“Tweet, Tweet, a little birdie told me you got the scholarship” It all began with hope on a bright sunny day. An email that changed the course of my life. I set foot in the world of academia with a utopic image of it being a place where great minds gathered to understand and better the world. I left having realized everything I thought to be true was an illusion. This is a true story about a young Asian scholar in the highly capitalistic, industrialized, colonial, and patriarchal walls of higher education, that shifts through hope, inner dialogue, challenge, loss, abuse, and letting go. This is a story about a journey that pushed me to realize that freedom, as it is told, is simply an illusion.