Confession time. My name is Ambra Nykol and I am a fallen intellectual. All that means is that at one point, I probably thought I was a lot smarter than I truly am. I have since been humbled.

I spent most of my life in private, stuffy, Seattle college prep schools with an inordinate amount of really cool, drunk (and high), rich, and entirely too apathetic white kids. It was there I learned about how to get into college, wear Abercrombie & Fitch, and despite my best attempts at resistance, somehow managed to graduate high school having completely memorized the lyrics to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and viciously addicted to Friends. The efforts were futile. I had become a true "black prep", yet my friends still forgave me.

"The sickness" began when we started studying for the SATs back in kindergarten. Our mission in life was established early: get into college and make lots of money.

Throughout high school, my utopia would have been to major in African American studies in college and wrap myself in the "genius" of Cornell West and his other cronies before heading on to law school.

I had high hopes for Harvard University, but unfortunately, Harvard didn't have such high hopes for me. In the spring of my senior year, I got a big, fat, and well-deserved rejection letter. Well, actually it was a little, skinny one (as most rejection letters are). Despite physically hunting down Harvard professor and author Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for a personal recommendation (completely obsequious, obnoxious, obsessive and admittedly out of character, I know), it seems Harvard didn't care that I gave the "co-valediction" at graduation (quotes indicate a false reality in that I somehow managed to snag this position by election, not selection), or that I could do the splits and hula-hoop with roller skates on for that matter.

When my college dreams were "crushed", I did what any good college prep school student would do and applied to 165 more schools. I finally decided on the less prestigious, however equally expensive, Wesleyan University in Connecticut as my new home for the next four years. While Wesleyan was a "top school", it didn't garner the respect I had hoped for in the outer circles of my Seattle social life (translated: no one had ever heard of it). And after all, what is the point of going to a school no one's ever heard of, right? Right.

Still, my academic ego was severely bruised as I soon tired of constantly explaining all summer that in fact, it was not the former school of our then First Lady Hillary Clinton, who went to Wellesley. Wesleyan was no Harvard, but it was good enough for me. It had to be. They gave me the most scholarship money.

It only took me two semesters and a few run-ins with professors to realize that a private liberal arts college was $34,000 more dollars (a year) than I was willing to incur in student loan debt to earn a bachelors degree in "reading books and analyzing vapid passages", and to have professors with sticks so far up their collective rear-ends deny the fallibility of their own arguments teach me things I could learn at the public library or by watching the History Channel.

Admittedly, I wasn't the most peaceful scholar. I once nearly brought a professor to tears in the middle of a religion class just by asking a basic question. I may have potentially driven another teacher back to liquor and nicotine. Cannot confirm. In retrospect, Wesleyan probably wasn't the place for a hellion like me. Prep school overprepared me for college work and the university allowed people to run around naked in their dorms. Yes; naked. It seems I'd managed to choose the most liberal university in America. Imagine Sodom & Gomorrah only on steroids and Wheaties.

It was in that prior year we'd been voted "Campus that Ignores God on a Regular Basis" by the Princeton Review (what an honor), or in other words, "Secular Humanism University". If the school gets struck down by lightning, remember, you read it here first.

The summer before my Sophomore year, I peaced out.

There was no deep revelation or explanation. I simply decided it was a waste of my time and I went on leave and never returned. Next to free cable, college was the single biggest piece of hype I'd encountered in life. Of course, much to the chagrin of my parents and colleagues, I had done the unthinkable. I quickly became a "fallen intellectual" and was soon excommunicated from the fold, probably written out of the family will, and no longer invited to mingle with the intelligent and civilized in the upper echelon of life. Well, not really, but it sure felt like it.

Being told by the masses and people I loved how idiotic and silly I was for dropping out of college served as an opportune time for me to humble myself. God crushed my ego, kicked me in my preppy behind and gave me a true vision, purpose, and calling for my life. Now the real work has begun.

So here I am in a place I would have never chosen for myself. I am so thankful God's thoughts are higher than ours. I stand reflecting on one of the best decisions I've ever made next to serving God. I realize my decision to leave school was not a judgment on higher education itself. I am abundantly grateful for the revelatory experience afforded me by "Sodom University". I have a good year's worth of book fodder.

I have not closed the door on finishing my college education, although, I doubt I will ever be sitting in a "traditional" classroom again--not as a student at least. God had to bring me to a point where I wasn't worshipping my education or my perceived abilities (something I'd done most of my life), but Him alone. Every day I live to know Him and make Him known on the Earth. I'm into breaking out of the proverbial box. I hope to live my life in a way no other 24-year-old has before.

This weblog is merely my answer to lazy writer's syndrome. To put it bluntly, I hate formalized writing. This started out as a way to keep in touch with my long-distance family and friends. Now I fear it would only scare them away.