In this article, the author describes lessons she learned from graduate school in the Midwest. All her life, her skin color meant nothing to her. It was just a part of who she was, nothing more, nothing less. She knows she is stubborn. She does not give up easily. She knows she loves to read, she loves to write, and that nothing is more important to her than learning. Her graduate school experience in the Midwest was just that, a learning experience. She learned she was the wrong color. She learned silence is best in a predominately white institution. She learned that in the Midwest, her voice was the voice of her color, especially when she was the only person of "color" in the classroom. She learned how much she could take and also how much she could not take. She learned she should not have left the south. She learned how to be silent. She learned she was caught between two worlds: (1) her people; and (2) her ambitions. She learned she did not fit in with her family anymore; she learned she did not fit in the ivory tower; and then she learned she did not fit in the Indian community because she did not carry a card, nor was she born and raised on a reservation. It has taken the author almost two years to regain her identity. She teaches now and has her life again in the south.