Thinking Outside the Girl Box: Teaming Up with Resilient Youth in Appalachia

4. Cassi: “They Will Make You Eat That.” Or, Tales of New Experiences and Adventure

 4 “They Will MakeYou EatThat.” Or,Tales of New Experiences and Adventure A “B” in GYM doesn’T coUnT, AnYWAY cassi Adkins, an extremely conscientious and organized student, made only two “Bs” in high school: tenth-grade gym class and twelfthgrade civics. smiley faces, A+’s, and notes of “excellent work” cover her tests and papers. A self-portrait collage she created includes cut-out magazine snippets of the phrases follow your passion, vibrant, sisterhood, and best. cassi’s self-description on her Myspace account reads simply: “if you’re happy and you know it . . . *clapping.*” cassi has a bright smile and writes with many, many exclamation marks. As you can imagine, it’s pretty hard not to like cassi. she is a devoted friend, and has described herself more than once as “one-fourth me, 68 cassi: “They Will Make You eat That” one-fourth sara [her close friend], one-fourth Jennifer [her close friend], and one-fourthTimmy [her boyfriend].” petite in stature, cassi frequently wore her waist-length,blondish-brown hair in a single braid.in focus group interviews—many of which began as formal interviews and devolved into prom-planning, storytelling, or gossiping sessions—cassi showed explicit concern for the interviewer (usually LeAnne,a former graduate student of mine). Are you getting what you need?What was your question again? sensitive to group dynamics and generous with smiles and laughter, cassi appears to be the glue whose bright spirit holds her friends together. in fact, one of the only times she got in trouble at school was in order to care for a friend: “My friend . . . was crying, and i got up to give her a hug while Ms. J was gone. i got up out of my seat, and i got in trouble for that. i didn’t understand why i couldn’t hug my friend who was crying!” cassi’s family lives “way out in the boonies,” which means she had to wake up at 5:30 a.m. to catch her bus to high school. Their home is on a one-lane paved road deep into the hollers of the county where her dad was raised. nearby, on a parallel road, cassi’s grandparents live in a double-wide trailer. cassi’s mom, whom she calls super Mom, has worked a series of customer service jobs in restaurants, hardware stores, and bars. in cassi’s words, her mom “hates it with a passion, but she does it for us.” cassi’s dad is an auto mechanic with an equally demanding work schedule. Because both parents had to be at work for long hours, cassi found herself babysitting her younger siblings after school and during the summer months. one of cassi’s teachers explained that she primarily got to and from her remotely located house by school bus.“once she got on the bus and went to the holler, she didn’t come out until it was time to get back on the bus,” she said.When another teacher inquired about her summer plans, cassi replied that she would probably be babysitting every day.“cassi is stuck up in the holler with the kids,” her teacher reflected.“i hate that for her.” The first teacher speculated that if cassi had been a son, her parents may not have expected her to babysit:“if she were a boy, she would probably have her a big truck and be able to go and run and do.” cassi noted that it was unlikely that either she or her brother would ever have had a truck of their own because her family was poor (her word). Unlike Teresa, who was one of the first Grp girls in the late 1990s, cassi and her friends were some of the last girls to enter the program. Tales of New Experiences and Adventure 69 Joining in 2005 as an eighth grader, cassi jumped into community service projects, anti–school consolidation activism, out-of-town trips, and—her favorite—pottery classes. But by the time she graduated from high school in 2009, the Grp no longer existed. Always relationship-oriented, cassi said wistfully in a 2010 interview that she wished the program were still around for her little sister.“it’d be good for her,” she nodded, adding that the Grp gave girls opportunities that weren’t available to them anywhere else in Lincoln county. As a sophomore this year at...