I appreciate you!
I’ve never been one to be content with being unhappy. I’m smart enough to understand the opportunities available to me, or at least how to find them, even if I don’t always use the opportunities for what they are. I don’t know that I’m motivated towards typical goals. I don’t have a big family, I’m not financially responsible for anyone else, and I don’t often get caught up in desires of having amazing things. I don’t think I am motivated by money or stability, rather, I feel like the choices I make are so that I keep myself entertained (in a largely broad sense of the word). That being said I have changed over time, and I think it would be prudent to start the discussion of how I arrived at being a university student back in high school.
I’ve always considered myself to be pretty smart and capable of doing most anything that I applied myself to. I guess growing up I always assumed that I would go to college after high school, although I never planned anything. My junior year I had a class with one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Flory. I remember it was a personal finance class, and we were looking at the top 10 highest paying jobs or something like that, and I remember more than half were medical. I’m a pretty queasy guy around needles and blood, so my focus fell to around seventh place or so, which was in engineering. I don’t even remember specifically what it was, but it, for some reason, motivated me to go home and start researching it (perhaps it was because I was almost a senior and I had no real idea what I was going to do).
I remember coming to two options after searching the internet for the specific career I wanted: getting into MIT or joining the Navy. The Navy would be more “practical” and after serving six years I could get out and get a civilian job making loads of cash. I think another truth in my life is I am inherently lazy and I typically take the easier of two roads when that road doesn’t have negative consequences. So I contacted a recruiter and was all signed up that summer before my senior year. I knew then exactly what life was about and exactly what I wanted out of it.
I was wrong about everything. The Navy was not easy for me. I don’t feel like I am matured now, but I was especially immature then. I created a lot of problems for myself everywhere I went. I got married after boot camp. I attempted suicide after completing two of the three schools for my job (because I was so unhappy with everything). When I finally got to my command (in Florida!), I spent most of my home time dreading going to back to work (meaning I didn’t sleep much at home). After almost three years I was discharged. My marriage ended when the paychecks did. I decided then that I didn’t care much money anymore, what I really valued was being happy and having free time.
A friend of mine (from Texas) had gotten out of the Navy a few months before I did and had been staying on my couch. When I got out I asked him what he wanted to do, stay in Florida, go to Texas, or go to my home state in Ohio. I told him I would rather go to Ohio, and he obliged. We packed up my Eclipse with as much as we could and we drove up, and showed up on my mom’s porch unannounced.
I hadn’t even spoken to my mom since before my senior year of high school. She’s kind of weird, but she let both of us stay in her basement for a few months until we got jobs and got our own place. I became a shift lead at a gas station and worked there over a year. I was pretty happy with the overall situation, my only complaint was that I wasn’t making friends. The people I worked with all had families, or babies, or did a lot of drugs (which I wasn’t into). I did start dating a girl after we had been living there about almost a year, and she eventually moved in with us. That whole situation fell apart about 6 months after that. Over the summer my roommate started relying on his parents in Texas to send him money for bills and stopped working. September was the last month he was able to pay anything. On top of that, in October the girl I had been dating told me she was moving out and had been seeing this guy I was working with at the gas station (meaning she also had no money to offer me for bills). I had to contact my dad for rent who I didn’t really know and hadn’t ever really talked to.
I decided that month to go to college.
It took me less than a week to begin researching all the details of how to go to college. In that week I applied for cscc, took the tests to get in, talked to a counselor about what classes to take, and completed my FAFSA. Prior to October I didn’t know anything about getting into college. I’ve been in college two years now (second quarter at OSU). I still feel like working at a gas station was good enough. I was happy overall, I liked the freedom and I was able to pay all my bills and buy anything I wanted. My main motivation was something along the lines of “I’m going to college not so that I get a job that makes good money, but so that I get a job that surrounds me with more quality people than this.” And I guess, that’s the story so far.
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