Insights revealed about strengths in navigational strategies yielded from a larger study on refugee-background college students prompted an examination of the same phenomena from the perspective of a high school refugee on her path to college. Htun, a high school senior and Karen refugee, faced repeated exclusion, resulting in her feeling silenced and/or silencing herself, which in turn excluded her from interactions related to school and school culture and thus valuable resources necessary for academic success. Htun's stories remind us that college readiness is not merely a collection of skills that can be measured; it is a social and cultural process, both of which stem from access to language and literacy processes.