As we turn our attention to the new academic year, Free Minds would once again like to thank the organizations whose financial generosity made our 2009-10 year possible. Special thanks go to the TG Public Benefit program and the Sooch Foundation for grants that supported two semesters of alumni programming and our successful recruitment of a new class. We also would like to thank our campus partners, the UT Humanities Institute and the Community College Leadership Program, for helping make this year's classes possible.

If you are interested in supporting Free Minds, you can find more information on our website.

In the past two weeks, our office doors have been opening at all hours of the day -- mornings, afternoons, evenings, weekends -- to welcome applicants for interviews. This year's applicants ranged in age from 19 to 65 and included referrals from the Housing Authority, Foundation Communities, St. Louise House, Austin Community College, Skillpoint Alliance, Goodwill, NOKOA, and The Villager. All qualified applicants were invited to our office for a reading level assessment and a one-on-one interview. Applicants got a chance to see the books that were used in past classes (King Lear, The Iliad, A Raisin in the Sun, American's Favorite Poems) and to read aloud and discuss a poem or selection from a play. That's the moment they started to get a sense of what it would mean to be a part of Free Minds.

When I started Free Minds in 2007, my son UsZee was four months old and I already had my three-year-old daughter Journee. At the time, I was living in South Austin in a one-bedroom apartment at a Foundation Communities property and making $8,000 a year. I had a 1987 Chevy Beretta that was on its last leg. It was a hard time.

When we began reading Plato's Republic in the Free Minds philosophy unit, I gained a confidence in myself that I didn't have before. UsZee would cry inconsolably with the childcare ladies, but I couldn't bear to miss class, so I would walk around in class nursing my infant son discussing the Thrasymacus question and the idea of the nature of justice. At home I found myself cutting off the TV and reading The Republic to my kids. I would try and explain it to my mom, my brother, random people on the street, whoever would listen. I loved it. It was like I let myself in on this big secret: I really am smart.

I don't necessarily believe it was the content of The Republic that changed me, but more the realization that I could conquer a book like that. I loved being in a seminar environment with people like me, working-class folks, discussing the book and having these interesting conversations about Socrates, feeling affirmed by my peers as well as my professor, Matthew Daude Laurents. I love philosophy, and I love to think about ideas and pick them apart to the atomic level. It is a luxury I really hadn't tapped into until then.

Reading this book inspired me to go on to read other challenging pieces. It pushed me to always pay attention and to continue to develop my analysis on my perspective of the world we live in. As Socrates says to Glaucon when discussing the Allegory of the Cave, "the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already." I know it has always been there. This experience just brought it out of me.

Kellee Coleman (Free Minds '08) is finishing her associate's degree at Austin Community College (ACC).