What You Find in a Mirage

You may not feel the same as you did the day you decided to attend DeVry. I certainly don't. I came to this school because of the standards it preached, and because I believed in the message. "DeVry University, We Major in Careers." Whatever the mission statement of this college may be, it doesn't mesh with the mindset of the commonplace student. I saw DeVry to be an oasis for higher learning, but it seems to have been merely a mirage. Almost everything I came to school for is nowhere to be found.

In my personal quest for education I have had a hard time defining what I want. In my entire life I have had the same issue. I have flipped, back and forth, between proactively seeking a way to better my position and secure a better future for myself to the reactionary stance I develop when the normalcy of my life seems too empty and unfulfilling. It might be safe to say that I have a bi-polar and unhealthy desire to seek improvement for my life. Each and every time I decide something needs to be done about my life I take extreme measures. As a drug addicted teen I realized I couldn't stay hooked to ecstasy or the lifestyle it carried with it, so I got clean, went to church 10 times a week and then moved to California to attend Bible college. One summer, having the day off from lifeguarding due to inclement weather, I spontaneously joined the Air Force Reserve to escape the woes of living with a mother that made living at home a nightmare. Somehow, I thought drill sergeants would be friendlier.

In 2007, I started to feel like the restaurant job I held just wasn't enough for me. Making pizzas or gazpacho, or searing off medium-well steaks, just wasn't fulfilling to me. I'd occasionally be working the front of the restaurant, or making a delivery, and I would see a former high school classmate who was eons ahead of me in their personal life. While I dropped out of my Honors-level classes in my junior year to party, these former classmates stuck it out, worked straight through to a degree in college and joined the category of hard-working, successful young adults. I was now in a subservient position to the people I internally ridiculed for not knowing the answer to a teacher's question. I always felt smarter than these people, but now my pretentious, lofty mind was sliced up with a new equation: take hard work and focus away from a brilliant mind = minimum wage misery.

This epiphany was not a singular moment. Since dropping out from high school, I have made the attempt to get a degree at 4 separate schools. I always seemed to amaze my professors/instructors, but at some point I would fade off the radar. I would lose my motivational steam in a variety of ways, including emotional and financial strains that were usually compounded together. I felt as if I had no support behind me to keep me going in school. I had a dead father, and a broke mother who didn't believe in me or in helping me financially with school. I found it hard to pull off minimum wage jobs and attend class concurrently, and couldn't peg down the skill to multi-task. I was too immature to realize that my educational ambition paired with a parasitic trait to suck up whatever resource I could get to attend college was never going to work. I failed repeatedly. I guess in the end I had to because it was all that I had to go through to teach me how things really work. It took this current push I am in to graduate from college, plus all the work to pay back prior defaulted loans and elevate myself into a place where I financially sound, for me to realize how much of this hinges on my responsibility to myself.

I am far from perfect. I think that is a trademark of a student, but I believe only the older, more adult students are willing to confess it. Maybe those of us suffering from chronic failure really get to taste the sweetness of success and victory. Maybe I'm still trying to be pretentious from the position of the defeated, low man on the totem pole. Now, after stating my imperfection, I must confess that coming to DeVry was a failure on my part. I don't fit the mold of a student here. I just tried to squeeze myself in with the crowd and hope for the best. My Air Force career showed me I had the aptitude for electronics, and I thought BMET would be a great field for me, but I don't have any desire to be an engineer. In fact, the test scores from my ASVAB test showed me I have an aptitude for pretty much anything I want to learn, but there's nothing here at DeVry that really captivates me. I thought changing my degree to Technical Management would be fine because at least I would graduate earlier, and the degree would solve it all. Then I realized I'd just have a really expensive piece of paper and not much else. Also, I've come to realize that without more financial help I probably will never be able to afford the path to graduation here. I'm in the precarious Catch-22 situation of needing more money to get a degree, but needing the degree for more money. I'm not giving up this time though, but I am trading down my bill at DeVry for a more manageable community college.

I certainly don't feel the same way I did when I decided to come to DeVry University. It has been a bit of a metamorphosis of my mind and career goals. I understand calmly now that leaving DeVry and transferring doesn't spell defeat. I'm not a dropout destined for the impoverished mediocrity of repeated failure, but rather someone with a rich experience that wasn't fully appreciated here. I'm leaving student housing, the parties, the addictive gaming sessions, and the lax attitude towards schoolwork. I'm leaving many acquaintances of indifference, and to those people I will be as a mirage. But I also leave behind some strongly forged friendships, and even a few poignant & profound professors. I'm leaving the place where some of the truest lessons about the balance of responsibility and ambition were learned. I'll always remember the roommates and friends that helped me grow, and even the people whose ambivalence towards life illuminated what truly matters to me. The words of my friends' support and the inspiration that they have lent to me will not be forgotten. Those are the most important things and they will be the strength I carry with me as I struggle on.