In just a few short days I will have a college degree! It took me a long time to get here; Not because I kept flunking out of classes - as a matter of fact, I'll be graduating with Honors (possibly even double honors - just waiting on those last couple grades to come in)! The problem was that I had little faith in the educational system prior to going into it. I was a kid who literally slept through the last couple years of high school. I could do the work, but it was boring, and I lacked the encouragement and drive to move forward.
I was interested in learning CAD right out of high school, but I couldn't get any help going to a tech school. My biological father just wanted me to work in the factory along side him and my step-dad just wanted me to find some steady work. I ended up working in a few places right after high school, including a couple auto parts assembly factories. I joined the Marines in 1995, planning to make a career of it. Unfortunately, during the last couple years in the Marines I had complications with asthma and had to move on.
While in the Marines, my friend, Joe Flores Jr. (RIP), introduced me to Windows 95, the StarCraft video game, and the "World Wide Web". Prior to that I had some experience with Apple Basic in high school and didn't think much of it, but this really interested me and I went out and bought a new computer shortly after and got internet hooked up at home. That was 1999. Half-Life had recently come out, so that was the first computer game that I bought for my new machine. I spent hours at the computer, digging into things that few people seemed to care about. At one point, while my wife was watching one of those young adult shows about kids in college, one character in the show asked another why he was building a website. The other guy said, "To justify having this computer." So, guess what, I decided I needed to go learn about making websites.
Fast forward a few years. I was working along side some college graduates as a Network Computer Operator and eventually, Tech Support Rep. (Yeah, that still seems backwards to me, but that place thought Tech Support was a move up.) Being completely self taught, I was convinced at that point that college gave no benefits. Although I eventually took a few computer programming courses, having two kids caused me to stop taking classes and focus on family and paying bills. In 2006, I was ready for a slight change in career and I went to work for a small web development company for PHP programming. Again, a field where I was primarily self taught.
In 2008, I realized that my G.I. Bill from the Marines was running out before I'd have a chance to use it. I enjoyed what I was doing, but money was tight, which of course added stress. The company that I was working for worked with lots of colleges and the company owner was a teacher, actually everyone else had a college degree. I got quite a bit of encouragement to go to college while I was there and eventually decided to get back to school full time. Unfortunately, that eventually forced me to choose between my job and my degree, because I was a very slow reader, and since I finally was motivated to learn, I spent hours up late at night studying. It was a very difficult decision, but with only one more year of financial aid coming from the Marines I felt that I had to use those resources and had faith that it would be worth it in the end.
So this is a big step for me. Of course, it wasn't quite as abrupt as taking a giant leap up a step - getting through college was a gradual process, one that increased my self confidence throughout the process. It also gave me some experience in some things that I really liked and some things that I didn't like so much. The thing that surprised me was how I hated some of the classes that I thought I'd like and I really enjoyed some classes that I had previously dreaded. I only wish now that I had done this years ago.
