Lots of people aspire to go to college. It’s a life goal imagined in our youth, when almost any dream seems within reach.

For many of the 10 recipients of the Weiler Family Teacher Preparation Scholarship, the hope was to become like the teacher who inspired them. But then life got in the way.

Here are stories of three scholarship winners who didn’t give up on their dream and now are one monumental step closer to realizing it.

Asho Gedi, Primary Education Program

“I’m 33 years old. I have two children. I am a Muslim Black woman who is the caregiver. I work,” said Asho Gedi, who enrolled in Ohio State’s teaching and learning program in 2022 after trying for years to earn her degree. “I have a lot of responsibility.”

As a nontraditional student, Gedi has more to contend with than just term papers and practicums. But she is no stranger to overcoming obstacles. Born in Somalia during its civil war, she recalls in flashes the sounds of helicopters and rounds of gunfire. To outrun the fighting, her family moved from town to town.

“My father did a good job trying to protect us,” Gedi said. When she was 3, they fled to a refugee camp in the Kenyan desert.

“You’re in a small, little tent,” she recalled. “You’re in there with three, four or five different families. Maybe you have one bed to four or five people.”

Two years later, her family immigrated to the United States and settled in Atlanta. Her world expanded to include skyscrapers, American television and kindergarten. The family was grateful for a second chance at happiness. But after 9/11, some wrongfully associated their faith with extremism, and her parents faced discrimination.

When her mother lost her job, the family moved to Columbus and rebuilt their lives yet again. That’s where Gedi met a language arts teacher who helped her believe.

“The whole class loved her,” Gedi said. “The whole school loved her.”

Others had made Gedi feel like an outsider. But Kim Dykstra, ’99 MA, told Gedi her bilingualism was an asset. In weekly journals, the teacher’s encouraging notes helped Gedi feel capable.

“I started writing freely, without any hesitation, without holding back. without putting myself down,” she said.

She would go on to study journalism at a community college, but bills and having a child put Gedi’s plans on hold. Along the way, a community literacy group started bringing her books to read to her son.

“I fell in love with teaching my son. And I fell in love with seeing how he feels once (he’s) learned. I was like, I want to have this feeling all the time,” she said.

She decided to go for a teaching degree, only to discover she was pregnant again. That nearly blew her resolve, but her mother encouraged her to stay the course. “She was like, ‘Don’t stop. Keep going.’”

She transferred to Ohio State in 2022 and is on track to graduate. She wants to encourage kids the way Dykstra encouraged her, while being a role model that kids of color can relate to. The Weiler Scholarship allows her to work less, study more and still be a mom to her kids. It puts her dream within reach.

“I’ve definitely heard way more noes in my life than I’ve heard yeses. So, I believe that whatever God has for me, there’s going to be nobody to ever stop me,” she said.

Rayshawn Young, Primary Education Program

A year after her son was born, Rayshawn Young was struggling.

“I just didn’t know why I was so down. … It was hard to get out of bed sometimes,” said the early childhood education student. “I didn’t know I was going through postpartum until probably he turned 1½.”

A first-generation student, her college plans had not gone as hoped. After a year at the University of Cincinnati, it was clear she wasn’t passionate about the science classes that would get her into veterinary college.

“I was like, ‘What am I doing here?’”

Changing her major to criminal justice wasn’t the right move, either. So, she switched to a community college, then to online education, then quit altogether and took a job.

“And that was when I became pregnant,” she said. “So, it was a struggle at first. But once he was born, I just knew I had to go back to school.”

In the middle of her hardship, she found her calling — and she has her son to thank for it. Young took a job at a childcare center, knowing she would need to find care for her son. It was her way of getting employment while vetting the center.

“Ever since then, I wanted to work with kids,” she said. “I love teaching them. I love watching their responses that you get when you are teaching them.”

In 2022, Young applied to Ohio State — “I just took that leap of faith, and I got in” — and had her general education credits transferred. But she had taken out several student loans over the years.

“I’m pretty much at the cap of my financial aid. I didn’t know what I was going to do. … I said, there’s no way I’m going to be able to finish school if I don’t try something.”

She remembered an email she’d seen about the Weiler Family Teacher Preparation Scholarship.

“This was the first scholarship I’ve ever applied to because, again, I discouraged myself a lot. I said, there’s no way I’m going to get this scholarship,” she said.

But she did. “Truly a blessing,” Young said, because it quite literally allowed her to stay enrolled.

She’s interning at the college’s A. Sophie Rogers School for Early Learning and hopes to teach first grade. She wants to provide the emotional support and guidance that she craved as a child. She’s close to realizing a goal that she couldn’t even imagine until fate brought it to her.

“Before … I was just surviving and going through the motions,” she said. “But when I had my son, I just knew that I had to provide. He was really the saving grace I needed to find out what I’m passionate about.”

Noah Trimble, Middle Childhood Education Program

It’s no small miracle that Noah Trimble wants to teach middle school math and science. Because middle school was anything but a good experience for him.

“There’s a violent incident that happened, and I was hospitalized,” he said. “Yeah, it was an ugly year.”

He was relentlessly bullied, culminating in the awful day he found himself slashed and bleeding after a student brought a razor blade to school.

“I moved to my dad’s (in Troy, Ohio), and I repeated my eighth-grade year,” he said.

He bounced between Troy and Columbus every year, switching schools as he lived with his mother, then his father. Along the way, he met a teacher who saw past his guarded behavior in class. Charles Metz taught chemistry at Troy High School.

“Once he knew that I was sharp enough — that I was going to do fine in the class — I think he just knew that there were other problems that needed to be addressed,” Trimble said.

Problems such as the fact that Trimble was one of three students of color in the school. And that he felt judged by everyone: among the Black community for trying hard at academics, and among the white community for not fitting into their racial stereotypes. But Metz was different.

“He went out of his way to help me, inviting me to his class during my study hall so I could learn as much as I wanted about chemistry,” Trimble said.

Metz joked around. He worked hard to get to know Trimble, then shared his student’s brilliance with others. When Trimble thanked him for help on an assignment, Metz’s response floored him. He said, “Your asking me for help is a gift.”

“It just shifted from feeling like any need that I had was a burden…” Trimble said. “I’m actually robbing this person of their joy by not letting them help. And that was really big. It was just really special to hear that there are people that just want to do good for others (and are) just looking for the opportunity.”

Trimble started tutoring his friends’ parents so they could earn their GEDs.

“As far as the race relations went, it was such a healing experience. Because it takes such a high level of humility to look at this kid that you … (might not) think very highly of, at least not academically, and say, ‘Hey, thanks. I really need help learning how to do basic algebra.’”

That emotional capital later saved him, when he found himself living out of his car while trying to take classes at a community college. Eventually, he allowed himself to accept help again, this time moving into the home of local missionaries.

Now 31, Trimble is in his final year at Ohio State. It’s taken him years to earn the degree he had hoped for in his twenties. The lessons he’s learned along the way don’t always correlate with book learning. While counseling students at Columbus Gifted Academy to not give up when they fail, he’s digging into his life experience as well as his education. He teaches them about overcoming.

Resilience should never be used as a measuring stick against someone, Trimble said. But it can be a powerful personal goal.

“To me, resilience is the willingness to do the hard thing that the moment currently is asking you for to achieve your ultimate goal,” he said. “If you’re not willing to do the hard thing right now and feel those uncomfortable feelings and deal with the anxiety and the fear and the anger — if you’re not willing to just toughen through those moments to do the right thing for your goals — then you’re probably not going to be very resilient. Because life doesn’t move around you. I wish it did.”

He recently made the tough choice to give up a steady income during his practicums.

“It’s hard going into student teaching,” he said. “I’m not getting paid, and I have to work (at school). This is going to be the first time that I cannot work during the day. And I’m not willing to sacrifice my night times with my son. That’s why the (Weiler Family) Scholarship is so helpful.”

At Columbus Gifted Academy, he will teach STEM education to middle-schoolers. He’s hopeful that one day they, too, will take up the torch.

“One of the biggest joys is watching somebody that you take care of, take care of somebody else…” Trimble said. “It’s almost like a lineage of care. For me, when it comes to teaching that lineage, it goes right back to Mr. Metz.”