Shadow652k
I am a junior in college enrolled at Arizona State University attending the Polytechnic campus in Mesa, Arizona. I have an associate’s degree in Software Development and I am currently working on my bachelor’s degree in Information Technology and doing a little web design in my spare time.
A little history on me, I grew up as a military child as my dad served 22 years in the army. My whole life was spent moving from, place to place. That sounds like a lot of fun, except that looking back, I only really have contact with friends I made in the last few years. This makes has made me a severe introvert with social anxiety. Over the years, I have gotten really good at hiding it, so if you ever met me in person, you probably wouldn’t notice. I didn’t really start to explore a whole lot till around 2014 when I started high school.
Now I wish I could tell you I was like any other high school student, but sadly, my story is much darker. My first year of high school, I nearly flunked all of my classes and killed my GPA before I even had one. My grades were a bit better after I changed schools for my sophomore and junior years, but admittedly, not by much. I spent two years at Lakes High School in Lakewood, Washington before I dropped out. Yes, you read that correctly, I dropped out of high school going into my senior year.
I’m sure the first question you have is how I can possibly have an associate’s degree being a high school drop out. What will probably shock you more is that I still have a proper high school diploma, not a GED. Well this is the very reason I love telling this story. It’s at this point my life started to go up. I tell this story very specifically to get the shock factor because my favorite line when talking about my education is, “I dropped out of high school to go to college.” That statement gets an amazing reaction out of most people, when in actuality, it wouldn’t really hold water if you looked through my transcripts. Yes its true, I did voluntarily drop out of my high school sacrificing all of the senior year experiences. I did also start attending college at about that time. The real story however starts about midterms time frame of my junior year. I was forced to go to some post secondary presentation as part of one of my classes. I had three options to choose from. The first being a military recruiter. Being a military kid my whole life, I knew what that was all about and decided against it. The next was a four year university. I knew my grades weren’t good enough to get me into university so I decided against it. My last option was a two year trade school and i thought maybe I’d do something simple and get a certificate to at least open up job opportunities, so I went to that presentation.
I get to the presentation and its the Bates Technical College Dean and another guy. This other guy is the one who encouraged me to drop out of my high school. They went through the typical college presentation and what they have to offer which was cool, but a little far fetched for someone with my grades, or so I thought. The other guy was the College’s High School Principal. His part of the presentation was short but was all I needed to change my high school career. He offered a chance to finish my high school diploma enrolled at the college and reset my GPA, which by the time I was done, was a 3.4 out of 4.0. Along with finishing my diploma, I was allowed to enroll in any of their associates level programs and work on my degree simultaneously for a small lab fee per quarter. They provided all my books, a free parking pass for all three of their campuses, and a proper .edu email for any discounted services or student benefits.
All I had to pay was $50 a quarter for a degree that cost $500 per class. Taking 5 or 6 classes per quarter, means the state of Washington was easily paying $2-3000 per quarter as they are required by law to pay the tuition of any and all high school students attending a registered high school. So while I was in practice a Bates Technical College student, According to the state of Washington, I was a student of Bates Technical High School, the built in high school enrollment program. While this does means I delayed my diploma by about a year, I also had an extra year of college to jump start my education with no student loan debt. Now I have transferred to ASU to finish my bachelor’s degree and make me just that much more competitive in the job market.
A common question I get is Why did I start writing poetry? As a technology major, poetry isn’t something that fits to some people. In all honesty, I started writing as a mental relief. I wrote my very first poem in Sophomore year of high school. We had to write a poem given an object. At the time I was fighting a lot of depression and stress. And when I got that seashell I just started writing what I was going through in relation to this shell. That is how my first poem came about, and I’ve been writing ever since. (See this poem here)
For me it was an escape from all the stress I went through. Now I don’t face nearly as much stress and pain, but I still write every once in a while. Which is why I decided to start this blog. Its a dark color to kinda demonstrate where I began, and I keep an old mantra I came up with while in school at Bates Tech. It goes along the lines of “Stay Dark, Stay Spooky, and Stay in School. ” And of course I hope to see all of you as I write, In the Shadows.