“I would say that the hardest thing was adjusting to the other children,” Donaldson said. “Their priorities were much different. I think it’s because I grew up in a community where I feel Jamaica is very much community-based. I knew all of my neighbors. If we needed anything, you could get anything from your neighbors. I could be walking home from school and I could just sleep at my neighbor’s house and they will tell my mom. ‘I don’t want anything to happen to her. We’ll just get her ready for school and you will see her tomorrow.’ They would give me food, everything. In America, it’s more of an individualistic-base. Everyone is for themselves and I wasn’t used to that. I felt very much alone. Also in class, I had to read out loud a lot and people would make fun of my accent. Some would call me ‘Bob Marley.’ Every time they would ask me to read something, I just wouldn’t want to because I had the thickest accent. That was the hardest to get used to. It was when I was in middle school, trying to understand what that process was because I was in high school when I was in Jamaica. When you are 12-years-old, you go to high school. I went to Lawrence Tavern Primary School and then Holy Child Hood High School in Jamaica. Just the dynamics of school and just how people were kind of all for themselves. It shocked me. It was a culture shock.”

It was at Reagan High that Donaldson enrolled in the PEOPLE Program, which was an opportunity that she almost didn’t learn about.

“The woman who got me involved in PEOPLE was Tashi,” Donaldson said. “She was a PEOPLE student and I was walking down the hall. She gave me a tour of the school. She was basically my first friend that I met at Reagan. I saw her and she said, ‘I’m printing out my resume for an internship for PEOPLE Program for UW-Madison.’ And my focus was always to go to college. My mom always said that I needed to go to college. She was a valedictorian, but she got pregnant with me after high school, so she didn’t get there. The deadline was that next night. I talked to my guidance counselor and he said, ‘If you bring it tomorrow morning, we can get you in.’ I applied. The first question was, Name something that goes unnoticed about you.’ It was similar to the essay question they have for UW-Madison. I wrote it and I got in.”

The PEOPLE Program proved to be more of Donaldson’s cultural style where everyone was supportive of each other and not just out for themselves.

“I had a huge PEOPLE family,” Donaldson said. “They are just the most supportive people I have ever come across. It’s just amazing how they are just there for you no matter what. And I love them for that.”

Donaldson loved the six-week summer PEOPLE session she spent on the UW-Madison campus after her freshman year.

“We were in Witte, popularly known as ‘S***ty Witte,’” Donaldson said with a chuckle. “Now they call it Pretty Witte. When we went there, I was pretty shy, but I met some of my best friends from PEOPLE. And the first two weeks, it was just a bonding experience. We would go on State Street. At the time, we thought State Street was like an outlet, something like Chicago Outlets. So we were very much excited. We felt grown. So PEOPLE Program gave us boarding rooms. In Witte, we had our own roommate. We were freshmen going into sophomore year and they were treating us like we were college students, like we were Badgers. They were conditioning us in how to be other than first generation, coming in like we don’t know anything. They were basically prepping us even if we didn’t get into UW-Madison. I remember they would have ACT prep. When I took it, I scored so low. Over time, my score increased. We got free ACT lessons. We got free tutoring. We went to travel to many colleges for free. We had a bunch of retreats for PEOPLE Program. I was able to make some of my best friends. After class at the end of the day, we would go on field trips and skating rinks. A teacher knew how to play piano and we would meet in the basement of Witte and have dancing lessons. We had everything that our parents couldn’t afford to give us.”

PEOPLE was basically preparing them for college, academically and emotionally. During her third summer, Donaldson did a law internship because she dreamed of becoming a lawyer.

“I was just 16-years-old having a law internship,” Donaldson said. “I met lawyers. We did a mock trial. It was just very eye-opening for me. And it made me want to study law coming into college. I’m just surprised that I didn’t have to pay for any of that. All I had to do was show up and want to be there.”

Donaldson entered UW-Madison as a PEOPLE Scholar in the fall of 2019. And that first semester was a great collegiate experience.

“When I had my first year of college, it was really fun,” Donaldson recalled. “Outside of PEOPLE, there was an MLC floor in Witte. Although I didn’t live there — I lived in Chadbourne — all of my friends were there. And the MLC, the multicultural learning center, was basically all the kids weren’t white. It was a safe space for everyone. There were some white kids on the floor. But it was mainly people of color. That was our safe space and outside of PEOPLE, that is where I would go if I wasn’t at the PEOPLE office. That gave me much more comfortability because I was suffering from Imposter Syndrome. I would feel like being on campus, there is a lot of racism to deal with, so that’s not the best part. But in dealing with that, that is where the MLC would come and protect you. They would talk to you to see if you needed help. The fact is freshman year, it was pretty good. I did well.”

But it was during her second semester that the bottom started falling out of her collegiate career. First there was the pandemic in March 2020, which physically closed down the campus, isolating Donaldson from the direct support of her PEOPLE family. And then her Aunt Edna, the woman who raised her, died in Jamaica. Donaldson was stuck in Wisconsin.

“I had such a deep bond with her,” Donaldson recalled. “She took care of me for 12 years. When she died, I lost it. And I damn near flunked out my sophomore year. I didn’t know that I was experiencing depression. I didn’t know any of this, so I chose to fool myself. No one knew about this. And I finally opened up to PEOPLE and they were like, ‘De’Asia, you need to talk to us.’ They were very much concerned. PEOPLE did not let me escape them. They were there regardless, even when I had my darkest time. Outside of PEOPLE, PEOPLE was still there.”

Donaldson’s deep depression also made her vulnerable to the negative racial attitudes that other students had.

“I just felt like I wasn’t good enough to be here,” Donaldson recalled. “I stopped going to classes. I was not eating. When I went to classes, I felt like, ‘Look at this girl. She’s the one didn’t come to class.’ Some of my teachers were understanding, but not all of them. They were like, ‘You have to come to class and you have to make it up. I don’t care.’ That made me not go to class. Not going to class, I failed that whole semester. And that made me feel like I was very stupid and not worthy to be here. And I was always the only Black girl in my class. It made me feel, ‘I am stupid. I am dumb’ It just wasn’t very good self-talk. That’s what I meant by Imposter Syndrome. But I didn’t know that. I was just grieving. I wasn’t being fair with myself. And ever since then, it really affected me, so I had to keep convincing myself that I was good enough.”

Donaldson would have to continue to keep those negative thoughts at bay because she ended up grieving for the rest of her UW-Madison career as loved ones died in Jamaica and she couldn’t go back.