

Heather and Samantha dozed off on a large couch in the garage, covered by a patchy blanket, in a tight embrace.

Clarification: Samantha was sworn into the National Guard in late April this year. She then got a job at a McDonald's until August, when she is scheduled to go to National Guard boot camp.

Guard training starts in fall if she makes it through boot camp.

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COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN Despite detours, Ashley Glover holds on to dreams of performing her music

By Roxanne Foster July 3, 2012 | 6:00 a.m. CDT

Editor's note: This story is part of the American Next, a special project exploring the hopes, fears and changing expectations of Missouri's next generation in challenging times.

MoreStory Related Media

Haley Davis has her hair styled after receiving highlights by Ashley Glover

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KIRKSVILLE — Don't be surprised if Ashley Glover greets you with a hug the first time you meet her.

She's the type of person who's never met a stranger. She takes forever to finish her grocery shopping because she stops and chats with everyone she knows. She calls her clients at Salon Nouveau "darlin'" or "honey" if they've been coming to her for a while.

This past St. Patrick's Day, Glover made a small

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as the two joke and laugh on Feb. 24 at the Salon Nouveau in Kirksville.

Glover enjoys making people feel comfortable and welcome at Salon Nouveau in Kirksville where clients often become friends.

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multicolored top hat out of hair extensions she had around the house. After donning a black T-shirt with the words "My name is Lucky" on it, she secured the hair-hat with a green polka-dot bow and wore it to work. It's just one of the ways she's come up with to showcase her abilities and follow her "you-have-to-wear-it-to-sell-it" marketing strategy.

DEAR READER: The American Next delves into the lives of a new generation

At 25, Glover is a fascinating blend of dreamer and doer, optimist and pragmatist. The dreamer in her has visions of singing on the "big stage" in front of thousands of fans who know every word to her songs. The doer in her goes to work in the salon so she can take care of her daughter and fiance, while saving for a debt-free future. The optimist believes she can get what she wants in life. The pragmatist is careful how she defines those wants.

Glover is among the generation of young Americans who grew up with a sense of limitless possibility, then slammed into the reality of a shaken economy and adult responsibilities. But Glover sees her current situation more as a detour than a destination. And she feels she's in charge of the journey.

"Sometimes you have to let go of the dreams that you thought were the things that you wanted in life so that you can move on and get to your bigger purpose — what you really feel like you're here to do," she says.

For her, that purpose is steeped in her music.

Singing from childhood Glover is the youngest of three girls and a self-described "go-getter."

She grew up singing in church and became comfortable performing in front of a crowd at an early age. In high school, she was involved in theater and cheerleading.

Just being involved wasn't enough — she wanted to lead. Glover believes that if she's going to do something, she has to be the best at it. When she tried out for school musicals, it was always for a lead role. As a cheerleader, she had to be the captain.

"I just pushed until I got there," she says. "I put in my best effort, and it usually paid off."

Her mother, Sandra Williams, grew up on a farm in Novinger, just outside of Kirksville. Her father, John Williams, is from the Gifford/La Plata area and is the youngest of six kids. He 2 of 9

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dropped out of high school at 15 to work in his father's auto repair shop and later worked at the family's sawmill. He worked in a paper factory while Glover was growing up.

In spite of the lack of opportunities presented to him in his youth, Glover describes her father as the "biggest dreamer" in her family.

"He never quits," she says. "That's just the kind of person he is. You would never think that he didn't have everything he ever wanted in life — and I think he really does."

She credits him with showing his children that they could do whatever they want — and achieve anything — if they're willing to work for it.

After hearing Glover sing a love song she'd written about her first high school boyfriend at age 15, her father gave her money to work with a few local musicians and record a CD. Her family also pushed her to enter a local pageant, which she won, that led to her biggest concert to date — opening for the Northeast Missouri Fair in 2003.

"They've always tried to get me to do something with my music," she says. "They believed in me when I didn't believe in myself."

On her 17th birthday, her parents took her on a scouting trip to Nashville, Tenn. It was meant to encourage her to pursue a music career. They even managed to arrange a meeting with someone in the business who could look at her work.

The plan backfired.

"It was the scariest thing that I had ever seen — to see so many people who could sing just as good as I could, who could write just as good as I could," Glover says. "They were on every street corner, working in every restaurant."

The trip raised doubts not only about her abilities, but about the lifestyle, she says. It left her asking the question: "If I can't go big, then what's the point?"

Pursuing a second dream Glover grew up harboring a second dream — to someday have a relationship like her parents, who have been married for almost 35 years and are still "ridiculously in love — the kind of love everybody wants," she says.

But like her music, the road from dream to reality hasn't proved direct.

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After high school, Glover moved to Columbia for a year to try out life in a bigger city. When she decided to move back home at the end of 2005, a "nice, sweet guy" she had met followed her.

They dated for a couple months, then got engaged. Six months later, they were married — one month shy of her 20th birthday.

She decided that since she couldn't fulfill her music dream on a grand scale, she would focus on building a family. She went to cosmetology school. She embraced the role of wife. She followed, instead of led.

Over the course of the next four years, the dream unraveled.

She and her husband grew apart, both unhappy with where things were going. Their relationship looked nothing like the one that had been modeled by her parents. So when doctors gave them the news that Glover likely wouldn't be able to conceive on her own, there was little holding the couple together. They divorced in January 2010.

Glover found it both devastating and freeing.

"I was trying so hard to fulfill that role," she says, "that once it was gone, it was like, 'OK, now I can just step out and be me again.'"

A new reality As her marriage was crumbling, Glover went back to writing music and singing in church. It was a form of therapy, she says — her "escape" After the divorce, she started performing around the Kirksville area again and seemed to be gaining some traction with her music. She even received money from local investors to produce a music video for a song she wrote after her divorce, called "Hysteria."

It was during that time that she reconnected with a high school classmate, Cliff "Greenjeans" Corbin.

In school, he was the quiet kid who fell through the cracks while his parents were going through a messy divorce. At 15 he dropped out and got into the music scene. He spent much of the time at the Aquadome — a music venue in Kirksville — playing shows and hanging out with friends. He figured he could learn more about music and management from being "out there" than he could in the classroom.

Now 26, Corbin is a laid-back guy who loves wearing tie-dye shirts, cracking jokes and playing

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any musical instrument he can get his hands on. He prefers piano and guitar, but he doesn't pass up the chance to make music whenever the opportunity presents itself.

"We both enjoy singing," he says. "That's a huge connection we've had right from the beginning."

They happened to be at the same bar one night and were reintroduced. Glover invited Corbin to a band practice she was having the following day for a benefit concert. They fell into an easy relationship, going to bars and clubs to play music, playing until the early morning hours, not worrying about much beyond the next day's gig.

That ended abruptly about a year into their relationship, when Glover heard the words she had given up on: She was pregnant. The couple's carefree lifestyle came to an abrupt halt.

"I didn't have a choice," Glover says. "I was pregnant. I was in that family mode. I wanted something more stable."

She gave Corbin an ultimatum: Step away from the music scene for the sake of their child or the relationship was finished.

She didn't expect him to agree. Corbin has two other children, ages 8 and 3, from previous relationships. But now he felt ready for the responsibilities of fatherhood and wanted something more substantial to show for his life.

Quinley was born last December. Glover and Corbin got engaged the following February.

Since Quinley was born, Corbin has played only one show. His primary role these days is that of stay-at-home dad.

The arrangement works well for the couple. With Corbin at home, they avoid the cost of day care. Glover works 40 to 50 hours a week at the salon and brings in about $30,000 a year, which covers their basic expenses. They do without cable TV and Internet access and use their income tax refund to pay big bills up front — like auto insurance — for an entire year.

"I make sure that our bills are paid, that we have a place to live, that there's a roof over our heads and that there's food," Glover says. "I'm willing to do that if he's willing to help me take care of (Quinley) and our house."

Corbin's days are spent making up baby bottles, changing diapers, cleaning house, doing laundry — and watching "The View." The change is worth it, he says, for the long-term

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investment he gets to make in his daughter's life.

"The way I treat her every day — every minute of every day — molds into something that's going to be solid for the rest of her life," Corbin says. "That's what I love most about full-time care — you make a million influences into their lives every day."

That choice doesn't come without some costs. A job at the greenhouse at Truman State University opened recently, and Corbin really wanted to apply. But it didn't make financial sense.

"I hate that, but we just can't afford to do it that way," Glover says. "It's cheaper for me to work and pay our bills and pay his child support and do all of that than for him to have a job."

Life at the salon Salon Nouveau might not have been Glover's life dream, but it certainly suits her.

When you walk through the door of the little white house on South Baltimore Street, it feels like home. The warm brick-red walls and black furniture are professional but inviting.

Customers are greeted with smiles or hugs — just like family.

The salon offers everything from roller sets to razor cuts, hair extensions to highlights, French manicures to full leg waxes. On any given day, it could be filled with teenagers waiting to get an updo for a school dance, moms whose husbands sent them in for a bit of pampering or dads who brought all of their kids in for a much-needed trim.

Glover has worked here with owner Jessie Austic for a little more than a year. The two met while they were both in cosmetology school at Hair Academy 110.

Working with hair has been as constant as music in Glover's life. She was 8 years old when she gave her sister Mary, who was a sophomore at the time, an updo for prom. Later she'd have highlighting parties with her friends and practice cuts, color and perms on anyone who would let her. She started learning new techniques — such as how to do extensions — because she wanted them, but her family couldn't afford to pay for her to go to a salon.

"I'm all about the weave. Gotta have the weave," she jokes as she flips her hair over her shoulder. At the moment it's mid-back length, medium brown on top with three shades of blond highlights below — what's called "the ombre" in the hair world.

She loves the fact that she is able to use her creativity to bring big and small transformations to

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her clients.

"It changes the way people feel about themselves," Glover says. "Women come in who are attractive, but don't see themselves as such. I change one little thing, and they think they look like a totally different person. No, they were always that person, they just didn't see it."

The salon is also a place where women gather to share their lives — from the latest weddings or births to how they're dealing with the loss of a loved one. Moms receive words of encouragement as they talk about the struggles of raising children on their own. Husbands seek counsel on how to make up for a wrong move they've made with their wives.

Clients come from all over the region. Taylor Overstreet, a freshman at Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, Iowa, drives an hour each way once a month to have Glover add extensions to her platinum blond hair. A friend from school who also comes to the salon for a weave introduced her to Glover about a year ago.

"I got one before coming to her, and it was a really bad job — it broke off a lot of my hair," Overstreet says. "Ashley spent two days fixing it. She took better care of it and now my hair's growing and coming back to normal. I definitely trust her with my hair."

As Overstreet sits in a refurbished black swivel chair, Glover asks how school's going and for an update on the boy she's been dating. As they talk, Glover sews wefts of hair into tiny horizontal cornrows on the back of Overstreet's head.

The salon is a symphony of quiet conversation, laughter and friendly banter, played to the backdrop of soft country music and accentuated by the occasional roar of a hair dryer. It gets so busy some days that Glover snacks on string cheese between clients because there's no time to stop for a proper lunch. Since it's often been just Glover and Austic, there's not usually time for walk-ins, so they regularly have to turn clients away.

Austic says that when she opened the salon in 2008, people expected her to fail. The economy was heading into a free fall, and several longtime salons were struggling to survive. But she and Glover have defied the odds through a combination of determination, hard work and personalized service.

"Their satisfaction in the services you render and your satisfaction in helping them — not just with their appearance, but also with what's going on in their life, watching them grow and seeing the changes that they experience — it's an amazing thing," Austic says.

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Business has been so good that Salon Nouveau recently moved to a larger space, renovating an existing salon in a way that preserved the family-style atmosphere. Services have expanded to include facials, massage therapy and spray tanning. Three new cosmetologists have joined the salon, meaning customers are no longer turned away.

Dreams for the future As the salon expands, so does Glover's role. She continues to offer new services and next year plans to switch from commission to booth rent. She'd like to do hair shows and possibly teach someday.

Lately, her dreams have expanded, too, and now include owning a home. The family recently moved from a duplex to a nice little three-bedroom house with a big backyard. But Glover has a five-year plan to save up enough money to buy a home of her own — with cash.

"I don't do debt," Glover says. "I could afford a house payment and have a house right now, but who's to say that one day someone can't take it away from me? And then, what was it for?"

Her voice gets passionate and her speech a bit hurried as she cites her family's past financial struggles. She talks about her father losing the job he held for 20 years when his factory closed.

She describes the house she grew up in that her parents bought "for cheap," renovated, then were forced to sell so they wouldn't default on their mortgage. She tells of a sister who had to file for bankruptcy.

At the salon, she has clients who talk about losing a home, losing a spouse or losing a child.

"I'm in a job where it's a constant reminder," she says. "It's taught me a different way to get the things that I want so that I can hold on to them. So everything that I own I want to be able to pay for it in cash, and have it and then it's mine and no one can take it from me. If I'm gonna own it, then I'm gonna earn it and then own it."

One thing she still owns, despite the detours, is the dream of doing something big with her music. For now, she doesn't perform in public, other than filling in occasionally on the worship team at Christ Family Church. But it's something she wants to work her way back to, something she feels she owes the people who have encouraged her and believed in her talent.

Even beyond that, music is a part of her core.

"That part of me never dies," she says. "Sometimes I wish I could turn it off, but I can't. I'm always gonna want to sing, whether it's in church on Sunday or on a stage somewhere. I'm

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always gonna want to have it."

But dreams, she has found, come in their own time and their own way. So for now, Glover sings to Quinley.

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COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN Second-generation immigrant struggles to find motivation of his parents

By Anthony Schick July 4, 2012 | 6:00 a.m. CDT

Ezana Gebru, left, Preston Stigall and Casey Trevarthen check the dinner specials before their work shift at Touch Restaurant in Springfield. Throughout his college career, Gebru has taken out loans and worked as a waiter to pay for the seven years he’s spent working on earning his bachelor’s degrees. | Megan May

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Samantha Williams, Ezana Gebru, Jevon Huang and Casey Trevarthen prepare for a busy night at Touch Restaurant in Springfield. The high-end restaurant has helped Gebru bring in tips to pay for his tuition fees. | Megan May

Ezana Gebru, left, goes out with co-worker Jason Parker after the two finish a shift at Touch Restaurant. Gebru and his co-workers often relax at Flame Steakhouse and Wine Bar. | Megan May

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Ezana Gebru helps a friend with his laundry. Gebru has had multiple roommates because he has transferred schools three times before landing at Missouri State University, where he is studying psychology and economics. | Megan May

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Ezana Gebru changed schools three times before attending Missouri State University. The son of Ethiopian refugees who worked their way into the St. Louis middle class, Gebru has found that his work ethics differ greatly from his parents. | Megan May Ezana Gebru has found that he has never had the work ethic his parents do. The son of two Ethiopian immigrants who raised four kids while going to school and working full time, Gebru had the American Dream drilled into him.

Seven years of college later, he is a part-time waiter and nearly ready to graduate from Missouri State University. ÂŚ Megan May

Editor's note: This story is part of the American Next, a special project exploring the hopes, fears and changing expectations of Missouri's next generation in challenging times.

SPRINGFIELD — Late at night, he used to relax in the glow of the television as his mother finished her homework. Ezana Gebru, a sixth-grader at the time, would sprawl out in the green leather chair and watch reruns of old sitcoms, mainly "Seinfeld," before falling asleep.

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Meanwhile, in the darkened living room, after a full day of work, an evening of college classes and the normal duties as mother to Ezana, his older brother and two younger sisters, Selamawit Asfaw would be at work once again: papers strewn across the table, math textbook open.

She'd earned that homework. She'd escaped persecution, learned a foreign language, traveled across an ocean and lived in abject poverty for the chance

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to do that homework.

She and Ezana's father, Zerebrook Gebru, had done that for themselves — yes, the Ethiopian refugees had worked their way into St. Louis' middle class — but more so, they'd done it to give their children the opportunities that have become American cliches.

"You're going to be a doctor," is what she'd tell Ezana when he was a child. He'd play along, but the notion never really sunk in.

Now 25, Ezana has idled in college for seven years and remains a semester away from bachelor's degrees in psychology and economics at Missouri State University. He has changed schools three times and has taken out loans every step of the winding way. And despite his parents' striving — a classic immigrant tale — Ezana is now on the same uncertain road as many young Americans of his generation.

A third of college students now transfer schools as Ezana did, and just 29 percent of Missouri students finish college in four years, below the national average of 33 percent. Over the past decade, average tuition has risen at least a few percentage points every year, and the average annual cost is now more than $10,000 per year at public universities and $28,000 for private universities. The result is an increasing average student debt — $25,000 for the graduating class of 2010 — according to the nonprofit Project on Student Debt.

Yet in 2011, more than half of recent college graduates were either jobless or underemployed, the highest rate in more than a decade, according to a recent census data analysis by researchers from Northeastern University, Drexel University and the Economic Policy Institute.

The findings are more fodder for the rising sentiment among Americans, according to a 2011 Gallup poll, that the current generation is unlikely to achieve a better life than their parents.

Ezana has a few different notions for how he plans to succeed in spite of a bad economy, including a move to southern California. One thing that's working against him: He didn't inherit his parents' drive.

"I just don't have that type of work ethic right now," he said. "I'm in school, and I should be graduated."

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by knowing what it took to bring the two together.

For one, it took his father running for his life.

The year was 1980, and Ethiopia was six years into a 17-year civil war. Mengistu Haile Mariam had taken power three years prior and launched a violent military campaign known as the Red Terror, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in brutal fashion: starvation, torture, bodies reportedly left in the streets to be claimed by prowling hyenas.

Zerebrook Gebru was a young man with a few years of college education, meaning those in power had suspicions about him. And anyone they had suspicions about, they killed. Fearing for his life, Zerebrook Gebru made for Sudan's border.

He crossed the border one day at 7 a.m., he remembers. He and the group he escaped with had no money and one loaf of bread as they entered an Arabic country with little knowledge of the language. He counts a cup of tea among the meals he had in the days before finding work. For three days he hauled boulders at a construction site. When that job ended, he found work on a farm, where he caught malaria and was forced to return to the city.

It was in Sudan's capital city, Khartoum, that Zerebrook Gebru met up with friends who had fled Ethiopia in the same manner. Selamawit Asfaw was among them.

The two married in Sudan, and in December 1982, they left for America, ending up in St. Louis like many other refugees at the time. They were once again in a foreign country, with only $96 to their name. They were granted refugee status, which meant food stamps and three months rent.

"It's very hard to communicate the deprivation we went through," Zerebrook Gebru said. He has explained his past to his children, he said, but they didn't witness or experience that poverty. He says it's just a story to them.

Selamawit Asfaw quickly found work in a nursing home, which, along with food stamps, helped the young couple survive. Zerebrook Gebru eventually found on-and-off work for a construction company, for the post office, for a hotel and briefly for an information company before driving a cab at the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

Zerebrook Gebru now runs his own cab company, and Ezana’s mother teaches math at St. Louis Community College.

"Ours was the American Dream 10 times over," Zerebrook Gebru said. "You have no choice.

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You don't have a plan B. If I fail, what happens to my kids? I have to provide. I can't afford to be sick. I can't afford to be out of a job. I can't afford to slack."

Ezana doesn't dispute his parents' perspective.

"Honestly speaking," Ezana said, "I feel like definitely growing up I didn't appreciate how hard they worked. Now, I appreciate it, yes, but I really still don't realize how hard they worked.

Now, I'm finally in college, and I do have a job. But they were in college, owned a house, had kids plus a job. That's way more business than I have to do."

Embracing a balance All four Gebru children were standout students, blessed with intellect and advantage. But Ezana, the second son, spent most of his childhood balancing his parents' expectations with his desire to be a normal American kid.

At a year and half old, he could read the letters on the sign for Barnes-Jewish Hospital a block from his home. His parents put him, like his older brother, Danaye, in Kennard Classical Junior Academy, a magnet elementary school in St. Louis. By third grade he read at an eighth-grade level.

But he didn't get to play the sports he wanted to during elementary and middle school. He didn't want to be the kid whose parents picked him up from sleepovers because they didn't want him staying away from home overnight. He didn't want his parents to have accents. And he certainly didn't want to explain why his name was different.

"When I was younger, I hated it," Ezana said. "You get made fun of."

He promised himself he'd change his name as soon as he turned 18. In the meantime he experimented with nicknames like Zeke, but nothing stuck.

He remembers sitting in the backseat of his father's car, asking to attend the nearby Gateway High School so he could play football. Not an option, his parents said; he would attend Metro Academic and Classical High School. Unhappy at the smaller Metro, Ezana failed to meet the school's rigorous standards and after two years opted to transfer to Kirkwood High School rather than catching up in summer courses.

"When he became a teenager, he started doing what teenagers do," Zerebrook Gebru said.

"Basketball and games and friends. I would have liked to see him apply himself a little more."

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Among Kirkwood's roughly 1,500 students, Ezana drifted further from his studies than his parents would have liked, but he found himself in the process playing soccer, eventually embracing his Ethiopian heritage and developing a social life with nights out among friends.

"Whenever I have kids, I'm going to go for more balance," he said. Meaning reading and math at advanced levels as he did, "but also they'd have sports and a social life. I want them to have both worlds."

Ezana's cousin and close friend, Abraham Tilahun, 24, says that's a dilemma for many secondgeneration immigrants. Tilahun's parents emigrated from Ethiopia to St. Louis at the same time as Ezana's and are members of the same Eastern Orthodox church. He and Ezana were raised together and grew even closer during high school, when they used to convince their parents to let them go out at night.

"They think that once you finish school, then you can worry about hanging out with friends," Tilahun said of his parents' generation. "It was hard trying to make them understand that if it's a Saturday, you want to go out with friends. There's a lot of frustration with that."

Always one away Ezana's experience is a stark contrast to the rest of his family. His older brother, Danaye, graduated in four years with two majors and two minors from Westminster College in Fulton.

He is now pursuing a master's degree while working in information technology at Saint Louis University. Their father said he used to have to remind Danaye not to work too hard. Ezana's younger sister, Wintaye, has passed him in school; she graduated from Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., earlier this year. His other sister, Senayit, is a freshman at Truman State University.

Ezana has been slow to graduate. He blames no one but himself.

"Most of the work ethic got lost in the past few years," he said. "I'm not going to class as much and not really studying for tests as much. I'm aware of the change. I'm aware I'm not working as hard. I know how much it takes to do well in school and do well in college. I think, for one, the whole thrill or idea of being in college, it's almost like it's worn off on me."

In 2005 he left St. Louis for Clarke University in Dubuque, Iowa, a school with 1,232 students.

It was the type of school his parents wanted for him, the kind of school where he went straight to the library after a poor test grade because, as he says, there was nothing else to do.

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He spent a year and a half there in total, with a year off after his first two semesters in which he took courses at St. Louis Community College. After giving Clarke another try, he realized he couldn't be happy there. He was taking out the maximum in federal student loans — in addition to help from his parents — and $33,000 per year in tuition was too much to pay for a bad fit.

While home in St. Louis over winter break, he made a gut decision. He enrolled at Missouri State, called up his cousin and told him he needed to move out of his Clarke dormitory room.

They left the next morning in Ezana's lime green Crown Victoria — an aging former taxi cab that was a gift from his father — and drove 12 hours there and back the same day. Weeks later, Ezana was couch-surfing and partially living out of his car at Missouri State; in the flurry of changing schools, he hadn't yet found a place to stay.

Most of what he owns now, he pays for. His parents slowly stopped paying his bills when he moved to Springfield, so he got a job waiting tables at Outback Steakhouse. He put in his time there and at a few other places before getting a job serving at Touch, one of Springfield's premier restaurants. With tips, he makes roughly $150 per night, give or take, and works nearly every night of the week. One night he made $1,500 when he served a party of 18 hosted by a former executive from Amazon.com. Save for sporadic help from his parents, he supports himself through work and loans.

"That's why I don't feel guilty anymore," he says, referring to his lingering in college.

He has delayed his graduation three times. He thought he was going to graduate in May 2011 but didn't meet the requirements. He was then supposed to graduate in December, but again he didn't make it. That's why school is the first thing his mother asks about when she calls — even on his birthday. His father can recall the conversations each time Ezana called to break the news.

"They're very painful," Zerebrook Gebru said. "Because with his mental capacity, with his upbringing, he could have finished a long time ago."

This spring, Ezana had to make that phone call one more time. Well into April, his father expected him to graduate in May and had planned on attending the ceremony. But Ezana will be in school for another semester, finishing up his economics degree and, he says, graduating this December.

"It didn't go well. He was pretty upset," Ezana said. "But, I'm sure he's over it by now."

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Finding his footing Soon, Ezana will have to have another conversation with his parents – this one to tell them what he plans to do after graduation.

A month ago, Ezana was looking into Missouri State's graduate program in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Now, his father thinks he is leaning heavily toward law school.

"That's my dad," Ezana said, explaining that he has little interest in law school.

He imagines himself in graduate school for sports psychology out in Los Angeles or San Diego.

He's heard great things about California from his sister and from friends, and he's been thinking of moving there for about a year.

Two of his friends, one graduated from Clarke and one from Missouri State, recently moved out there. One lives in Culver City, near LA, and the other in Oceanside, just north of San Diego on the coast. When they moved, he says, the idea of California became more real.

This past spring break, which happened to include his 25th birthday, Ezana traveled to California partly to visit his friends and partly to test out whether he'd want to live there.

He split time between LA and Oceanside. He walked up and down Hollywood Boulevard and Rodeo Drive. He saw the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He met folks who worked on movie set trailers, who shared stories of their exploits with various celebrities.

Those were his favorite scenes, though he knows those wouldn't be the scenes of his everyday life. In Culver City, the median monthly rent is roughly $1,000 more than what he pays now.

Once he graduates, payments begin on his several thousands in student loans. Nevertheless, he's confident he could find a job to make it work. He says he hopes to be living in California by this time next year.

He thinks California could be the change of pace he needs — the kind of place that will hold his attention. On his trip, he went snowboarding one day and surfing the next. It was the first time he'd swum in the ocean. The first day of surfing, he just boogie-boarded, laying flat on his stomach, riding small waves nearer the beach.

"The next day I got out there on a longboard. I paddled out there. I caught some waves, but I was thrown every time," he said. "By the third day, I never actually fully stood up, but I was getting my feet under me."

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COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN Small-town community living drives family relationships in Rocheport

By Alexandria Baca July 5, 2012 | 6:00 a.m. CDT

Jessica Long, 26, moves her hands over grains as they go through a stone mill to make flour early in the morning on April 24. Long grinds all of the grains that she uses in her breads on site. | Kristen Zeis

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Jessica Long, 26, dances with Dave Smith on April 27 at the General Store in Rocheport. The General Store has live music on Friday and Saturday nights that attracts both the locals and the tourists who are brought to town by the local shops, winery, bed and breakfasts and the Katy Trail. | Kristen Zeis

Jessica Long watches as her co-worker Jaeson Day helps load finished bread into the car. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays Long bakes loaves of bread that are delivered to both Clover’s Natural Market locations and two Hy-Vee locations in Columbia. Long has hopes to expand her business one day into a storefront bakery that would draw people to Rocheport. | Kristen Zeis

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Jessica Long says goodbye to her neighbor and friend Amanda Weyerich after the two had lunch together at Abigail's, a Rocheport restaurant. Long says that Rocheport’s close-knit community is one of the reasons she is happy there. | Kristen Zeis

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Jessica Long, 26, helps her neighbor Joe Aguirre move a broken washer to the curb. | Kristen Zeis

Iced cinnamon rolls and fresh loaves of bread cool before being packaged at the General Store in Rocheport on April 27. Jessica Long owns Annie's Breads and uses the store's kitchen in the early morning to bake her breads. | Kristen Zeis

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Jessica Long bags and ties bread that her co-worker Jaeson Day cut in a bread slicing machine.

They will later be delivered to four Columbia grocery stores. | Kristen Zeis

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Jessica Long, 26, holds Hannah Weyerich, 8 months, at a table with, from left, Amanda Weyerich, Navarre Scholes, 11, and Joe Aguirre while they wait for their lunch. The friends had lunch at Abigail’s, a locally owned restaurant in Rocheport. | Kristen Zeis Friends Jessica Long and Amanda Weyerich both ended up in Rocheport and enjoy the small-town community atmosphere. Long owns Annie's Breads and uses the kitchen of the General Store in the early morning to bake her breads. !

Editor's note: This story is part of the American Next, a special project exploring the hopes, fears and changing expectations of Missouri's next generation in challenging times.

ROCHEPORT — On an overcast St. Patrick's Day, Jessica Long walks across the street and onto Amanda Weyerich's wooden porch. She needs to borrow some clothes for the next couple of days before the town's festivities start.

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"Don't you think we look alike?" Long asks.

"I'm not sure," Weyerich responds.

Maybe their almond-shaped eyes share a faint resemblance.

Their smiles are similarly wide. Anything beyond that is a stretch of the details. In fact, at first glance these women

seem to have little in common.

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Weyerich, 29, is a married mother of three. Her straight blond hair is usually pulled back in a ponytail or bun. She is quick to laugh, making easy friends of neighbors and passers-by.

She works one day a week as a surgical technologist but otherwise is at home, bending her schedule to the needs of her family.

Long is 26 and single. Wavy chestnut hair frames her face, which is usually bare of makeup.

She tends to be reserved, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. She spends her time baking for the small bread company she bought here and fills in part time behind the counter at the Rocheport General Store. If she has a schedule, it is determined more by whim than work.

What the women do share is the community they've found in tiny Rocheport, a cozy river-bluff town 20 minutes west of Columbia. They met not long after Weyerich moved here two summers ago.

Long was drawn to Rocheport by its quaint nature and easy-going lifestyle. Weyerich's choice was more purposeful: This would be a good place to raise her children.

Despite different motivations and personalities, both have rejected — for now — the ambitious bustle of city life and the glitz-and-glamour material striving that drive many in their generation. They now move at the same relaxed stop-and-enjoy-a-glass-of-wine-and-stayawhile pace of Rocheport.

Their way is a decidedly different route to defining and achieving the American Dream.

Small-town beginnings Weyerich grew up in the small southern Missouri town of Mountain Grove, population just under 5,000, near fields and farms. She and her siblings amused themselves in nature. They made toys of the sticks and flowers and treasures found outdoors. Weyerich would like for her children to have the same experience, but in a struggling economy and job market, she can't afford the kind of land her parents owned when she was young.

Raising her children in Rocheport is the next best thing.

Weyerich has a daughter, 9, and son, 6, from previous marriages. The children live with Weyerich, her husband and their 7-month-old daughter.

Like many from her hometown, Weyerich married soon after high school. But there was a world out there beyond the one she knew. She and her husband lived in Texas for a while, then

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Weyerich ended up back in Missouri, divorced with two children. She studied anthropology and religion at Missouri State University for a time, but interrupted those interests to get a more practical certificate in surgical technology.

"You can make a decent amount of money for two years in school," she says.

Each day, as she left her home in Nixa to go to work in Springfield, a thought would nag at her: "This can't be it." Somewhere, there had to be something more — more culture, more ambition, more community. She and her then-boyfriend decided to find that something more and started looking for homes in Columbia.

The couple found Columbia too bland for their tastes, so considered nearby Rocheport, which makes up in character what it lacks in size.

Weyerich drove to Rocheport on a quiet summer day to check out a muted purple two-story house that was for rent across from the General Store, in the heart of what passes for downtown. The grass and trees were deep green, and the broad porch surrounded by white rails invited passers-by to sit and stay awhile. Weyerich loved it at first sight.

She ate lunch at the General Store before heading back to Nixa. As she sat in her living room that night, she knew Rocheport would be her new home. The location was perfect — close to the city-style offerings of Columbia but far enough away to enjoy the country. The folks in Rocheport were warm and welcoming. Weyerich could get to know her neighbors there. Maybe for the first time, she would want to get to know her neighbors.

Rocheport, population 239, boasts two restaurants and is something of a haven for artisans and bed-and-breakfasts. Residents joke about the Rocheport "beach," a sandy bank beside the Missouri River where locals sunbathe and hold bonfires. The town attracts a fair amount of young day-trippers from Columbia who bike or run there on the Katy Trail. Rocheport does not have a local school, and there is limited employment. Seventy-one percent of the residents are over the age of 35.

All that works for Weyerich, at least for now. Her husband commutes to Columbia where he works full time as a registered nurse at University Hospital. Weyerich's one-day-a-week surgical tech job in Columbia gives her time at home with the kids. She plans to take one class per semester at MU starting this fall, slowly working toward those interrupted degrees in anthropology and religion.

The two older children attend New Franklin Elementary School, about 10 miles away. Class

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sizes are relatively small. The principal knows both the troublemakers and the well-adjusted students by name and family history. Back home, Weyerich's children roam the dozen or so streets of Rocheport, walking to friends' houses and the General Store without the need for adult supervision.

Rocheport lights an oversized Christmas tree every holiday season just down the street from Weyerich. This past year, when her older children asked if they could walk down to see the tree, she didn't give it a second thought.

Her parents, who were visiting, were puzzled by the exchange.

"You can't let them go by themselves," Weyerich's father argued. He wanted to trail behind the children to keep an eye on them.

After Weyerich explained the safety of the community, she pointed out how much more unusual it would be to see an older man, who people didn't know, trailing the children without their knowledge.

However, the small-town safety net of Rocheport carries a price. One of the toughest internal conflicts Weyerich faces is whether to raise her children as "sharks or guppies." She wants them to have earnest, soft-spoken moral values — those she feels will be forged in Rocheport.

Yet the social and career ladders tend to favor go-getters and toe-steppers.

"I do worry because the real world is huge and ‌ corporate," Weyerich says, wondering if the idyllic life of Rocheport will prepare them for that world.

A try at city life Long's route to Rocheport was more serendipitous than considered. She grew up in the touristand-music hub of Branson in southern Missouri but didn't envision a small-town future. She was infatuated with all that big cities seemed to offer — the different people, the energy, the action. She once asked her mom if Branson, population 10,500, would ever become a city.

"Probably not," her mother replied.

After high school, Long chased her city dreams to Houston and then to Kansas City, hoping to study art. But there were so many distractions in the cities. It was hard to meet people in Houston. Plans to enroll in the Kansas City Art Institute fell through. She and a boyfriend visited Rocheport and liked it. There was nothing tying them to Kansas City, so why not? The relationship ended, but Long found a home.

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In the summer of 2010, she got a job with Annie Humphrees, a full-time college student who developed a part-time baking business. Long didn't know how to bake, but she learned. She took Humphrees' recipes and made them her own. When Humphrees was ready to move on, Long bought Annie's Breads from her, inspired by the idea that she could provide something so simple and timeless for her newfound community. Breadmaking, she says, combines creativity with purpose.

A casual way of business The smell of fresh bread wafts through the open door of Rocheport General Store one day this spring. Inside the kitchen, where Long relaxes into the repetition of kneading dough, soft music plays in the background.

Two women, who biked to town from Columbia, are lured by the aroma of baking bread.

"Can I get a beer?" one asks, unsure of whether the store was open.

"Of course," Long says, welcoming them.

While her bread bakes, Long sits outside with the pair, enjoying the warm sun and cool breeze.

The women urge Long to join their roller derby team, but she demurs; if she gets hurt, she won't be able to bake. Exchanges like this are one of Long's favorite things about Rocheport.

Visitors are welcomed as friends.

On another day, a Thursday, Long is again sitting outside the General Store, drinking coffee and eating cinnamon bread she baked the day before. On this morning, it is locals who stop to chat, asking if she's baking more for tonight.

Thursday is locals' night at the General Store, though anyone can join. This week's menu includes pork steak and broccoli salad.

"People catch up and eat pretty cheaply," Long muses.

She'll be there, as will Weyerich.

Long hasn't decided yet if there will be fresh bread. Her bread baking doesn't follow a set schedule. She sells locally at the General Store and ventures to Columbia sometimes to sell at the Columbia Farmers' Market, Clover's Natural Market and Hy-Vee. Her approach to business is pretty casual, as are the long talks with neighbors on their way to

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the post office next to the General Store. People greet you by swinging their arms wide and around your shoulders and smiling. Cars stop in the middle of the road so passengers can chat with people drinking wine and relaxing on their porches. Long likes knowing the man who toils in his garage across the street.

A sense of belonging and guidance Although Long and Weyerich don't have a lot in common on the surface, Rocheport works for both of them. For Long, it means tight-knit relationships and a slow pace. For Weyerich, it means a friendly community and isolated security.

Long says she has always treasured relationships. Her mother was pretty hands-off in terms of telling her what to dream or be when she grew up but encouraged education and experience.

What she wants out of life now includes a home of her own, neighbors she knows, a strong community and time for the small things. Rocheport offers that.

"I don't want to feel the rush," Long says.

Weyerich likes that there's no false striving here, no pressure to keep up with the Joneses — whoever they are. When she lived elsewhere, she would build a wall around herself. Here, that wall was broken down like that, she says with a snap of her fingers.

Her sense of belonging is so strong that she and her husband are buying a plot of land and building a house just down the street from where they live now. Getting all the paperwork and licenses and filings correct can be tedious. But instead of putting up bureaucratic roadblocks, city officials have helped guide her through the process — and invited her to join the city's Planning and Zoning Committee. Locals are thrilled to see a new family investing in the community.

"Any time you're talking any kind of business around here, it's like you're talking to an old friend," Weyerich says.

She plans to make Rocheport home at least until her older two children leave for college; custody agreements stipulate that Weyerich can't move out of state until the children are legal adults. By then, the baby will be 13, and Weyerich hopes to take her to Europe. For all she has settled into Rocheport, Weyerich likes to read to her children about foreign cultures and exotic places. She wants to expose her daughter to the world, to show her how other people live.

Weyerich describes the American Dream as "liberated opportunity." Not everybody born in the

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United States has the same access to education or wealth, but everybody has the opportunity to change their circumstances, she says. Some people might have to work harder because of the circumstances of their birth, but it can be done.

Weyerich remembers how her own mother told her that she was the only person in control of herself. Weyerich would have to decide how she wanted her life to turn out, which path to take.

No one could do it for her. Since then, Weyerich says, life has been a series of choices, each considered carefully to advance her dual goals: raising a family and experiencing the world.

She wants to raise her children with that same sense of responsibility and self-determination and is concerned about the future of young people who have never been allowed to fail. "How can you ever learn to deal with defeat if you're never allowed to fail?" she says.

To that end, she tells this story: Her 9-year-old daughter came to her recently saying she wanted to be just like Taylor Swift — curly blond hair, hit country voice, pop star. Weyerich told her daughter that with singing lessons and hard work, she could be a good singer. But people like Swift, well, they are born with that sort of talent. Weyerich advised her daughter to focus on activities in which she is naturally gifted, such as swimming.

Her daughter burst into tears. Weyerich's husband later chided her: Aren't you supposed to tell your children they can be anything they want to be? Weyerich shook her head in disagreement.

"Failure is a necessary and natural part of life," Weyerich told him.

A part of the town A green-clad crowd gathers around the General Store. Long grabs a few things she borrowed from Weyerich and hurries to get changed. Every St. Patrick's Day, Rocheport hosts an Irish road bowling tournament. Weyerich and Long are teammates this year.

The game takes all morning and half the afternoon. Teams take turns rolling a steel ball over a half-mile length of road. Between rolls, players share drinks and smack talk and hunt for lost balls. A referee in a black top hat and striped shirt bicycles back and forth. He is charged with keeping everybody relatively on-task and orderly.

"Relatively" seems to be the operative word. The team that crosses the finish line in the least amount of throws wins, but that's not why anybody plays. People play for the funny pictures and easy laughs and because everybody else in town is playing, too.

Weyerich and Long's team finishes somewhere in the middle of the pack, but the order isn't 12 of 13

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important. After everyone has thrown their balls back into town, the General Store welcomes them all in for a meal of corned beef hash.

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COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN Couple turns childhoods of poverty into wealth for their own children

By Camille Phillips July 7, 2012 | 6:00 a.m. CDT

The Mabins family shares pizza in their kitchen after a late night basketball game. By most standards, the Mabins are living the classic American Dream. Darline, who moved from Haiti as a child, and Sean, originally from the Missouri Bootheel, are raising three children, from left, Kylan, 6, Isaiah, 14, and Naomi, 4, in an upper-middle class lifestyle in Springfield. | Benjamin Zack

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Sean Mabin congratulates his son Kylan after his team won their basketball game in a tournament. In the spring, the Mabins' free time is spent shuttling between Kylan's basketball games, Naomi's dance practices and Isaiah's track meets. | Benjamin Zack

Naomi clutches onto Darline Mabins as they walk toward the kitchen in the early morning quiet. Each morning, Darline drops off the children at school on her way to Guaranty Bank where she works as a manager. | Benjamin Zack

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Darline Mabins combs Naomi's hair while she yawns at the kitchen counter. Weekday mornings in the Mabins house are a rush of making breakfast and preparing the children for school. | Benjamin Zack

Isaiah, Kylan and Naomi play Angry Birds on Darline's phone after she picks them up from school.

The kids usually stay with their grandmother after school while Darline and Sean work, but after several weeks of overtime, Darline was able to take the afternoon off. | Benjamin Zack

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Photos and souvenirs from the past decade cover the living room mantle at Sean and Darline Mabins' home. The flag and vase on the left are from Haiti, where Darline lived until she was 7, when her family moved to Kansas City. | Benjamin Zack

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Sean and Naomi celebrate their win over Isaiah and Kylan in the new game that the family bought that day. Wednesday afternoons and Sundays are Sean's days off. | Benjamin Zack

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Darline Mabins looks out at her backyard during a brief moment of quiet. Much of her time at home is spent with the children within arms reach. | Benjamin Zack

Sean Mabins teaches Isaiah how to use the weed whacker at the end of a spring day in Cherokee Heights, a suburban neighborhood on the south end of Springfield. Sean's car in the background is from the Kia dealership where he works as a sales manager. | Benjamin Zack

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To Sean and Darline Mabins, a healthy bank account enables a stable life for them and their children. Both came from homes where money was scarce but have worked hard to achieve what many consider to be the classic American Dream. ! Benjamin Zack

Editor's note: This story is part of the American Next, a special project exploring the hopes, fears and changing expectations of Missouri's next generation in challenging times.

SPRINGFIELD — Sean and Darline Mabins figure they made about $180,000 last year. In this economy, that's an impressive number.

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The Mabins don't apologize for their relative wealth. They both come from childhoods that were marked by a lack of it.

And they have worked hard to place themselves in that earnings bracket.

To them, a healthy bank account is the foundation for happiness because it enables them and their three children to have a stable life. They have purposely chosen jobs that pay well and found ways they can achieve the highest standard of living for the lowest cost possible.

Sean has been able to find good deals on cars as the sales manager at Youngblood Kia. And Darline, who manages a branch of Guaranty Bank, qualified for a good interest rate on their home mortgage because she is an employee at the bank and they met the credit and income requirements and contributed a sizable down payment. .

Most importantly, the money they earn helps them secure an education and future for their children.

These days, $1,000 a month goes to the Sylvan Learning Center to tutor 14-year-old Isaiah, whose grades need to come up if he's going to get into college.

Another $800 a month goes to Springfield Lutheran School, where 6-year-old Kylan is in kindergarten.

And another $800 is taken out of Darline's check every month in pretax dollars to pay for 4-year-old Naomi's private preschool at Springfield Lutheran.

The Mabins think paying for private school for their two youngest children is worth $1,600 a month because it will lay the groundwork for them to be successful later in life. They plan on

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moving Kylan and Naomi to public school in middle school, once they're solidly on the right track.

Darline and Sean know Springfield Lutheran is giving Kylan and Naomi a good education because the school gives them close feedback.

"Kylan's teacher tells me everything — where he is on his reading, where he needs to improve.

It's detailed information," Darline says. "Whereas with public school, it's like, 'Well, he's OK.' What's OK? Compared to who?"

According to Education Week, about 10 percent of American schoolchildren attend private schools. Those students are more likely to go on to college.

For all of their hard work and planning, the Mabins don't see their good fortune solely as the result of their efforts.

"We call it favor — favor from God. That's all it is," Sean says. "We know that God has blessed us, and we try and give back as much as we can."

The Mabins are members of Deliverance Temple Ministries. Their faith is a vital part of their lives that gives them strength and direction. The church is also how they met.

They know what it is to be blessed because they know how difficult life can be.

Childhoods rooted in poverty, tragedy Darline, 32, was born in Haiti. When she was 3, her entire family took a taxi truck from the city to the country to celebrate her younger brother's birthday. On the way back, the truck slipped off the bumpy, curvy road and rolled down the mountain.

Darline, her father and her younger brother survived the crash. Her mother and older brother did not.

"The hard part is I only remember bits and pieces," she says. "I didn't see a picture of my mother until I was in my 20s. That's a long time not to know if your face is on your mother's face."

Sean, 42, was born in the Missouri Bootheel, the fifth of seven living siblings. His mom, brothers and sisters lived with his maternal grandparents in their house in Sikeston. Sean's dad wasn't in the picture, and neither were any of his siblings' fathers.

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Sean's family lived in a poor, black neighborhood known as Sunset Addition. At the time, Sean didn't realize they were poor.

"We were out taking two-by-fours and nails and making cars, playing with rocks and clay," he says.

In the 1980s, Sunset Addition got swept up in the national crack epidemic, and Sean's mom worried about her children's safety. As best as Sean can remember, she scraped together money from her job as a cook at the Shangri La in Sikeston and managed to move the family to Springfield when Sean was 13. Suddenly, Sean was the only African-American in his class. Even today, census data show that just 4 percent of Springfield is African-American.

For the first time, Sean was aware of his family's poverty. He saw classmates wearing Nikes and Ralph Lauren shirts and their parents driving Mercedes-Benz. He decided he was going to have all of that someday.

What he didn't know was how he was going to get it. His mom didn't emphasize education; she worked as a cook in various high-end restaurants and made do with food stamps and child support from Sean's dad.

"She didn't make it past fourth or fifth grade," Sean says. "Back then, no one cared if black kids got an education."

As a single mom who had lost two other children to unexplained infant illnesses, her focus was on her kids being safe and healthy.

"She was very, very overprotective," Sean says. "I mean, we did all right, obviously, in school.

We didn't flunk out. But she didn't care about homework. She just made sure that we were in the house, that we weren't drinking, that we weren't doing drugs, that we weren't embarrassing ourselves. And that we were alive."

His mom also wouldn't let Sean or his brothers and sisters have jobs while in school.

"She was like, you're going to work the rest of your life. Have fun while you’re in high school," he says.

Putting a premium on education Darline's childhood was also underscored by struggle, but her father put a premium on education as a way to a better life. He put her and her brother in school from the time they

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were 3, and he expected good grades.

"You didn't want to disappoint him 'cause we knew how hard he worked," she says.

Back in Haiti, Darline's father worked as a waiter aboard Royal Caribbean Cruises. He married an American woman when Darline was 7, and the family moved to her home in Kansas City.

Her father continued to work aboard cruise ships for the next year, then settled in Kansas City, where he worked on the line canning meat for Armour Packing Co. After her mother's death, Darline helped raise her younger brother and learned to take care of herself early on. She knew that if she wanted something, she'd have to work for it. And that a key to being successful was going to college. Darline's dad didn't finish school in Haiti, but her stepmother had a college degree.

Darline studied sculpture and mixed media, graduating from Missouri State University in 2002 with a bachelor's degree in fine arts. But she never planned on making art her career because it wasn't a good way to earn a living.

"I love art. It's something that's always come naturally to me," she says. "But I didn't want to be a starving artist."

Instead, she found a job after college working for a Chase bank. She has worked her way up in banking jobs ever since.

Turning back to faith After high school, Sean went to Ozark Technical Community College for a year and then followed a good friend to University of Washington in Seattle. Rather than focus on studying, he and his friend started going to parties and drinking.

"We went out there and just kind of kicked it. The school was glad to see us leave," he says, laughing.

He moved back to Springfield within a year but kept the partying lifestyle. First he worked at clothing stores, then switched between a few grocery stores, working his way up to lower management.

More than a decade passed.

In 2002 on the advice of a friend, Sean began selling cars for Republic Ford and discovered he

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had a knack for it.

But it was an event three months later that truly changed Sean's life — an event that Sean now calls a miracle.

Driving home on New Year's Eve, he fell asleep at the wheel and drove off a bridge at the U.S. 60 and 65 interchange. His Jeep flipped over and over until it landed in the Springfield Veterans Cemetery. Sean wasn't wearing his seat belt. He shot through the windshield.

"My brain swelled, knocked all my teeth out," Sean says. "Broke all the ribs on the left side of my body. Ruptured my bladder and my spleen and my colon. I think I broke my right pelvis."

The prognosis was grim, and doctors warned Sean he might never make a full recovery.

Instead, Sean says, he defied all expectations and left the hospital in two weeks.

Sean credits prayer: "My mother is a praying woman. She did nothing but pray and fast for three days."

After the accident, Sean stopped partying.

"I totally understood that I had no control over my life. That it was not mine. It was all God's," he says.

Sean grew up attending Deliverance Temple Ministries and had never stopped going to church but says he hadn't been living a life dedicated to God. Now he turned back to his faith.

Two months after the accident, a friend who knew both Sean and Darline suggested Sean give his testimony at a conference Darline was organizing for Campus Crusade for Christ at Missouri State. Darline had been attending Deliverance Temple since she moved to Springfield in 2000. Sean and Darline knew of each other through church but had never spent time together. They were of different ages and lifestyles.

"She seemed at peace, and I knew I would just bring her chaos," Sean says. "I noticed her though."

The accident and the conference gave him a new perspective. He got Darline's number from a mutual friend, called her and asked her out. Darline jokes that he stalked her. But Sean insists he was just persistent.

They were married a little more than a year later.

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Visions for a better future It's that same persistence combined with God's favor that Sean credits for his success today, despite his lack of a college degree and the racial discrimination he says he's faced.

In 2007, Sean was awarded $100,000 from a racial discrimination lawsuit against the grocery chain Price Cutter. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission fought the lawsuit on his behalf.

Sean says he's not at liberty to discuss the settlement. However, court documents indicate that the money was compensation for racial epithets and possibly wrongful termination.

After Sean got into auto sales, he eventually went to work at the Youngblood Auto Group and was soon setting records for the most cars sold in a month.

A year after he started at the car dealership, a job opened up in finance, and Sean told one of the owners he wanted to apply. He says the manager in charge of hiring had never worked with an African-American before and seemed uncomfortable with putting a black man in that position. But Sean argued his case, and even offered to cut his hair, which he wears in long dreadlocks. "I said, 'Look, you can't give me this job, and you can't take it away. The Lord will do that.'"

He got the job, kept his dreads and became good friends with the manager.

Sean was later promoted to sales manager. He often works 12 hours a day, six days a week, but he earns a percentage of everything the dealership sells.

Darline's job managing a branch of Guaranty Bank gives her more flexibility than Sean, so she builds her hours around time with the children and doing volunteer work in the community.

Sean's mom still lives in town and sometimes babysits the three kids.

Sean's oldest son, Isaiah, spent most of his early childhood in Texas with his mother, a former girlfriend of Sean's. The relationship didn't last, and Sean saw Isaiah a couple of times a year.

But now he was settled with Darline and their two children. He and Darline both knew the struggles of growing up in single-parent homes, wanted all their children to have more opportunities and to be raised by two parents.

"When you don't have a father figure, there's this void," Sean says.

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So when Isaiah turned 13 and could state his preference in court, Sean and Darline obtained full custody and moved him back to Springfield with them. It took some adjusting for them all, but you'd never know it now.

"He (Isaiah) changed our lives," Darline says. "When you go from a 5-year-old to a (teenager) – whoa."

Isaiah and his little brother, Kylan, seem to have a special relationship. Although they are more than seven years apart in age, Isaiah tosses a NERF football around the yard with Kylan and stands behind Kylan’s chair while they watch cartoons, playing with his little brother's dreads.

For now, the Mabins are focused on raising their family and making a good living — goals they see as related.

"I don't want my kids to struggle with anything," Darline says.

"But we don't want them to have that sense of entitlement, either," Sean adds.

They try to find the balance between giving their kids enough but not too much. And while they make conscious choices now that allow them to do that, they also dream and plan for the future.

Darline eventually would like to work for a nonprofit that focuses on bringing education to underprivileged children, building the volunteer work she does now into a career. Sean would like to open up his own business — either a car dealership or a restaurant.

Sean wants a bigger house someday. He likes to be able to afford nice things and welcomes the challenge of making money. It's a matter of proving to himself that he can do it and never has to be poor again.

Darline's childhood left her with similar goals, but ones she feels she's already achieved.

"For me, I'm there," she says. "If I can see my family, take a family vacation, my kids are in school, and we're not missing meals, and I can help people — I'm good."

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Ahmed Abdalla, Somali refugee, learns reality of the American...

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COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN Ahmed Abdalla, Somali refugee, learns reality of the American Dream

By Hilary Niles July 8, 2012 | 6:00 a.m. CDT

Ahmed Abdalla peers out of his living room window from his second-story apartment in St. Louis in early May during his day off from work. Abdalla works as a bellman at the St. Louis Union Station Marriott. Originally from Somalia, Abdalla moved to the United States seven years ago after spending most of his life in a refugee camp in Kenya. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he takes an English grammar class at Forest Park Community College. | Nick Agro

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Ahmed Abdallah talks to his sister-in-law on the phone at his apartment in St. Louis. The living room is sparse except for a few decorative curtains, a carpet and two folding chairs. Abdalla shares the apartment with his older half-brother and often has other family members visit as well. | Nick Agro

Ahmed Abdallah waits to cross the street before getting some snacks at a local convenience store in St. Louis. | Nick Agro

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The large living room window of Ahmed Abdalla's apartment overlooks the parking lot for his apartment complex in St. Louis. Abdalla has moved around a lot, and this apartment marks his fifth address in seven years. | Nick Agro

Amhed Abdalla shares an apartment with his half-brother and sometimes his father. His father splits his time living with Ahmed and Ahmed's mother, who moved to Cape Girardeau in search for more affordable housing. | Nick Agro

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Ahmed Abdalla and his family fled Somalia to live in a refugee camp in Kenya. After seven years there, the family was allowed to relocate to St. Louis. It's been a journey of imagination and reality as the family has adjusted and learned the many cultural challenges and a new language. Now 20, Abdalla works as a doorman at a St. Louis hotel and attends college classes. ! Nick Agro

Editor's note: This story is part of the American Next, a special project exploring the hopes, fears and changing expectations of Missouri's next generation in challenging times.

ST. LOUIS — As a boy, growing up and going to school in an African refugee camp, the only thing Ahmed Abdalla really knew about America was that he wanted to move there.

He was just a baby when his parents escaped genocide and famine in their native Somalia.

They left family behind — some murdered, others simply refusing to budge. They fled on foot, finding their way to a series of temporary safe havens. Six years later and with as many more children, the Abdallas built the first home their children would know. They lived in Kakuma, a refugee camp in northwestern Kenya.

In Kakuma, America’s allure was as ubiquitous as heat. It came with no proof: Ahmed had never known a refugee to return to the camp; there were no newspapers or radios and little access to modern media. Still, this rumor of America saturated Ahmed’s childhood and the refugee culture. Dreaming of a new life in America wasn’t discussed. It was understood.

Ahmed was 13 and had spent seven years in Kakuma when his family was relocated to St. Louis. There, they began another winding journey through a series of apartments, jobs and the maze of laws, challenges, demands and possibilities that is the real America.

Seven more years after his dream of America came true, Ahmed — now 20 and a doorman at a posh downtown hotel — is still learning what it means to live here.

Ahmed’s story echoes both the enduring gratitude and steep learning curve that often follow refugee resettlement. All is new in this new world and not all as it seemed from afar. From what he knew to what he imagined to what he found, Ahmed discovered that dreamsmade-real take some getting used to.

HOME What Ahmed knew: With their own hands, Ahmed’s parents stacked hundreds of sun-baked mud bricks into the

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shape of a one-room home. Under a bare metal roof, on blankets and carpets spread over an earthen floor, after extinguishing their single gas lantern, the family of eight slept. Rude as it was, this mud-brick hut was good fortune for the Abdallas, better than what many around them had.

Kakuma is home to about 90,000 refugees from the ravaged nations of Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea and Rwanda.

They came to Kakuma for shelter. What they got was insufficient by the camp authority’s own standards. Upon arrival at the vast camp, refugees are issued only plastic sheets to stake to the ground as shelter. Most spend their nights for years under these tarps, lucky to have them replaced when the plastic becomes threadbare. Temperatures inside the thousands upon thousands of makeshift plastic tents cook up to 110 degrees and higher on the hottest African days.

They came for food and water, but hunger, malnutrition and disease grow where nourishment doesn’t. Ahmed’s family lived in the second and most parched of three zones within Kakuma.

In Kakuma 2, as it’s known, water use averages less than two gallons per person per day — not just for drinking but also for cooking and sanitation.

Again, Ahmed’s family was lucky. Cholera rates in Kakuma 2 were the highest among all three zones of the camp, at 15.9 cases per thousand refugees, but his family escaped the contagion.

Without more water, agriculture is not possible in the climate, and raising livestock is forbidden in the camp. Food rations, though robust for the region at 2,100 calories per person per day, were “grossly deficient” in nutrients, according to a 2000 report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Selling and trading food rations carve away at the nutritional value of the refugees’ rations, yet people often must barter for kitchen goods and charcoal just to be able to cook what they can keep.

They came for safety, but refugee camps breed their own strains of violence. In Kakuma, exiles from at least eight nationalities, of various religions and competing for scarce essential resources, often clash with each other and the local Turkana people who inhabited the semi-arid desert before the refugee camp was created in 1992. Armed battles in 2003 displaced at least 14,000 residents of Kakuma 3 — nearly half its population — who abandoned their rows of plastic tents and mud huts for public shelters in the other zones. As of 2011, the U.N. Refugee Agency still forbade aid workers from staying at the camp past 6 p.m.

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for resettlement is a lottery only residents of the U.N.-operated camps can play.

What he imagined: Growing up, Ahmed’s vision of America was one of beauty: tall buildings and streetlights. Fun: watching television in your house. The good life: wearing shoes and nice clothes, riding in cars, keeping food refrigerated.

These ideas came from the few movies, commercials and television programs Ahmed saw. They came from the vague notions that filtered through camp culture and took their own shapes according to each refugee’s dream.

Then one day, Ahmed heard: His family’s name was posted on the board on the camp’s main road. They would be interviewed and screened for resettlement.

"I wasn’t wearing no shoes, … but I was just running on the streets," Ahmed recalls. He wanted to see the board for himself. "I saw my whole family, you know, the head of the household, which is my dad, my mom and me, my little brother, then the little ones."

Refugees at Kakuma are not allowed to come and go as they please — a restriction prompted by both security and political concerns within Kenya. Since arriving seven years earlier, Ahmed had never stepped foot outside the camp. And his feet never touched the ground when he left: The family boarded a small plane at Kakuma 1, bound for Mombasa on Kenya’s east coast, along the Indian Ocean.

"I was just holding the seat. I wasn’t even looking down!" Ahmed laughs when he remembers that flight. "I even remember shutting my eyes, when the plane was going up, you know. I thought, this plane is going down!" His eyes and his smile still brighten with the memory.

In Mombasa, the Abdallas joined international travelers on a plane whose liftoff seemed even more implausible to Ahmed. "It was big, big, big, I don’t even know how big — maybe a football stadium," he says, still smiling.

Kenya to Switzerland. Switzerland to New York City. New York to St. Louis. It was nighttime when the Abdallas landed at their dream. Ahmed slept through the final descent.

A Somali cab driver drove them to their new home. Through the taxi’s windows, Ahmed saw the lights for the first time.

"I was just saying, ‘Oh, wow, wow. Thank God. Thank –." Laughter interrupts the reminiscence

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of relief.

What he found: A bed. A pillow. Light switches. Everything about his first home in America was a wonder to Ahmed. All was luxury.

"The kitchen was working nice," he says. "I mean there was hot water, cold water."

The International Institute of St. Louis, one of three agencies in Missouri that contract with the state to provide refugee services, had secured a four-bedroom apartment for the Abdallas in the city.

In accordance with the "Minimum Required Client Goods and Services" that must be provided in the first 90 days of resettlement, one day’s worth of food stocked the kitchen. There was one plate, one bowl, one cup, one fork, one knife and one spoon per person. One towel per person.

One set of sheets and blankets for each bed. Laundry detergent. An alarm clock.

At 13, Ahmed was the oldest of seven children. This left him with new responsibilities in St. Louis. He became an interpreter, facilitator and somewhat of a protector for his parents, who as adults hadn’t enjoyed the benefit of learning English in Kakuma’s schools. He would answer the phone at home, help them navigate the new city, translate utility bills.

"I was just excited that I was speaking English," he says. "My parents were happy that their son could speak English for them."

Ahmed liked helping. And his parents would need it as they applied for jobs, obtained social services, shepherded their children through school and moved four more times in the next several years.

Now 20, Ahmed is soft-spoken and often smiles when he talks. He is lean and tall. At the apartment he now calls home, on a warm, sunny day in early spring with thunderstorms brewing in the massive dark clouds drawing near, he is barefooted, wearing soccer shorts and a clean, bright white, untucked T-shirt.

This is Ahmed’s fifth apartment, which he shares with a half-brother.

His family is complex and extended. His father has three wives, as is still common in much of Africa; two of them — including Ahmed’s mother — have resettled in the U.S. Ahmed’s mother and her six younger children moved last year to Cape Girardeau, where it is less expensive to

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live.

Ahmed’s father works four days a week in a sewing factory in St. Louis; he splits his time between his sons’ apartment there and his wife’s in Cape Girardeau. Another of Ahmed’s half-brothers, that brother’s Burundian wife and their two young children also occasionally stay at the apartment; at other times, they stay at their own apartment near a downtown hotel where the brother works.

On a midday in March, it is just over 80 degrees and the parking lot outside doubles as a gathering place — one where Ahmed does not socialize. Reggae music pumps from one car where a handful of men and women hang out. Two other men, one from Honduras and one from Argentina, both of whom came to St. Louis looking for roofing work, smoke cigarettes and drink cans of beer in a van with the blinds down on the windows but the side door open.

The neighborhood beyond appears occasionally optimistic — a garden here and there, sidewalk construction across the street — but largely abandoned. Windows are broken, a burnt porch looks as if it’s been falling down for years. A young man in jeans and a baseball cap trudges down the road, head back, guzzling from a 40-ounce can wrapped in a brown paper bag.

Drained, he pitches it to the pavement without breaking his pace.

Sweet, musky incense suffuses the second-floor apartment, in stark contrast to the layers of stale and fresh cigarette smoke permeating the halls outside. The apartment walls are clean and the linoleum floor swept, as opposed to the kick-stained stairs, the drip-stained entrance walls or the smudge-stained, narrow windowpane inside the building’s front door.

If it weren’t for incense, you might think this apartment’s tenants had just moved out. The pale walls are blank. The floor is bare, save for a small, simple woven rug by the living room window, where Ahmed has placed two folding chairs. There is no couch. There is no table. No lamp. Not a shred of domesticity, save a curtain, to be seen.

It is brightened only by sunlight from the east-facing window. The lights are off, and Ahmed’s soft voice can finally be heard when a neighbor silences some floor-rattling rap music that’s heavy on bass and f-bombs.

"We live inside," Ahmed says, pointing toward a small kitchen and down an interior hallway toward their bedrooms.

From the living room’s open window, the polyester curtain, bursting with a pattern of giant red tulips, blows lightly into the room. The curtain softens the view onto a scarcely green courtyard

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at the center of four more brick and vinyl buildings just like his.

WORK What Ahmed knew: "Scantily monetized" is how a U.N. High Commissioner of Refugees report in 2000 described Kakuma. Such little money makes employment in the refugee camp a complicated prospect, with no illusions of self-sufficiency.

Some adults earn "incentive pay" of $40 to $90 per month by working for humanitarian organizations. Ahmed’s father started a store to capitalize on what little movement of goods and money there was. Dependence on handouts and international aid was an assumption perpetuated by the conditions and restrictions within the camp.

What he imagined: Ahmed assumed he would work and save money in America. This part of his dream was only partially informed.

Once in the U.S., refugees have 90 days to start working or find other sources of income to provide for themselves, according to the International Institute. Within six months, they must begin repaying their travel loans, which can run up to $1,500 per person.

"I wasn’t expecting all these bills," Ahmed says. "I know you have to pay rent. But I just thought ... your house, it’s yours, so nobody’s gonna come for you. ... You just have to pay for everything, you know. That’s one thing I learned."

Besides rent, Ahmed was introduced to water bills. Car insurance and registration. Phones and the fees that come with them.

He tries to remember the word for when you buy something for, say $2.99, but you have to pay extra on top of the cost.

"Taxes!" he slaps his knee in excitement. "Yeah. ... Nobody told me about those things. I just have to learn, you know."

What he found: It’s Friday night, and almost everyone who asks Ahmed for anything at the Union Station Marriott in downtown St. Louis is some degree of drunk.

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Wedding revelers and wrestling fans in town for the NCAA Championships vie for the attention of a black-clad cocktail waitress weaving between low tables and leather chairs. At the center of the former railway station’s Grand Hall, the swanky hotel lounge is dwarfed under sweeping archways that rise to 65 feet at their peak. Art glass windows, fresco paintings and gold-leaf detailing surround the interior of this castle-like stone relic of a building.

Guests with cell phones pull up a seat on the edge of knee-high planters, swig Corona from bottles and shout over the din that reverberates through the Grand Hall like the rumble of trains must have 120 years ago. Constructed in the 1890s, Union Station once served more than 100,000 rail passengers a day. Now rooms start at $169 per night —$239 on weekends.

Ahmed’s uncle, who also works here, helped him get his job as a doorman and bellman in October 2011.

What’s the best place to get oysters, a guest wants to know. Where are the ballrooms? How do I get to the Hard Rock Cafe? What time does the concert start? Ahmed arrives at work more than an hour early to find out what’s going on in the city and read the newspaper as preparation for fielding any questions that might come his way.

Spilling out of the hotel in rushes and dribbles, guests need directions, cabs and — they may not know this yet — a bit of entertaining banter. Rules of engagement change outside. Away from the front desk and out in the fresh air, doormen and guests alike are more talkative.

Doormen make better tips than bellmen, Ahmed says, because they have more chances to do things for people. And it’s not just guests that doormen manage.

A line of taxis populates the street shoulder that leads to the hotel entrance. Drivers, restaurant owners and some who trade in more illicit services are known among travelers the world over for giving kickbacks to doormen who send business their way.

But the system at the Union Station is just that: a system. Guest needs a ride, doorman blows his whistle, first taxi in line pulls forward and the rest of the line inches up. Most of the time.

Tonight, a very drunk man wants to hire the taxi that has just pulled up with a carload of passengers for drop-off. But according to the system, it’s not that taxi’s turn — a point Ahmed gently tries to make.

"I’ve already called the taxi for you. He’s right here," Ahmed says, pointing to the cab driver pulling into place. But the man is not looking. The man is opening the door of the arriving taxi;

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the passengers inside look surprised.

Ahmed tries to negotiate a complex matrix: the drunk man who wants his ride and wants it now; the drop-off taxi driver who might get lucky enough to score two fares back-to-back; the pick-up driver next in line who might lose his fare. Ahmed shifts on his feet. He calculates.

Then he tells the pick-up driver with the empty cab to hold on, sticks his hands in his pockets and waits. He glances over his shoulder now and then, checking on the drunk man, who gets into the cab as soon as the arriving passengers get out. And in no time, another guest walks into the night, looking for a ride. This time, the problems solve themselves.

More guests emerge from the hotel, asking for a late-night place to eat. Ahmed pulls a short stack of coupons out of his pocket and suggests an Irish pub down the block, but they don’t take the bait.

It’s a trick of the trade that Ahmed recently learned from his uncle. He’ll get a certain amount of referral money for each party who brings in a coupon with his name on it. Ahmed thinks the restaurant pays out once a month, but he’s not sure, and he doesn’t know how much they pay.

He hasn’t sent anyone there yet.

Shyness is not a lucrative trait in this business.

EDUCATION What Ahmed knew: Back in Kakuma, children were taught math and science, but English and the Quran were the most important things to learn."We weren’t worried about history," Ahmed says. His family’s history, like that of all the refugees, floated through the air, in the conversations of grownups.

It was as ubiquitous as the dust kicked up from the scatter and shuffle of bare feet on scorched dirt roads. It was nowhere and everywhere.

"We were just worried about learning English," he says. "How to speak English and how to write English and how to read English."

To learn the Quran, he attended a Duksi, as religious schools are called in his native Bantu language. Ahmed remains religious — a call-to-prayer app sounds five times a day on his iPhone — but he does not miss the Duksi. Recitation was a staple in the classroom, but most students "didn’t know how to read in our head," Ahmed says, talking about the hard chore of memorization. "I can read while I’m looking, but I can’t read if you cover (the words) for me."

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Nor does he miss the Duksi teacher. "That teacher was mean. ... Everybody used to get beat, no matter who you are," he says.

One day, the oldest boy at the school fought back, saying he hadn’t done something the Duksi teacher accused him of. "Not the biggest, but the oldest boy in the place," Ahmed remembers.

"It was just so funny because we want the teacher to get beat, you know," Ahmed laughs. "We had (the boy’s) back because he was standing up for us. Because we was so young. We can’t say nothing, you know, he (the teacher) just gonna do whatever he want to us."

The teacher won; the defiant student was thrown out of the class. Two days later, his parents brought him back to school, and the routine continued.

What he imagined: For his life in America, Ahmed imagined what he could not have in Kakuma: college. He hopes also to have a family here, but family is where his goals would have stopped in Africa.

"I’d probably have a son — I mean baby,” he laughs. He will take what God gives him. "Live in my own house, you know. Take care of family. Forget about college, forget about education, all that. Just try and live."

Those were his old dreams. As he talks, an approaching storm has arrived. Lightning smacks close by. Ahmed closes the window, calming the curtain and keeping the sill dry, as thunder rumbles.

Here, he imagines a different future. It, too, involves a family, but in a sort of hybrid BantuAmerican tradition. Marriages are still arranged, he says, but more and more Somali girls are holding out to marry "the right one ... because they start listening to this crap." He laughs — a little bold, a little shy — and glances down while he sips mango juice from a tall glass.

The chance for girls to finish high school before having children, to have a say in whom they marry, is as hard for Ahmed to get used to as his own new dreams.

"Sometimes I (think) about becoming a pilot," he says. "Or an artist," because he likes to draw.

Or a photographer. But then, he wonders, should he pursue something less ambitious, more attainable?

Ahmed tries not to think too hard about his future right now because it’s so uncertain. His goal is to stay afloat with work and continue to improve his English, so that he’ll be ready for his

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future when it arrives.

What he found: One familiar comfort for Ahmed in America was soccer. They played it quite differently at his new high school in St. Louis, but they played it, and that’s what mattered.

At the camp in Kakuma, Ahmed and his friends would improvise their own field: Impromptu boundaries marked with the shirts they would take off their backs, goals staked in the ground with two sticks where the front posts would go. They couldn’t conjure a net, so successful goals sent the boys running to chase down the ball.

Their soccer ball was also a feat of imagination: plastic grocery bags bound together with rubber bands. Lots of them. Thick ones. The rubber bands were how they got the ball to bounce.

Indoctrinated into the sport in this way, Ahmed was used to kicking the ball quite hard to give it air and distance, but he’s too modest to say whether he could kick harder than the American kids he played with here.

Now that he’s graduated, Ahmed still enjoys the sport. He plays with Bantu friends, and they invite others to join them — Liberians, Mexicans. "Yeah, we play a lot," Ahmed says. Even on this rainy day, he’s hoping to sneak in a muddy game.

Fellow refugees make up a lot of Ahmed’s friends. His girlfriend is Somali. Even many of his co-workers at the Union Station Marriott are immigrants – not uncommon in hotels around the country.

This extends a cultural stratification that he also found in high school. The immigrants and Americans didn’t mix much, he says. Perhaps it was culture. Perhaps it was language.

Despite the emphasis on learning English in Kakuma — and his usefulness helping his parents navigate this new land — fluency remains elusive.

Ahmed was optimistic after graduating from high school. But in 2010, after starting at Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, he found that he couldn’t keep up with the language and the rigors of college.

Now he attends Forest Park Community College, "where most foreign kids go," he says, hoping to transfer back to the university after a couple years. He doesn’t have a major yet. For now, his

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classes simply help him get up to par so he can pursue his education.

Success and struggle mingle. He passed two of the classes he took last fall. But he failed grammar, so he had to retake that this spring. And he read four books in the fall for a reading class. But he lost a fifth — a biography of a basketball player — that he had checked out of the library of his own accord. The $50 fine has scared him off from checking out another.

Instead, he stays in the library to read one or two pages at a time when he’s on campus. He recently started a new book.

"I don’t know the title but it’s about Martin Luther King," Ahmed says. "Like, how AfricanAmericans were back then. That’s the kind of book I am reading."

He had never heard of King before or of the Civil Rights movement. The only American name he knew in Kakuma was President George W. Bush. The only American event: 9/11.

This young man who was never taught the history that displaced his family, and who waits for a future he can’t quite imagine, is slowly learning the past of his new home.

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St. Charles West high schoolers on the American Dream

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COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN St. Charles West high schoolers on the American Dream

By Sangeeta Shastry July 9, 2012 | 6:00 a.m. CDT Editor's note: This story is part of the American Next, a special project exploring the hopes, fears and changing expectations of Missouri's next generation in challenging times.

Due to St. Charles West High School's privacy rules, we are not using the real names of students who have not yet graduated. Of the two students who graduated before this story was published, Ryan Stahlschmidt , gave us permission to publish in-depth interviews with him.

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Through teenage eyes: The American Dream to suburban high schoolers

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ST. CHARLES — They want to be happy. They want to be able to provide for families they haven't yet started and send their someday children to college. They want houses — not too big, but not too small, they made sure to note — and they don't want to live under the shadow of debt. They want to be the smartest people they can be.

DEAR READER: The American Next delves into the lives of a new generation

I just want to be successful, so many of them said after pondering the question for a few minutes.

Students at St. Charles West High School live in one of the state's wealthiest counties — its per capita annual income is $30,664 and the median household income is $70,331. Located about 30 miles northwest of downtown St. Louis, it is among the fastest-growing counties in the nation.

One day this spring, about 100 freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors took time in their classes to talk about their personal hopes and fears and how their aspirations fit into the broader future of the country. They were studying different subjects across seven classes — history, contemporary issues, American government. But students in each class raised the

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same themes.

They know technology is having an unprecedented impact on the way members of their generation think and the goals they have. They say their generation is lazier and more entitled than those that came before — in part because of those technological advances.

They're concerned that reaching for their dreams might preclude them from paying their bills — either because the rising cost of an advanced education or because their dream jobs wouldn't pay secure salaries in an uncertain economy. Even so, they don't know if they would be willing to abandon those aspirations for financial stability.

Their core vision of the American Dream has been shaped by parents, by television and movies and by what they read in their history textbooks.

"I think that's what everybody works toward," said Ryan, a senior. "You go to school, go to college, get married, have kids, buy a house."

"I think we've sort of defined that as success," added Janine, a junior. "We've also equated happiness with that."

Yet these students are inheriting a future that might be far different than the ones they envision. As the U.S. economy faces fundamental change, the global economy struggles to find a solid footing and wars threaten on multiple fronts, they are the first generation since the Great Depression that cannot expect to have a better life than their parents.

That reality is creeping into discussions of what the American Dream will mean for them.

College: not optional Almost all the students at St. Charles West said any hopes for the futures they want begin with a college degree. Higher education is not a question of "if," but "where."

"My parents didn't even go to college," said Laura, a junior. "It wasn't a big deal for them. Now, for us, we have to get the highest degree and get the highest education and make sure we go somewhere with it. For them, it was just making sure they had a job to get food on the table."

Laura said she'd like to live in a loft in Los Angeles, but added: "I want to be content with my life. Period."

Her classmate Janine had a slightly different story: "My family's a little different. Both of my

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parents … they weren't comfortable middle class people by (any) means. But they all saw education as the way out. So they were really focused in the educational department. That's how they tried to work to better their life."

Janine said her goal is to be the smartest person she can be by learning as much as possible.

She's considering small private liberal arts colleges such as Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

"Wherever the best education is for me, that's where I go," she said. "(My parents) really don't mind the traveling. They've said that they want to send me to the best place."

Ciara, a senior, wants to become a dermatologist and eventually do her residency in Germany so she can also work as a translator. But she knows she has a lot of work ahead to make that happen.

"My ACT scores hold me back," she said. "My GPA is just fine, but my ACT score … that's just how colleges compare you to other students. And if you're trying to get into medical school like I am, that's quite a bit of money."

Amy, also a senior, said she's expected to go to college. But she's finding it's not a straight line from high school to MU, which is her first choice. She'll likely need to enroll at St. Charles Community College and transfer to the university later.

She's faced such practical challenges before. The family moved three times after her father lost his job at General Motors. Her mother, who has a college degree, was unemployed for nearly two years until she finally found work at U.S. Bank.

A culture of excess But is doing their best enough to achieve the goals they've set for themselves? Part of the problem, several students argued, is the culture of excess the American Dream fosters. What they want might be different than what they can afford.

"I would also argue that the American Dream is this whole idea of buying wants and not needs," Janine said. "I think it's bred into society that we can buy what we want. It's not necessarily the money itself that's the issue. It's this whole concept of 'want' that is part of the American Dream — that if I want something, I can easily get it. If it's a personal goal, then I think that'd be fine. But if it's a physical expense, then that's where people have problems."

Ryan agreed. He said even his own parents know they won't be able to rely on Social Security 3 of 8

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for their retirement. That has prompted him to strive to be successful enough to support himself throughout the course of his life.

"I think my parents saw the American Dream as not really a goal — it just kind of happened to them," he said. "I feel that for myself it's attainable, but if I look at society as a whole, then I think the American Dream is kind of the ideology that people strive for but can't actually reach.

I think that a lot of the debt that people have right now is because they're trying to reach the American Dream when they really should not be trying to do that."

Ryan says the dream, as it's been defined in the past, is a false ideal to which people have been expected to conform, something he simply doesn't want to do.

"For me it means that, no matter what I'm involved in, whether it's just going to the park with some friends or being involved in a school activity, I've actively taken a part in that and made a positive change that can be seen and cascade from there to make more positive change," he said.

A dose of reality As the discussion in the contemporary issues class gains momentum, teacher Steve Smith, 32, offered his two cents on the American Dream.

"Mine was to work here — I did achieve it," he said to chuckles from his students.

Smith was born in Bitburg, Germany, where his father, now a colonel in the Air Force, was stationed. Smith was raised in St. Louis, then enrolled at MU as a photojournalism major, which "did not pan out so well," he said to more laughs.

After graduating from MU, Smith went on to get a master's degree in education from Lindenwood University in St. Charles. Now as he teaches, he's back at Lindenwood, working toward a second master's degree in educational administration. His eventual goal is to become a principal.

"I make a modest living," he said. "I have a house, a kid and a dog. It's not such a bad life.

When you go out from high school or college, you're like, 'I'm going to do so much better than my parents.' Then you get out, and you go, 'What my parents had was not so bad.' My parents aren't millionaires by any means, but they were responsible with their money, and I'd be happy to be where my dad's at when I'm his age. I'd be very content to be right at that spot."

Students can afford to be optimistic right now, Smith said, but what happens when the bills 4 of 8

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arrive in a few years? Does it mean taking up a job that pays those bills even if it isn't their dream?

When it comes to choosing a liberal arts education that engages the mind or a trade-school curriculum that teaches more practical skills, Amy said it depends on the person.

"It's what you'd rather do with your life and what you think would give you a better outcome," she said. "If you think going into politics is going to better you and better your family, or if you think you'd rather be on the safe side and get a certain trade skill and stay with that for the rest of your life — would it help you? It's all about perception, I think, at this point."

Maddie, a sophomore, said that building a safety net is driving her career choice.

"I know I definitely want to go to college for something that is useful, something that has a lot of jobs right now — which is unfortunate, but kind of smart," she said. She cites engineering as a possibility.

Jordan, also a sophomore, said he, too, would pick engineering over his first career choice: being a novelist.

"I was kind of split between those two," he said. "But as a career, I've just decided to go with engineer because engineers get an obscene amount of money, and it's a pretty decent job area as of the moment. (I'll) probably major in engineering or physics and take some writing classes, maybe get hired as an engineer and then write novels when I have the time."

But Catie, another sophomore, used her family's situation as an example to the contrary. She's been watching her older brother, who attends a technical school in Florida, struggle to find employment, all the while jumping from odd job to odd job, saving money wherever possible and accepting the extra bit of cash from their parents. So Chelsea worries she might regret giving up on a dream just to bow to financial realities.

"Later on in life, when you're about to retire, you're going to wish you followed that dream," she said. "My mom wanted to be a teacher. She's a nurse because that's just how it happened.

And my dad wanted to be an architect. He works with computers. They put their dreams away to go with the better job. But they kind of wish they had done what they wanted to do now."

Ryan's in favor of the practical solution, even though accumulating wealth isn't one of his goals.

"I've always wanted to go into politics, but my job right now deals with sales, and I'm actually pretty good at that," he said. Ryan works at Midtown Home Improvements, a company based 5 of 8

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in O'Fallon.

"I know a lot of salesmen at my company make a pretty good living, so I could see myself settling for that if education doesn't pan out," he said.

But because each generation has seen fluctuations in the economy, Ciara said, students her age can't worry about where it's headed.

"Whether it's good or bad, that's just how it works, and you just always have to do your best and try to reach your goals so that you can make it successful for you and your family," she said. "I'm not really focused on how the economy's going to go because it's never for sure."

Looking around us and behind us In his contemporary issues class, Smith pointed to countries that have been on the rise economically over the years, including oft-cited examples of India and China. They're "nipping at our heels," he said. If American students don't fix "attitude problems," he tells his students, they'll fall further behind.

His students take in that message but are struggling to connect Smith's theory to their reality.

"Our generations have never faced any hardships, and most of the other people in the other nations have faced many hardships," Laura said. "So we've just been sitting around doing nothing while they've been fighting for their lives."

"The stakes are a little bit higher in those countries," Ryan said. "Comfort is at stake in America, and food is at stake in those other countries."

They looked back at the generations that survived the Great Depression.

"My grandparents were very self-sufficient," Smith said. "They saved everything. But they went through the Great Depression. They instilled that in my dad, who's a baby boomer, and they didn't have to do anything. What hardships have I had to go through growing up?"

"My great-grandma was the one who immigrated here from Poland," Janine said. "They had to work to try and establish themselves in a new country with nothing. So my grandparents' generation, they were still trying to establish that. In my parents' generation, that was when it finally started to get to the breaking-even point. I don't have that experience of actually trying to work to get into society."

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Are we there yet?

Some students in Smith's class questioned their generation's ability to achieve its goals. They said they've heard remarks from older generations that young people today don't have the same work ethic or know-how to buckle down to get the job done, whatever the task may be.

The St. Charles West students overwhelmingly agreed. Most were quick to nod when asked if they think their generation is lazy or entitled. They think that trend is growing with each younger class of students.

"I think the difference between the juniors and seniors in this class compared to the sophomores and freshmen at this school is huge," Ryan said. "I think really the only thing that can account for that is the rapid change of technology. We see technology grow rapidly, and we see the change in students' responsibilities grow rapidly."

Ciara gave a specific example: "The art of writing a letter to accompany a thank-you note for letting you shadow someone on the job is a lost art because you could just email them. I just think that's lazy, personally."

"I also think our generation, they don't have any drive," Laura said. "I think that older generations have had that drive, and that's why they succeeded. ‌ Our generation's like, 'Oh, we can do it. Why do we have to work that hard?' America has become complacent."

In his class, sophomore Jordan says we've moved from the "Information Age" into the "Entertainment Age." "Rather than gathering information, we're obsessed with entertainment like the media, culture," he said. "So people get more and more focused on enjoying themselves."

Another sophomore, Sarah, is in a different position than many of her classmates. She has a 7-month-old son and is struggling to juggle school and the challenges of being a teen parent.

"He needs a lot of attention, so I have to give it to him instead of getting my homework done," she said.

Yet even she questions programs and lifestyles that seem to let people off the hook.

"I'm on Medicaid and (food stamps), so I get free check-ups and stuff like that," she said. "But then again, I'm not for (government aid) because my mom, she got laid off, and now she's on food stamps and stuff like that, but she's just being lazy. She isn't going out looking for a job.

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She's just using the system."

Is it schools?

For Melanie, a junior, all the uncertainty about the future adds up to a determination to take responsibility for her own goals. She already knows exactly what she wants to do after high school: major in chemistry and help develop alternative fuels to reduce the dependence on gasoline.

She said she doesn't see that same focus in others her age. While she's not sure what caused the difference between them and her, what she does know is that the gap between students who want to learn and students who don't has a tangible effect in the classroom.

"I feel like sometimes (teachers) give less work or work of less difficulty to just kind of make sure everyone does it," she said. "People who don't care as much about school may feel more inclined to do it because it's easy. Well, then that means that people who do want to work and people who like school and people who want to learn new information don't feel pushed hard enough."

Janine argued that high school students today don't have the best teachers anymore.

"You have your older teachers retiring, so that would be your strict education," she said. "The problem with the younger generation is the lack of education."

Ryan again peppered the conversation with pragmatism.

"For me, it means I just leave class and go home and study on my own," he said.

Melanie says that it all depends on them, the students.

"I think it varies from person to person," she said. "I know people who really just don't care, who want to go through life and just get by and have fun. But some of us want to make a difference. I think it might have to do with how you grow up because my parents have always pushed stuff on me. You need to do something rewarding with your life and just not try to go through it with settling for not being the best you can be."

That's an endgame most students seemed to share, though what that means and how they'll each get there remains to be seen.

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