• First-generation college stories — how two very different paths shaped your adulthood.
• How expectations, finances, imposter syndrome, and identity play into the college journey.
• Why finding your people matters more than the school itself — and how community becomes belonging.
• Raising college students while still becoming adults yourselves — and how your sons’ college + military paths mirror and diverge from your own.
• What higher education is getting wrong, what it must do to survive, and why connection still matters more than policy.

“There are so many paths. And nobody gets to tell you which one is right except for you.”

• What parts of your own coming-of-age shaped who you are now?
• When did college first feel like yours — or when did it not?
• How do you talk to young adults about pathways: straight lines, zigzags, detours, or restarts?
• What role do people — not places — play in creating belonging?

• ASU’s charter: “We define ourselves by who we include and how they succeed.”
• Conversations on cultural identity, intersectionality, and inclusive teaching from Denise’s TEL 212 course.
• Reflections on the Gulf War and how early adulthood moments spark service, purpose, and identity.
• The evolving landscape of higher education — enrollment cliffs, NIL, mental health, and the future of the college experience.

Share your own college story:
What surprised you? What shaped you? What still lingers from that version of you today?

Tag us @theroughdraft or visit deniseleighwaters.com/ourroughdraft to join the conversation.

Denise tells the story of discovering — a decade later — that she hadn’t actually graduated due to a missing credit…and how a VHS-based child development class finally closed the loop. Sometimes the rough drafts of our lives really do come full circle.

This week, ask someone you love (a partner, a teenager, a friend) about their college expectations vs. their reality.
What did they imagine? What surprised them?
Let it open a conversation about identity, belonging, and the many paths into adulthood.