Acknowledgments

This book exists because of the people who walked alongside me, long before I understood where the road was leading. To my family, who received an overnight decision with nothing but faith and prayer, and who have carried both ever since, thank you for a foundation that never wavered. To the instructors who took apart everything I thought I knew about discipline and built something sturdier in its place, thank you for a strictness that, in hindsight, was its own form of care. And to my fellow Class of 2026 Intake One, who crawled through the same mud, stood in the same queues, and studied through the same anxious nights, thank you for a camaraderie that turned a personal ordeal into a shared one, and made it survivable.

This story belongs, in part, to all of you.