I come from LaGrange, Maine — a small town in the kind of place people don’t write about, unless it’s hunting season or the snow won’t let up. My father is a third-generation truck driver, hauling wood just like his father and grandfather did. My mother is a kitchen cook at the local high school, waking up before the sun to feed other people’s kids.

Needless to say, we didn’t talk about Ivy Leagues or internships at dinner. We talked about brake lines, school lunch menus and getting by with what you had. And still, through a mixture of persistence, luck and people who believed in me, I made it to college.

Later, I earned my MPH, and now I’m a fourth-year medical student — someone who hopes to return home to care for communities like the one I came from. But I am not here to toot my own horn, I’m here because I am pissed off.

None of what I’ve accomplished thus far would’ve happened without the Pell Grant.

That’s why Congress’ recent move to gut the program feels like more than a policy mistake — it feels like a betrayal. In May, the House passed a budget bill that would raise the minimum course load required for full-time Pell eligibility, cut the maximum award and completely eliminate support for students attending less than half-time.

If these rules had been in place when I was applying to college, I wouldn’t be here writing this.

Most of the time, the kids taking fewer than 15 credits are doing so because they’re working a full-time job on the side. Yup, they don’t have their parents’ fortunes to fall back on, a concept that might be difficult for those in Congress to understand. That kind of balancing act is common among low-income and first-generation students. But under this new plan, it will disqualify those deserved kids automatically.

According to the National College Attainment Network, over 1.4 million students stand to lose Pell Grant access under the proposal. These are not kids coasting through college — they are students making impossible choices, often at community colleges and regional schools, doing everything they can to keep going.

This proposal doesn’t trim waste. It slashes futures.

And all the while, it preserves hundreds of billions in tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. It reinforces the message that if you inherit a trust fund, you get a boost — but if you inherit a timecard and student loans, you’re on your own.

The Pell Grant was never a handout. It was a lifeline. It was the thread that tied possibility to my name. It’s the reason a logger and a lunch lady can have a son who can grow up to become a doctor or a public health worker or whatever they work hard enough to attain.

Without the Pell Grant, that future will be lost for thousands of students who haven’t yet had their shot.

Let me be the evidence: investment in students like me works. We go on to serve, to give, to return to the very places we came from. What we need is not a tighter gate, but a longer table. What Congress and the current administration are attempting to accomplish is all about politics, not the folks they were elected to serve in the first place.

Don’t close the door behind me. Keep it open for those coming next.