When it comes to bullying, Jessica Brookshire believes what goes around comes around.
Brookshire, graduate student in Spanish, hopes to teach children this lesson through the foundation she started in 2009, Kids Against Ridicule, Meanness and Aggression.
"You have to understand that every decision you make is going to come back to you," Brookshire said. "The way life works, it comes back tenfold. If you choose to ignore your teachers and you choose to hurt your classmates, one day you're going to find you're in a situation you don't want to be in."
Brookshire, 23, said her epiphany to start KARMA happened when a girl at Smiths Station Intermediate School asked her what to do when other students are mean to her.
"I said, 'You have to kill them with kindness. You be the nicest person in the room so it makes them look foolish to be mean to you,'" Brookshire said. "And she said, 'If I was as pretty as you, they wouldn't make fun of me.' My heart just broke. I realized that I had blocked out all these memories."
Brookshire said she faced extreme amounts of bullying in school.
"I would fake illness so I didn't have to go to school," she said, "and when I did have to go to school, I really would get sick from anxiety from being around my classmates."
The effects of being bullied followed her to college, Brookshire said.
"I was afraid to walk in crowded rooms by myself," Brookshire said. "Walking into a classroom late wasn't even an option. If I was late to class, I skipped it because I was scared of being made fun of."
Through KARMA, Brookshire has spoken to more than 70,000 students at school assemblies. She recently spoke to the sixth- and seventh-graders at Drake Middle School.
"Jessica will talk to kids on a level where they really get it and understand it," said Sandy Resa, assistant vice principal at Drake. "It was a really great experience for our children."
Resa said bullying isn't a major problem at Drake.
"Many times it's teasing," Resa said, "but she did a great job of explaining the difference. If it makes somebody uncomfortable, it's bullying."
Brookshire said victims of bullying generally either implode or explode.
"When they explode, they lash out with acts of violence," Brookshire said. "When they implode, they hurt themselves, which is when you get kids that will cut themselves, eating disorders, anxiety, panic attacks and suicide."
Brookshire recently shared her story at a town hall meeting in Montgomery.
After she spoke, a 14-year-old girl approached Brookshire backstage and pulled up the sleeves of her shirt.
"Her arms were just mutilated," said DiDi Henry, public relations director for KARMA. "It was horrible. The girl said she was contemplating suicide because of the bullying she had gone through."
Henry said the girl is now going through counseling to help her cope with the pain of being bullied.
"It's overwhelming," Brookshire said. "I always say that out of a thousand kids at an assembly, if one kid listens to me or one kid feels better or one kid is talked down from suicidal thoughts or one kid changes the way they talk to somebody, I've accomplished enough."
After she earns her master's from Auburn, Brookshire said she plans to go to law school.
"We've forgotten how to be nice to each other," Henry said. "Jessica is school-by-school, student-by-student, teaching them the value of human kind again."
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