Since my junior year of high school, I've been saving up money for college by working at a fast food restaurant.
I regularly work the closing shift, which means getting home around 3:30 in the morning. Sometimes during my breaks, I'll sit at the tables in front of the restaurant and scroll through my Snapchat only to see pictures of my friends out at parties, which always hurts a little. It feels like I'm missing out on the fun of being a teenager.
At the same time though, the sizzling grills, bubbling fryers, and orders being yelled out sometimes provide a welcome distraction from worries I have about my future.
We never really talked about it, but I grew up knowing that my family would not be able to help me with tuition. So even though I was accepted to a four year university, I decided to go to community college for my first two years to save money.
My family has always been economically vulnerable -- something a recent survey, called GenForward, from the University of Chicago, says is common among black and Latino youth. The survey asked millennials how an unexpected bill of a thousand bucks would affect them.