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On July 17th, the air quality in Virginia was so bad that Nottoway Correctional Center cancelled outside recreation for the entire day. Even so, I still had to march outside and attend my computer literacy class. Each step dragged me down, and the toxic air gave me a headache. One so bad that I stepped inside the Vocation building and sat down. The headache eventually subsided but I had to head back outside in an hour and a half. When I finally retreated to my housing unit, I

The 4th of July is celebrated by all, even those incarcerated. However, when there is no central air in one's prison facility, celebrations are forgotten as those in a cell do whatever they can to ward off the unbearable heat. During the first week of July, the heat index was one hundred degrees in Virginia, but inside Nottoway Correction Center, it was much higher. Each housing unit holds 64 incarcerated men, housed in a claustrophobic cell, where they utilized '12 inch fans

When the start of the summer semester of college began in Nottoway Correction Center, my world changed. I initially signed up for four classes: History, Computer Literacy, Religion and Quantitative Reasoning. The workload would be a heavy one, but Religion was dropped due to something outside of my control. Even so, three classes in prison was hectic already, but when I sat down and learned about Quantitative Reasoning, hectic was an understatement. Every student that I spoke