Being a 37 year-old college freshman I might have a different view of the world than most of my younger counterparts. Not only is there a significant age difference, but I have also experienced a tremendous amount of adversity that most of them most likely have not yet had the opportunity or time to experience at this point in their young lives. I have first-hand knowledge of the struggles that most people without a college education face. Now that I am in a position to attend college I am gladly taking advantage of the opportunity.
Throughout my younger years in school from kindergarten until the 7th grade I was a very capable and eager student who performed well in school; I had good grades and enjoyed learning. I was well behaved and never had any disciplinary problems before the 8th grade. That was the year it all changed.
That summer I had made new friends: the friends that I had from my childhood were no longer cool enough to hang-out with or relevant in my new life. My new friends were all older. Some were only a year or two older, and some were as much as twenty years older. However, with my new friends, I had started on a long journey down a deep-dark path; a path that my childhood friends never ventured.
At that time school was no longer important to me. My friends and I, those who were still enrolled in school, began cutting school. For me it was only occasionally at first because I was worried that my parents would find out and be angry with me. However, my parents were real lenient with me, and when they discovered that I was cutting out of school they were angry, but not as angry as I thought that they would be. By the time I entered the West Islip High School, which students started to attend in the 10th grade, I was regularly cutting class. On the days that I actually showed up for homeroom I would cut most of my classes: the classes I did show up for I would show up high on marijuana. This did not sit well with the school’s administration, by the end of the first half of the school year I was transferred to an alternative school for kids with disciplinary problems. I would not be allowed return to the West Islip High School.
My new school had students from various districts throughout the high schools located in Long Island’s Suffolk County. The school’s administration was run by the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES). The first year I attended the school it was located in the Patchogue-Medford High School. During the day the school facilitated the local students who were not in the alternative school program. However, in the evening the alternative school students would be bused in by the little yellow school buses. Being that there was not a tremendous amount of students that lived in each of the school districts the buses would pick the students up at their home and after school dropped them back off at their home; each bus contained only students from a specific town. School started at 2:30 in the afternoon and the school day ended at either 5:00pm or 7:00pm, depending on whether you had two classes or three. The classes were scheduled for an hour and fifteen minutes each: after the first class was our meal break, after the second class, if you did not go home, the students were given a fifteen minute smoke break. Finally, if you stayed for the last class the buses would leave the school around 7:20pm. If I went directly home I was always dropped off last and would arrive there close to 9:00pm. There was never any homework issued by any teacher in any subject, and best of all detention was non-existent. They would tell you that you had detention but never followed up on it.
This schedule fit well with my social life. The hours allowed me to hang-out all night with my friends, get drunk and high on marijuana, and still be able to wake-up in time for school. That was, of course, if I decided to go. At the alternative school they did not notify your parents if you did not attend or if you cut classes. On the days that I did go, I went mostly to hang-out and get high. The alternative school only utilized a small portion of the Patchogue-Medford High School; the rest of the school was “off-limits”. This made the other classrooms and particularly the auditorium the perfect place to go to smoke marijuana. During the warmer weather my entire bus would just walk in the front door and right out of the backdoor. All of us that were transferred out of the West Islip High School became friends of sort, and all of us smoked marijuana together.
At the end of my first year at the alternative school there was a big fight between different two school districts on the school’s grounds. Subsequent to the fight, the entire school was transferred to a BOCES campus located in the town of Bellport. In that school there were no empty rooms or parts of the school for us to hang-out in or get high. We would have to resort to walking into a wooded area to smoke our marijuana.
The alternative school was just a place to get high all day. We used to smoke marijuana on the little yellow school bus on the way to school and at times drink beer or liquor on the bus on the way to school. On the late bus there were usually only a few of us at a time. On one occasion we smoked a joint with a bus driver while he was driving us home. On another occasion one of our regular bus drivers bought my friend a twelve-pack of Budweiser for the bus ride home on his birthday. Yet, another bus driver, on her days off, used to drive us to the city to buy drugs: crack, marijuana, angel dust and heroin for her incarcerated boyfriend.
I wound up dropping out of school after an arrest for drug possession. The last grade I completed was the 9th grade. The next decade and a half were spent mostly within the confines of various jails and state prisons. My life was out of control and it appeared to me, and everyone that knew me, that I would continue this vicious cycle of remaining a drug addicted person whom would do life in prison on the installment plan. I have at this time 4 felony convictions as well as numerous misdemeanor convictions.
I was at a point in my life that I had done nothing productive for a very long time. My living conditions left much to be desired: I was homeless and living in a shelter, drug addicted, unemployed and under-educated. Then one day I heard about a program named the Manhattan Educational Opportunity Center (MEOC). I enrolled and built up my self-esteem by becoming certified by Microsoft in Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Then, by the urging of many of the staff at the MEOC, I applied for college and was accepted by CUNY. I also applied for financial aid and am receiving enough to accommodate all of my school expenses and have some left over.
The first day I attended the College Discovery orientation at the Borough of Manhattan Community College all of the students participating in orientation received a BMCC tee-shirt. The staff conducting orientation asked the participants to wear the shirt the next day, the second day of orientation. I heard many of my peers grumble at this, and the next day only a handful of us, me included, actually wore their shirt.
Hearing the other students grumble about wearing the BMCC tee-shirts, and not wearing them seemed real petty to me. If they grumbled over such a small thing as wearing a shirt from the place that perhaps might have the greatest impact upon their future then they have no idea how lucky they are to have this opportunity that they are being afforded. However, for me, seizing this opportunity to attend college has created a sense of pride that I have seldom felt. I will not grumble over wearing my BMCC tee-shirt, on the contrary I wear it with pride.