When Jessella Gaymon graduated from Reid Ross Classical High School with a modified ceremony during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 or started college that August without having a college freshman dorm experience, she felt like it was “the end of the world with little opportunities.”
“My classmates and I lost a lot that last year of high school, and then my first year of college I felt like there was no hope, no motivation,” she said last week. “I’m glad everyone tried to make the best of what it was, but it really sucked.”
Despite feeling melancholy, Gaymon persevered.
As a senior mass communications major at North Carolina Central University, she is one of 25 students from a historically Black college or university nationwide named to AT&T’s Dream in Black Rising Future Makers Class.
Gaymon said national honor means a lot to her because she comes from a smaller town and goes to a smaller HBCU.
“I never thought I’d see my face associated with a million-dollar company like AT&T,” she said. “They could pick any 25 students. For them to sit there and review 1,001 applications and look at mine and say, ‘This is the one,’ while watching videos and reading essays from other applications is incredible.”