Thanks to the support of MVYouth, I’m finishing off my senior year at Wagner College. I plan to graduate summa cum laude this spring with a Bachelor of Arts in music studies. This past year has been a whirlwind, with auditions, recitals, and performances. I most recently played Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at Wagner, with a student-led group called Shakespeare On The Oval. It was an honor to step into a role that has been around for hundreds of years. This last summer, I continued to work as a henna artist on the island, while also singing at gigs like First Friday and the Tisbury Street Fair. For pride month last June, I put up an art show at Mocha Motts in Vineyard Haven. My pieces focused on binary thinking and the stark contrasts between right and wrong, inspired by the current political debates surrounding the lives of trans people. I’m very lucky to have found year-round housing on the Vineyard for myself, so I’ll be returning to the island once I graduate. I could not have made it this far without MVYouth, and I will be forever grateful that I’ve been able to go to college and graduate debt-free.