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Peter's School, she avoided the pitfalls of urban living. In fact, while she was clear-eyed about what was going on around her, she says the drug transactions she saw going down rarely involved local minorities, but more often Links of London Red and White and Black Valentine Bracelet suburbanites. "I was growing up in a place that was home. I didn't know it bad until I heard other people talking about. I had to defend my city, and I'm always defending New Haven," she says. She paraphrases a line from a rap song that sums up her attitude toward her environment, "It's not where you're from, but where you're at." The world of opera has nurtured her, and New Haven has been the springboard, says Jackson, for providing many of those incredible opportunities: her 2003 selection to travel with Oprah Winfrey to South Africa, where she met Nelson Mandela (an experience she calls "like winning the lottery"), that Links of London with a recommendation from her Coop Arts & Humanities High School English Links of London Blue Friendship Bracelet Jane Marshall; or being selected for the famed Houston Grand Opera Studio or being asked by Yale School of Music Dean Robert Blocker to sing at the Yale Tercentennial celebration. Jackson's co-stars for the concert are people who have meant the most to her over the years here, where she started her vocal career as an 11-year-old at NMS and the ACES Links of London Wimbledon 2009 Friendship bracelet Center for the Arts. She wants it to be "a festive occasion so the people in the audience see my favorite people." Jackson is a deep thinker when it comes to understanding the karma of her life experiences. She says it took her years to process why she was selected for the Oprah trip, calling it "divine intervention," because it came at a time, that despite her achievements, she felt "the person inside me was not really radiating outward."