Once I raised my GPA from 0.25 to 3.2 and graduated with my Associate’s Degree, I had to plan my next step. It was then time to apply to pharmacy schools. In an effort to leave the state of Virginia, I applied to Northeastern University of Boston, the University of Georgia, the University of New Mexico, the University of California-San Francisco and the University of Washington. With the 4 corners of the United States covered, I also applied to Virginia Commonwealth University, just in case it was too expensive to leave Virginia. (It should be pointed out here that I wasn’t going alone; my fiancé would be going with me. She was a Registered Nurse and she would be our main source of income.)

After looking at my high school transcripts, Cal-San Francisco rejected my application. As for the other schools, they all accepted me to their university but none of them accepted me to their pharmacy program. At this point, we decided to pick a school and then decide what major I wanted to follow.  We settled on the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque. We loaded our car and drove the 2000 miles to Albuquerque. At first, I thought about entering the engineering program but something didn’t feel quite right about out. Faced with some indecision, my fiancé suggested that we go see a movie and forget about any intense decisions about my future. Since my wife was a big Hugh Grant fan, we decided to see a movie named, “The Englishman who Went up a Hill but Came down a Mountain.” In the film, Hugh Grant plays a young government land surveyor. The movie is set in a small town in Wales. I felt connected to the character because I had left a job as a land surveyor a few years before and my last name is a common Welsh name. After a series of events, Grant’s character falls in love with a local Welsh girl. As he verbally trying to figure out what to do, he said, “Well, I could teach!” At that moment, a light when on in my head; “I could teach!”

I then decided that I would become a high school mathematics teacher. (I rejected teaching physics because I was tired of labs; teaching them or giving them.) Soon after this, we decided that New Mexico was too expensive so we drove to our second choice; the University of Georgia in Athens. When we arrived there, I saw a town of about 70,000 people, a campus of 35,000 students and a football stadium big enough to hold just about all of them. The football fan in me knew I was in the right place. Add in all the pretty girls, the various places to drink and its small-town feeling and I knew it was where I wanted to go to school. However, since it was June, there was no available apartments for students who were married. So we went back to Virginia, stayed with my in-laws and waited til August to return. It ended up being on of the most interesting journeys I have ever had. Or was it just an interesting start to an even bigger journey that continues as I write this?

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I wasn’t always a great student. When I was young, I showed promise as a student. My mother has likes to brag that I started school with a 5th grade reading level. I picked up mathematics rather quickly and I enjoyed it. My interest in baseball probably helped in this area. As my school years passed, I learned two things about myself. First, I learned that I could pass classes by just paying attention. I concluded that I didn’t need to put very much energy into studying or taking notes. The second thing I learned is that, if I didn’t have interest in a subject, I would give just enough effort to pass.

By the time I got to high school, I had terrible study habits and refused to do more than 15 minutes homework every night. The result? I graduated with 2.3 GPA and had horrible to non-existent study habits. However, at the same time, I scored average scores on the Pre-SAT but my ASVAB scores in math and reasoning exceeded the 90th percentile. I received brochures from Boston University and an all-math school in the Northeast. I also received an offer from the University of Virginia where they Army would pay for my education, provided that I participate in ROTC and join the Army upon graduation.

I never pursued these options so my first fall was spent in community college. After one semester at community college, my GPA sat at a 0.25. I knew I was intelligent but couldn’t bear going to class and studying. I spent the next 10 years in low paying construction and surveying jobs and living with my parents. Then, in 1988, I met the woman who would become wife. She convinced me to return to college to be a pharmacist. So back to the community college I went. Except, this time I was in contact with a school guidance counselor who was a mother of my stepdaughter’s friends. She introduced me to a program that would forgive my pitiful college grades. (Occasional college classes has raised my GPA to 0.63 and later to a 1.8.) By the time I graduated in 1995 with an Associate’s degree in Science, my GPA was raised to a respectable 3.2.

I then transferred to the University of Georgia to pursue an undergraduate degree in Secondary Mathematics Education. (I was turned down to all the pharmacy I had applied because my grades were good but not great.) After a lot of struggles, I finally graduated in 1999 with a 2.6 GPA. After completing my student teaching (which I failed), it was off to a teaching job in California. Then to Virginia, because my father and mother-in-law got cancer.

After teaching for 5 years, and being disappointed about my pay, I went back to California and land surveying. (This time the pay was much better. My one week paycheck in surveying was equal to my bi-monthly paycheck in teaching.) After about 5 years of California surveying, I was bored and missed teaching. So it was back to Georgia and high school math teaching. I missed teenagers so much that I didn’t care about the pay. I was gonna be back in the classroom.

I am still employed by that same school district in Georgia but I am at the third high school since returning to teaching. Not long after arriving in Georgia, I completed my Master’s degree in Sports and Performance Psychology. This time, the GPA was much better (3.9). I discovered that, if the subject interests me, I can do rather well at it. And I love sports and performance psychology. In 2012, I took that lesson to another graduate school and graduated with a PhD in psychology (Consciousness and Spirituality). I was able to maintain the new high standard and graduated with 3.8 GPA.

Why did I tell this rambling story? To make the point that I know what it takes to be a good student and I know what it looks like when it’s not going so well. I know that sometimes a kid is not ready for college and sometimes a college is not ready for a kid. And, without interest and ambition, a kid will never really succeed in the education arena.

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