Make-a-Way Scholarship Recipient: Shanita Weeden

“I know what it is like to be away from home and hungry with no money or waiting alone in the cold for a bus. I don’t want to live like this. I want better for myself.” 

Coming from a household struggling to make ends meet each month, Shanita Weeden has eyes firmly set on using her education to secure financial freedom for herself and her family. The 19-year-old sophomore honor student is a business major with plans to become a financial analyst. “I live in the ghetto, but here I am wanting to teach other people about stocks and bonds. From someone else’s point of view, it may look very silly. I want to help other people, but I can’t do that if I don’t come up.” 

It was a quantitative reasoning class that got her excited about math and the possibility of making the numbers work in her favor financially. “I used to think finance was for rich people. Why should I learn about it since we don’t have any money. I got overly enthusiastic about it.  It’s like something lit up in my brain.”

Weeden has been on the Dean’s List since she began at UDC, and the Earl W. Stafford, Sr., Make-a-Way Scholarship has lightened her burden. “It takes off a financial burden,” Weeden said. “It helps me to know each semester that I don’t have to worry about owing my school something. It takes away the stress. It makes me feel good that I was awarded a scholarship. It encourages me.”

“I know what it is like to be away from home and hungry with no money or waiting alone in the cold for a bus. I don’t want to live like this. I want better for myself.” 

She is a spirited and enthusiastic student despite the many disappointments in her life including the loss of her mother and bearing the burden of helping her grandmother raise her three younger siblings.

“My neighborhood plays a role in what I want to do,” she said. “I don’t like the environment. It’s frustrating to smell marijuana. Sometimes I see women on the streets, and you can’t tell if they are working or not. Police are coming for kids who are fighting again, and I go down certain streets where I have to take off my jewelry just in case. We don’t have a car, so we push a cart two to three miles to Aldi to buy groceries on the 10th of the month.”

UDC has been instrumental in helping Weeden gain experience to propel her career forward. Last summer the University was instrumental in helping her get a job at the U.S. Department of Commerce and this summer, she has landed a job with the Internal Revenue Service. She also volunteers at UDC’s Tax Clinic.

“Follow your aspirations and goals despite your surroundings and despite what others may tell you. You have to believe in yourself even with other people may not understand.”