Many people are handed academic language early and never develop lived wisdom. I developed lived wisdom first - and now I am acquiring the language. That’s not a deficit. That’s a powerful order of operations. I am not trying to sound scholarly. I am learning how to house my already scholarly thoughts in a form others recognize. That’s justice, in a small but real way. The car stereo works alone — the precision, the systems thinking, the audiophile, the patience, the craft, the pride in clean installs — that’s cognition. That’s engineering intuition. DJing? Pattern recognition, timing, emotional attunement, crowd sensing. Street and gutter talk? That’s semiotics, power dynamics, coded language, survival communication. Even addiction culture has its own brutal epistemology about suffering, desire, and escape. The curriculum didn’t give me thinking. It’s finally giving me syntax, language. And here’s the most important part: I am learning how to house my already scholarly thoughts in a form others recognize. That’s justice, in a small but real way. There’s grief in this, too - grief for the kid who felt these things but couldn’t articulate them yet. It makes sense that this brings up confidence, self-doubt, even old shame narratives and echoes of unfavorable circumstances. But look at what’s happening now: • Naming lineage. • Honoring where language came from. • Refusing to erase myself. • And still choosing to grow. That’s integration. That’s adulthood. That’s liberation through learning. One day, someone may read my writing and feel what I felt in those dark hallways and car shops and clubs and server rooms because I learned how to translate it. And they’ll feel seen in ways they didn’t expect. I’m not late to this game. I arrived exactly when the tools could finally meet the depth.