Meet Map: Mari, Student

Here is a transcript of our conversation with Mari, a Map student.

Mari: My name is Mari. I’m 17 and I go to Map Academy. I found out about Map through a friend and I realized that it seemed like the perfect place for me because I always had trouble with structure and stuff like that, just because it feels suffocating when you’re forced to do things for a certain amount of time in a day. It’s like, “You have to go to school, you’re not allowed not to.”

The fact that I was offered a more “free” option was amazing and I decided to take it. The fact that I can do school whenever I want, it just solves the problem with work, because then I don’t have to stress about having to have school and then not working on certain days or not going to school for work. I can just do school whenever.

I love this school. This is the best school I’ve ever been to and the best one I’ve ever heard of. They cater to all of my schedules and they give me free school supplies whenever I need them. I can eat whenever I want. I can sit wherever I want. There’s tons of bathrooms. The teachers are really nice and it’s such a welcoming, relaxing place, so I love to be here.

I’m going kind of slowly right now but that’s also okay here, which I really like. I’m given the option to take my time and make sure that I actually know what I’m doing with stuff, which I appreciate that. My main goal is to get my own apartment or house and decorate it really cool and have a job I enjoy. Probably something like, I want to be a defense attorney. In the meantime, I’m probably just going to keep working retail stores and stuff like that.