I Need a New Plan

What is my story?  I guess I will start with high school.  I went through high school without putting much thought into college.  At the time my family owned a chain of grocery stores, so my thought was that it didn’t matter; I was just going to work at the stores.  Then a series of events led to my family selling the stores and I needed a new plan.  I still didn’t put much consideration into college because I was too uncertain about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.  I guess I was under the assumption that I needed to know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life when I was 17 years old. 

Once I graduated from high school, I needed a job, so I worked through the summer.  After a few months of hauling 60lbs bundles of shingles up a ladder three stories, I realized that I needed to do something different with my life.  I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I was certain that I didn’t want to break my back working construction my whole life.  I explored two options: community college and the military.  I went with the military.  For me the choice was easy, either I go to school at a community college and work at night, or, I join the Air Force; travel, go to school for free, full health and dental coverage, all m meals paid for and all the other benefits that go along with it.

By the following February, I was in Texas for basic training.  I did four years in the active duty Air Force and returned home in 2007 to serve in the MA Air National Guard.   I got to travel to different places and meet a lot of different people.  Unfortunately the job I had in the Air Force wasn’t something that I could use in my civilian life.  I guess not many commercial airlines were looking for someone to load munitions on their planes.  So, I still needed to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.  I decided to stick with the Air Force area and go to a technical school to learn about maintaining aircraft in general aviation. 

After school, I got my FAA certification and started a job maintaining helicopters.  The job had no benefits, and I had to drive 75 miles each way.  I had no guidance or teaching; it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do for the long term.  I was almost spending my entire pay check on gas and health insurance, on top of having a boss that was rarely around and didn’t want to teach or guide me in any way.  The job had no room for advancement so; I started looking for jobs elsewhere as soon as possible. Because I was working on helicopters, I started looking for jobs working on wind turbines, because I figured that would be the way of the future and I passed about 3 of them on my way to and from work each day.  I ended up finding a job in Boston working at a renewable energy company.  I started out as an Assembly Technician making solar-powered inverters.  I really didn’t know anything about solar-powered inverters before I started, but the people I was working with were really good about teaching me. 

Shortly after, I was promoted to Assembly Lead, and then about a year later to Manufacturing Assembly Supervisor.  I managed to work my way up the chain at Satcon without my degree, but I knew that if I want to go any further, I was going to have to get it.  I am not content with just being idle; I need to advance.  I tried to take some college courses at night, but it didn’t exactly work out as I was planning.  I took one traditional English class and tried to take a hybrid course which alternated between meeting in class one week, and having an online session the following.  One class wasn’t a problem; adding the second class where we were supposed to meet every other week during the winter was a little more of an issue.  We went through a stretch that winter where we had a lot of snow so I had about a five week period where we didn’t meet in class at all.  Going that long was just too much time without interaction with the teacher.  The class was structured so that a lot of the material was explained during the classes when we met in person.  I needed help from him first hand, rather than trying to have a conversation via email.

Even without the difficulties of not being able to meet for the class, at the rate that I was going, I would have been in school for four years.  Again, not something that I could have done with my work, military and personal schedule.  Then I found out about College Unbound.  At first I was skeptical, but once I spoke to Jamie, she alleviated a lot of my concerns.  I loved the idea that I could receive college credit for my life experience and other courses that a traditional college probably wouldn’t have accepted.  I received credit for tons of experience; from the military and technical courses, to my professional development courses.  I was ready to chalk up all that experience up as a loss before I spoke to Jamie.

The other part that really turned me on to CU was how I would be using my everyday job as an internship.  I wouldn’t have to alter my schedule much from my everyday work hours.  I was already spending between 8 and 10 hours a day at work, so I could use some of those extra hours to work on my project for that semester.  I thought it was a great idea to have us as students get the experience of working on a project that we wouldn’t normally be working on.  It gave us experience and it helped the company because it is a real project that someone would have to do anyways; a true win-win scenario.

Another point that I liked about College Unbound was the idea that I would be interacting with other students that were in the same scenario that I was in.  We could relate and sympathize with each other because we knew what one another was going through.  Traditional schooling didn’t work for us, so we had to find an ulterior way of being educated.  We could share stories and relate to the people that we were working with.  We could share ideas of how something worked for us, but other things didn’t.  We would be learning from one another, along with the CU staff and our Professional Advisors.  We would be interacting with each other on a more personal level; similar to a work environment.

I liked the idea of the education and learning plan being based around me.  You wouldn’t have to bother with all of the excess material that you really didn’t want to go through, just because you had to.  We would be “cutting the fat” out of our education.  We would only be taking in the useful information that would help us grow and achieve the things that we wanted to achieve.  But, it would still be up to us to do the work and take on the responsibility.  Just because it would be based around us, wouldn’t make it any easier; maybe a little more convenient with our schedules, but not any easier.  We would be taking on twice the work; a full-time job and full-time school.

For me, it wasn’t easy the first year keeping up with all the school work, my full-time job and life.  I was a new husband, a new father and I was killing myself at my job working 60 to 70 (sometimes more) hours a week.  I would take the train to and from Boston when I could and either read or do school work for that hour.  I would come home (exhausted) and spend 20 to 30 minutes with my wife and daughter before they fell asleep and went right back to doing school work.  There were so many things that I needed to do around my house, that just had to wait.  I needed to spend time on my school work.  When big projects came up at Satcon, my school work suffered.  I couldn’t not be fully focused and dedicated to Satcon; this was my livelihood.  I needed to provide for my family first and do my school work second.  I struggled for a while with this just because the projects at work didn’t let up for about a year.

My story has been filled with a lot of uncertainty.  Uncertain about what I wanted to do in high school.  Uncertain about what I wanted to do after high school.  Uncertain about what kind of school to go to after the military.  Uncertain about where my job was/is going.  The one thing I am certain about is that I need my college degree.  There are many reasons why I want my degree, but those aren’t as important as the process of obtaining it.  At CU, there are many great aspects of the program; like the flexibility in schedule, class collaboration, work internships and “real” projects, but my degree is not going to be handed to me.  I need to take charge of my own learning and get the work done on my own.  There are going to be plenty of people all around me to offer me help and support, but it is going to be up to me to get the work done.