This week has been an especially challenging one for me as I have felt very overwhelmed with school, I know this always happens to me in the spring as daylight savings time comes and it is lighter later and MLB’s spring training is in full swing(I LOVE baseball). I have the hardest time going to and then concentrating in class. I think I just love the spring; I intentionally avoid the baseball field at SCC because I know if there playing I WILL skip class. So tonight when got home I needed a pickup me up. So I read an essay I wrote last semester in one of my most scariest classes English Writing (I took this class four times before passing it last semester). I thought I would share it. Here it is:
Tyrone Brown Jr.
October 28, 2010
Essay #3
Project #4
“You Aren’t Cut Out For College”
Before I had graduated from high school, I was ready to make my mark on the world. I was ready because I had experience. I spent my junior and senior year in the Regional Occupational Program specializing in sports medicine. In the end, I earned a certificate which enabled me to become a physical therapist aid. In the eyes of the ROP program, I was a success story. I had attended and graduated from their program, and I was ready to work as a Physical Therapist Aid. I could support myself, my future family, and be successful even though I hadn’t yet graduated from high school. In the eyes of my guidance counselor and the ROP program, I was not cut out for college. I was perfect for learning a trade at a simplified technical school and work in that field. If I did advance, I could attend another technical school and fulfill some other entry level position created for those of us who just aren’t cut out for a college.
In the fall of 1997, I attended my first college class at American River College. At the time, I wanted to become a Physical Therapist or Athletic Trainer for a professional sports team. I had spent the last year putting my ROP certificate to work making little more than minimum wage cleaning up after the Physical Therapist’s Assistant who carried out the actual physical therapy exercises and modalities the Physical Therapist had prescribed. I was at the bottom. I quickly learned that the bottom was not where I wanted to be. I decided to try college. I dropped out of college before my first exam. I liked the idea of being on a college campus as a college student, but the structure of classes and long lectures made me feel like I was back in high school. I toughed it out for a few weeks, but eventually gave in and dropped out. Shortly after I dropped out of school, I was married and had a son on the way. I was soon employed as a supervisor at an amusement park and made what I thought was pretty good money. I wasn’t cut out for college.
I was now a husband and a father. I was required to provide and care for two other human beings. With the help of public assistance and my supervisory job at the amusement park, I was barely making it. We were just squeaking by. I was soon laid off from my job and out of work. My wife and I received more public assistance from our church, our family and our friends. I knew I needed to better myself and figured education was the only road. I wasn’t cut out for college, so I enrolled in High Tech Medical Institute. You may have seen the commercials. They are usually on during the day or late at night, generally the times when people who aren’t cut out for college are at home watching The Jerry Springer Show or Maury. I was soon enrolled and found myself doing well in my classes. I was on my way to earning my vocational associate’s degree and becoming a Medical Assistant. In just 18 months, I was finished and working in a doctor’s office. However, I was still barely making ends meet with the help of public assistance, and I also had some new debt in the form of student loans. I figured this was life for those of us not cut out for college.
I worked as a medical assistant making a little more than I was making before and my wife was working too. She had taken a home study course and was now a medical transcriptionist. For the most part, we were off public assistance. With our higher income I thought that things could be so much better if I just went back to college and finished my degree. I felt that we could live off of my wife’s income as well and take out more student loans to cover me not working. I enrolled in and began taking classes at Sacramento City College. I tried to be successful but struggled in the remedial classes. I began to really believe that I wasn’t cut out for college. I lasted until the second disbursement of my student loan was picked up from the controller’s office and deposited in my bank account. I wasn’t cut out for college.
This cycle occurred several more times. Whenever life seemed to go poorly, I felt I wasn’t educated enough and I had a greater desire to finish school. I would enroll in classes and I would go to class. I would try hard and sometimes I would succeed, but for the most part, I would end up dropping out. My wife and I divorced and I moved back home with my parents. I got a job that allowed me to go to school full time. This time it was going to work. It had to work. I was working and going to class. I was doing homework and my grades improved. I then received a job that would pay me more than I had ever made before. I promptly dropped my classes and began working as an office manager for a drug testing lab. I was making good money. I made enough to move out of my parent’s home and into an apartment with a couple of my buddies. Things were going well for me without a college education. I guess I wasn’t cut out for college.
I worked for the drug testing lab for a couple of years, and then I worked in the automobile industry selling for Mercedes-Benz. I was successful and making great money, I began dating and eventually married my current wife. When I asked her father for permission to marry her, he spoke to me quite a bit about finishing school and the importance of a good education. I half heartedly said I would finish school and that ended our conversation about education. My wife would bring it up now and then but I would justify not going to school by the amount of money I made in the automobile business and how comfortably I thought we were living. I received a lot of advice from many friends on returning to school and it never did sink in. Eventually, the bubble burst and the automobile industry took a big hit. I worked many different jobs: I worked for a consulting and advertising firm in the auto business. I worked as a ramp agent for a major airline company, as well as a few others. I could not find what I loved to do, and never thought about returning to college; despite my friends’, family’s, and wife’s suggestions, recommendations and prodding. I knew I wasn’t cut out for college.
Then it happened. I took a job working for United Cerebral Palsy. (UCP) The only requirement they had was that I could lift up to fifty pounds and pass a background check. I knew I could lift fifty pounds and assumed I could pass the background check. I became an Instructional assistant at Orange Grove Adult School, a school for adults who are severely handicapped. I had never worked in this type of setting and it was completely foreign to me, but I fell in love with it. I soon wanted to become a teacher in adult education. I researched and found the requirements for an adult education single subject teaching credential because I wanted to make this my career. I learned it would require me to attend college or spend five years working in the field to meet the education or experience requirements. I decided to go for the experience. I wasn’t cut out for college.
Two years into my five year experience requirement, the economy crashed, and the California budget made unprecedented cuts to education. Adult education took a huge hit. I realized that adult education may never exist as it did. I knew becoming a teacher in adult education was not the best choice. I also knew that I needed to improve myself and that I was becoming stagnant. I knew that the only way I could advance was through a college education. I had to face the past eighteen years of teacher, guidance counselors, friends and most of all myself telling me I wasn’t cut out for college. So, I got online and looked at my transcript. I saw all the “W’s” for withdrawals. I saw the “F’s” for failed. My grade point average was a miniscule and laughable 1.706. My academic progress percentage was equally laughable at 40%. I had been academically dismissed and didn’t even know it. I wasn’t allowed to go to college without a petition to the Dean. In the petition I had to meet with counselors and provide some sort of compelling argument why I should be allowed to re-enter college. I had to face up to failed attempts of the past and justify how and why this time would be different. By the time it was all completed and submitted to the dean, it was too late to enroll for the semester. I would have to wait until the spring semester to enroll, if my petition was approved. Would the Dean think I was cut out for college?
Finally the letter came from the Dean and I was approved for reentry and could enroll for the spring semester as long as I showed satisfactory progress and raised my GPA above a 2.00. I was excited and nervous. The doubt began to creep back into my head, “Was I cut out for college?” I didn’t know but I was going to find out. I enrolled in 14 units and in January I would be back in college. I worked hard. I studied and read. I didn’t miss a class. I tracked every point and assignment as if it were a blue chip stock. I could tell you with one look at my spread sheet my grade in any one of my four classes. I was determined to succeed. As the semester went on, my confidence swelled and so did my grades. By the end of that semester I had two A’s and two B’s and the highest GPA I had ever received, a whopping 3.538! Something else appeared on my transcript that I had never seen before. At the bottom, underneath my cumulative GPA and progress percentage, it read “Highest Honors.”
Why was I cut out for college after all these years? How is it that I am now three semesters in and I KNOW that I am cut out for this and that I belong? Not only can I pass my classes, but I can excel. I think it is the result of three things. The first is maturity. Looking back at the failed attempts, I was nowhere near mature enough to be an effective student. My lack of maturity in high school played a big part in it as well. It was what brought about the lack of support offered by my teachers and guidance counselors. I didn’t give them any reason to believe that I was cut out for college and they simply offered me the best solution they could see for me. The other reason I am successful in college today is that I was able to expunge the negative rhetoric that told me “I wasn’t cut out for college.” Until I did that, nothing would have changed. There is still time when the rhetoric creeps into my head and I feel like I am overwhelmed and not cut out for this. The third reason is my wife. She encourages me and celebrates my efforts. My success makes her very happy and I love to make her happy.
My road in education has been a difficult one, but it is one that I am thrilled to continue. I know that there is still a long road ahead, but I’m excited for what the future holds. So, in the end, when that little voice inside my head tells me that “I’m not cut out for college,” I’ll simply log on to “e-services,” look at the notation under the spring 2010 semester that reads, “Highest Honors.”
