NYCHA-CUNY Scholarship Winner: Tanasia Price

NYCHA-CUNY Scholarship awardee Tanasia Price is excited to take advantage of the opportunity to continue her education. Ms. Price is a Brooklyn native, the mother of a young son, and a resident of Nostrand Houses since 2019. In recognition of her potential and her academic achievements, Ms. Price was awarded a NYCHA-CUNY Scholarship for 2023. We spoke with Ms. Price about her path and where she hopes her education and efforts will take her in the future.

So you grew up in Brooklyn?

Yes, I have lived in Brooklyn my entire life, Bedford-Stuyvesant specifically.

My childhood was in many ways a really good one, but my family also had its share of challenges. My mom tried to give us everything she could, but we lost our housing multiple times. My grandmother lived in Staten Island, and she was a source of stability, but in one chapter of my childhood my family moved I think 11 times – and this was in just one five-year span.

How did that affect your ability to focus on your schoolwork?

Well, I did go to a lot of different elementary and middle schools. Just for high school, I went to three: Abraham Lincoln High School, then Curtis High School, and then Arts & Media Preparatory Academy. Surprisingly, I was able to keep my grades up anyway, so by my senior year I actually had all the credits I needed, and I completed College Now. That helped me a lot when I decided to go back to school, because I had already earned a semester’s worth of credits between when I had stopped going and College Now. I was able to graduate early because of that.

That’s impressive.

Thank you! In my senior year of high school, I was actually a teacher’s aide, because I had finished all my credits, including College Now, so I just went to school for the first three periods and then worked as a teacher’s aide at a nearby school.

And your academic experience since then?

After graduating high school I went on to BMCC, the Borough of Manhattan Community College. But I only stayed at BMCC for a short time – I dropped out after just one semester. And yet surprisingly – at least to me – I passed all those BMCC classes!  After leaving BMCC, I took several years’ break from school. When I came back to school just recently, I enrolled at Kingsborough Community College; I just graduated from Kingsborough last June with an associate degree in criminal justice. Today, I’m a student at the City College of New York, hoping to finish up my studies there in 2025. My major is political science, and I have two minors, in anthropology and philosophy.

And you are thinking about law school as your next step?

You got it, a hundred percent! I’m in the City College legal honors program; it completely takes care of your LSAT prep and guides you through the system (to apply to law school). I’m going to be taking the LSAT for the first time in June 2024 – that is what I am preparing for now.

What do you find most interesting about your current studies?

I just love being able to have access to information, just in general. City College definitely does promote a lot of serious intellectual thought. We have lots of important and deep conversations, which I really value, and I just find it wonderful to have so much access to material and to thinking that I never would have even considered looking into.

What does the opportunity to continue your education mean to you?

It truly does mean so much to me, because before beginning my education again, I didn’t really understand just how necessary it is to have an education.

Outside of the “accolade” of getting that diploma just being able to understand things in this world is so incredibly tied up with education, even just in how you interact with the world, how you’re able to have discipline, how you’re able to interact with your peers. I just feel like it is so tied up with everything important. After all, you only know what you know, and you can’t do better if you don’t know better.

Has the opportunity to return to school benefitted you?

I really do enjoy it. I enjoy going to school where I go to school, and also learning just about everything. I have the feeling that it can be hard for people sometimes. When you grow up in Brooklyn, it’s not always what you think of as “the big New York City experience.” Brooklyn can sometimes operate more like a small town. Growing up in Brooklyn, I somehow did not encounter the “big ideas” the way that college has been allowing me to do now. School has exposed me to so many different things, so much about personal development, so many different ways of living that I didn’t even know existed – all here in my own backyard.

To learn more about the NYCHA-CUNY Resident Scholarships, and to see a full list of the awardees, click here.