It has been a decade since I graduated from Wilkes University, and those ten years have passed in what feels like the blink of an eye.
The ten years after my 16th birthday were chaotic to say the least. That period of my life is a story for another time, but suffice to say that I was not at all ready for college when I graduated from high school. I'd thought about going back to get my degree over the years, but I didn't really start giving it serious thought until I broke up with my girlfriend and moved back home when I was 26 years old.
The last piece of inspiration that I needed to return to school came from an odd place. It wasn't something that a family member or a mentor said to me, or from a sudden burst of confidence that I was ready to tackle this challenge. It was a blog written by Jeffrey Windham called "I Am A Japanese School Teacher". It was here that I learned about The Japan Exchange and Teaching Program, which provides an opportunity for native English speakers who have a Bachelors degree to move to Japan to work alongside Japanese schoolteachers as both an educator and a cultural ambassador to high school students who are studying the English language.
The existence of this program was the last piece of the puzzle; it became my motivation to go back to school and to earn my degree. I'd always had teaching in the back of my mind as a career that I'd find fulfilling, but this program gave me a goal to shoot for. My plan was to go back to school for a bachelors in education, earn my teaching certificate, and apply for the J.E.T. Program to teach in Japan for up to the five year maximum. I'd then return to the United States and put this experience to use in a teaching career, or maybe pursue a Masters Degree.
The first part of this went according to plan. I spent two years at Luzerne County Community College, and had a perfect 4.0 GPA when I transferred to Wilkes University for the start of the Fall 2009 semester. My interest in psychology shifted my goals a bit. I ended up changing my major and graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelors in Psychology with a Sociology minor.
My goal of entering the J.E.T. Program remained unchanged throughout my time at Wilkes, but I had my post-Japan sights set on a career as a psychology professor at a community college. I had a deep interest in psychology and I enjoyed teaching and tutoring, and I also saw this as an opportunity for a career that would give me the opportunity to help other adult learners who returned to college many years after graduating from high school. However, things didn't quite work out that way.
My grandfather was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in November 2010. He has been the rock and the most positive influence in my life since I was a baby. I wasn't willing to admit it to myself at the time, but I knew deep down that he didn't have too much time left. I was in the first semester of my senior year at Wilkes when he got his diagnosis, and I threw myself into my studies and my capstone project when I wasn't spending time with my grandfather to distract myself from thinking about a world without him.
Grandpa passed away on April 18th, 2011; just under five weeks from my graduation. My grandmother passed away eleven months later. I got married to an incredible woman in the July 2011 and we bought our home in September. After my grandmother passed in March 2012, our focus turned to cleaning out and selling her house. Before I knew it, a temp position that I took with Nestle for the 2011 holiday season turned into a career that spanned eight years, and the path that I had laid out for myself to go to Japan and to pursue a career in education had become a distant memory.
The path that I had laid out for myself didn't go as planned, and I suspect that it rarely does for anyone. However, the five year span of July 2006 to July 2011 has given so much to me that I can only look back with gratitude. For starters, the fact that I was able to return to and succeed in college was a massive confidence boost. School pretty much kicked my ass from fourth grade straight on through my high school graduation, so graduating from a university with honors was a pretty big deal for me. Secondly, having my grandparents support to return home was life changing. It gave me a safe place to slow things down and to figure out who I wanted to be in this world, and to recognize that I've made mistakes in the past and I'll make mistakes in the future, but those mistakes don't have to define me. I choose to define myself by my ability to learn from these mistakes and to move forward and to be the best person that I can be.
As important as both of those things are to me, the most valuable thing that this period of my life has given me is five years with my family. I was a nightmare as a child and even worse as a teenager. I got my first apartment when I was 17 years old and spent a good portion of the next nine years making poor choices and getting into trouble. While I was not perfect by any means, I had settled down quite a bit by my 26th birthday, and being at home and focused on my studies and the goals that I had after college kept me in a good headspace. This allowed me to have a real relationship with my family. My dad came over twice a week for dinner. My grandparents and I got to know each other as people. I'd have breakfast and dinner with them almost every weekday, with weekends spent with the woman who is now my wife at her apartment. We celebrated birthdays and holidays. We watched television and went grocery shopping. I mowed the lawn and shoveled show (though my grandfather wouldn't give up his control over the snow thrower). We had a cat and a dog who we all loved very much. We'd argue occasionally, especially my grandmother and I, but it was nothing like the craziness that it was when I was a teenager. I got five years with my family, and that means more to me than any college degree; more than any trip to Japan; more than any career paths that I could have taken. I am so grateful to have had these five years to reconnect with my family, and I don't want to even think about a world where I wouldn't have had that opportunity.
