“A very good friend of mine, who would go to the ends of the Earth for this organization, or for anyone who might be at a point in his/her life where they needed a helping hand, asked if I would consider sharing my most recent post from my personal page with all of you wonderful people here. Before I do that, here’s a little bit about myself: I’m originally from Sacramento, California, the youngest of three. Today I call Colorado home. I am a retired Army Veteran who served for 20 years. I did three combat tours in Iraq and two combat tours in Afghanistan. Other overseas tours include two peacekeeping missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and one tour in Kosovo. I started out as a printing press operator, then I moved over to the Intelligence field. Duty stations include: Fort Shafter, Hawaii, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Katterbach Kaserne, Germany, Fort Carson, Colorado, and Joint Base Elmendorf – Richardson, Alaska.
If there is even a small benefit to anyone here in doing so, it would be a privilege to share a little bit of myself here and my ongoing pursuit of higher education, from my most recent post:
“Even though I already had a good idea what my final grade was going to be for my last class, I just received the official notification about an hour ago. 98.5% A
I’ve been asked a few times: why now? What suddenly made you decide to sign up for college classes?
The answer is quite simple, really: it’s because I wasn’t smart enough or disciplined enough to do it when I was younger. That is the cold, hard truth of the matter. School bored me like nothing else. I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in education & learning. I believed it to be completely useless, worthless, & a total waste of time. I actually thought I could get by in life by doing the absolute bare minimum & achieve the same results as my better educated counterparts. And yes, I really was stupid enough to believe in the illusion I had created for myself. And after joining the Army, I thought I had it made. Why should I trouble myself with school now? With my Military knowledge & experience, I can do anything I want when I get out.
Or so I thought. But such would not turn out to be the case.
In time, I would figure out just how completely wrong I was in my line of thought. I took a class here, a class there, but I still wasn’t taking things seriously enough to go the distance. It wasn’t until I was near the end of the Army Line that I came to the stark realization that I just didn’t quite have the right knowledge to continue on in the ‘real world’. I had hoped I might find the right opportunity with the right person that could set me up for long-term success, but such was not meant to be. If I was going to ‘take it to the next level’, it was going to have to be ME that would have to take that next, bold step into creating a new beginning for myself.
Now that I have a few classes under me (eight thus far), I’m seeing that it really isn’t all that tough, & I’m even finding myself enjoying the learning experience for the most part. I have also been challenged with some of the course curriculum, more than I expected, but I still managed to get through it.
Back when I was younger, if anyone would have told me that I would make straight A’s when I was finally ready for college, I would have thought that person would absolutely need to be committed for having such ridiculously optimistic thoughts about me.
I also felt there was something else in my life I needed to do. I suddenly felt a strong need to finish something I had started so many years earlier.
And here I am, almost halfway into finishing the degree program I signed up for last November. If all goes well, I should be a college graduate by this time next year.
It’s a great feeling to be where I am now, albeit, at a place long since overdue.
And yet, everything just feels so right…………”
Posted by David.
We learn from school. We learn from our mistakes. Either way… it’s worth learning.
