“You Aren’t Cut Out For College”

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.”

Moments in United States History

 I was just thinking about the moments in United States History that help to shape and define who we are. One such moment occurred today 25 years ago (January 28, 1986). Like the disaster of September 11^th, 2001 or the day fateful day President Kennedy was assassinated (November 22^nd, 1963) people remember the details of their own personal lives rather than those whom were directly affected by such historical occurrences .People tend to remember things like where they were, what they were doing, watching or listening to and how they felt the rest of that day week, month or for some years later. Their lives have been forever changed because of it.  

January 28, 1986 was one such day for me. On this day I was eight years old and sitting in Room D-4 of Williamson Elementary School in Rancho Cordova California. I was in Mr. Tuttle’s 4^th grade class, but Mr. Tuttle was absent that day and we had a substitute teacher that day.  We had a substitute teacher that day because Mr. Tuttle was at Cape Canaveral Florida at the Kennedy Space Center watching firsthand the launching of the Space Shuttle Challenger. I like millions of other school children sat in a dark classroom excited to watch the launch which was being broadcast to classrooms around the country because of the presence on the crew of Christa McAuliffe, the first member of the Teacher in Space Project. Prior to the launch NASA had distributed educational materials to schools across the country in preparation for the launch and subsequent broadcast from Kennedy Space center as well as the Shuttle itself while in orbit. NASA also distributed an unprecedented number of tickets to view the launch in person to educators around the country and Mr. Tuttle, my fourth grade teacher was one of the lucky recipients of such tickets.

As the final countdown continued the excitement in the room and the country built. I am sure I was counting down silently in my head along with television commentator 10- 9- 8- 7- 6- 5- 4- 3- 2- 1, ignition Lift off! The disaster occurred when Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida, United States, at 11:38 a.m. EST. I sat and with the country took a deep breath and tried to sort out what I was seeing. The television was quickly turned off and the substitute teacher had the grim task of trying to explain to a room full of eight and nine year-olds what they had just witnessed.



That day President Ronald Reagan was scheduled to deliver his annual “State of the Union” speech to a nationally televised joint session of congress, instead he delivered what I and many others believe to be one of his finest addresses. Seated at his desk in the Oval office rather than the lectern in the House chamber. In his speech President Regan spoke to me when he said: “And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.”

From then on I had an interest in the Space program; still to this day I love to watch the broadcast of the Shuttle launch. And to this day I hold my breath as do so many others as the beautiful shuttles lifts off the launch pad clears the tower and rockets to the unforgiving environment known simply as “space”. I still have a hard time turning the broadcast off until the shuttle has reached orbit and accomplished the hardest part of a shuttle mission, the launch. But the experience of that fourth grade class room that January morning 25 years ago forever changed my life, and I am thankful for those brave men and women who undertook the challenge of the space program. So it is with pride, joy and thankfulness that I honor in my own little way the lives of the Challenger Astronauts who as President Regan put it “slipped the surly bonds of earth'' to ``touch the face of God.''

Full Text of President Regan’s Address to the Nation on the Explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger, January 28, 1986 http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/12886b.htm

I was just thinking about President Lincoln as his birthday is fast approaching and he is one of my favorite people. So I thought I would share a part of a speech given by President Lincoln in 1864. This is a speech that allows Lincoln to share his thoughts on Liberty by using a parable. I think it is quite profound and relevant in today’s world of fighting for and touting for personal “Freedoms” and Liberties.

LECTURE ON LIBERTY
ADDRESS GIVEN AT THE SANITARY FAIR IN BALTIMORE,
APRIL 18, 1864.

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and
the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all
declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean
the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to
do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while
with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please
with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two,
not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name,
liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the
respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names--
liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the
sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces
him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the
sheep was a black one. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not
agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same
difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the
North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold
the process by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke
of bondage hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by
others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the
people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty, and
thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf's dictionary
has been repudiated.

Abraham Lincoln

Spring 2011

This was going to be the last semester before I received my Associates degree; however it looks like it may not. I will need to finish one more history class in order to graduate. I AM ok with this because even post-graduation I still will be attending SCC for two more semesters to finish all of my lower division course work for CSUS. It is just much cheaper to do it this way. Today it did sting a little when I met with my councilor but it’s all good!

I try to be original and think out oh the box but I was inspired today when I saw a young man having his photo taken next to the large SCC sign in a cap and gown. I thought it was a great photo location and look forward to taking my graduation photo there as well. Graduation and the photo will be the capstone on a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long community college career. (One long for each year I have been at this). I was looking at a face book post a year ago an dfound this post from the day i began school again for the umteenth time:

'Well the first day of school was not bad! In fact I enjoyed myself. One of my biggest fears was that I would be the old man in my class but my humanities teacher may has me beat by at least 40 maybe 50 years. I did feel weird when the 16 year old sat down next to me in comm. Now if they could only get bigger desks! January 19, 2010 at 9:06pm via iPhone'

I am still not the oldest person in and much more comfortable, successful and optimistic about college and education as a whole. I am always willing to share my advice and support to anyone who is considering returning to school or beginning school. One of the best choices I have made in my life.

This semester I am taking two history courses, intermediate algebra, and s theater art class, if maintain my GPA I should be able to accomplish my goal of graduating with honors. Pretty good job for boy who wasn't cut out for college!

January 17, 2011

I was just thinking…

How every time my boys leave, after spending time with us, how quite our house is. I often hear how some parents yearn for the peace and quite of children sleeping or the stillness when they are away, but for me when I come home and the house is so still and quite it makes me miss them so much more.  I miss the laughing, pounding of boys wrestling and yes even the arguing between brothers. I love being a father and a dad. I also love seeing my boys grow up into fine young men. It was a wonderful birthday gift for us all to be in the temple together last Saturday. We were able to do baptisms and feel the wonderful sprit in Gods house. I love to do new things with my boys, one reason why is that it is so fun to experience things for the first time through their eyes, an example of this is the first time children go to Disneyland, I used to think that there was nothing better than seeing the look in children’s eyes the first time they walk down main street or the first time a little girl runs up to her favorite princess (most likely Belle). But nothing can compare to the look in my boys faces and the sprit I felt as I saw them walk into the House of the Lord and perform the Lord’s work. My heart was and is so full of love and appreciation for that experience. I am also so proud to know that my two boys live their lives in way that they are worthy to stand in holy places and feel their Saviors love so abundantly. I am blessed, and love my boys.  

But, Most of all I love the noises of boys.

I was (also) just thinking…

How wonderful it is to have a chance to serve those who have served me in the past so well. My wife and I were so well taken care of by dear friends of ours who have recently fallen on hard times. It has been such a blessing to now have the chance to offer them our service, love and support. As they have taught us through their excellent examples. As I write this my wife is preparing to spend a day at the hospital to support, encourage and simply just be there for a woman who through her example and love has helped mold and form my wife into the wonderful woman that she is today, Sandra and I now have the opportunity to repay a small portion of the service Love and support she has provided us. I love and appreciate  you both Sandra and Sharron.