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Not becoming a doctor.
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Broke a multi-generational tradition of docs (one of them drove an ambulance between the lines during WWI) and nurses. I’m a lot happier this way.
(Wait, is college age “young”? Sure feels like it a half century later…)
These are some of the best stories I’ve yet seen on the Dope. Thank you all for sharing.
I had a sequence of decisions / actions that were all set in train by my decision at age 16 to apply to spend my high school senior year abroad. The big sisters of my best friend had done this, so we both signed up. I made it through the process and lived in Japan for a year. Blew my mind, so different, but very satisfying and interesting the whole time.
Going to the UW (I’m from Madison) was always expected of me so getting my Mech Eng. Bachelor’s was not a big deal, however, it was made a lot easier by funding I received thanks to…my Japan experience. At this time, the late 1980’s, the US Gov’t was giving money to universities to train engineers how to speak and function in Japan. This also made it relatively easy for me to get into a great school in California for my master’s degree, also funded.
Then it helped me land my first full time job outside of internships. I got to work in Palo Alto alongside some really interesting people. While my company, a Xerox spinoff, was entirely business focused, we shared a cafeteria and auditorium with the famous Xerox PARC. What a blast.
Then, another big decision, to leave the Bay Area because it was so expensive and stressful to live there, ultimately. I had no social life. So it was off to Seattle, which in the late nineties was still affordable, not so crowded, and really attractive, to date a friend who had moved there previously. (To close the circle, it was one of my friend’s sisters who gave me the idea to do a foreign year abroad.)
The relationship didn’t work out, but within a month of the breakup, I started dating the woman I married. We bought a house, had a kid, etc.
None of that would have happened, it turns out, if it had not been for my friend’s sister. I only realize this now. Kind of a shock tbh.
I grew up in rural, poor, Appalachian VA and was from very poor background. Lot of family that have gotten into legal trouble (going back to the early 1900s), I realized around 7th grade that for whatever reason I was very good at retaining and understanding information, and putting it back out specifically in the form of exams. I realized I didn’t have to try that hard to get a good GPA, I had read a book around that time that mentioned that the Federal service academies actually let you attend for no charge. I also read that they tend to primarily be selective based on your grades and exam scores, and that the step where you have to apply with a local congressman for an admissions endorsement is generally operated based on GPA and academic achievements as well. Starting in my freshman year of High School which is when all that started to “count”, I made sure to basically get As in every class and to take as many of the harder classes as were offered, extra levels of Chemistry / Physics / Math that weren’t required for HS graduation. When it came time to try to get appointed my research suggested that the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (Army) was actually generally easier to get into than the Air Force and Naval Academies. I saw it as a free education and I “didn’t mind” the idea of what I felt would be a short service commitment at the end of it.
Now, the fact that once I got in, I didn’t get out for almost 30 years means 17 year old me wasn’t quite accurate about my future, but that’s not what changed my life about going to the academy. What changed my life was plebe year. I was a tough Appalachian kid, had played football, wrestled, been in plenty of fights. I thought pretty highly of my toughness. Plebe year taught me that while I was big and could throw a fist, I was not mentally tough. In many ways I was mentally weak. I had an Appalachian accent and came from a “bad” upbringing, I was an outsider to many in my own class, and the whole system is kind of built to just shit all over you when you’re a plebe. I literally had days where I’d cry in my bed like a bitch. I wrote a few letters home saying I was probably going to drop out. But for whatever reason something inside me decided I didn’t want to be a quitter, and the lesson I learned was that if you stick with something and really push yourself you can get past things that feel way too hard at the time. I think that really changed me as a human being, it gave me reserves of mental toughness that frankly, I often see other people don’t have. I wasn’t born with it, and I certainly didn’t have it at age 18, it was something I acquired through a harsh and unforgiving system, and I think it set the tone of my entire life. FWIW I don’t hold up plebe year as being anything like what a lot of real bad asses in the military go through (like the Special Forces guys who go through hardcore training, or combat veterans who have gone through actual combat etc), but for an 18 year old kid from rural VA who had never been around anywhere, getting through that first year on the Hudson River in New York was a life changing experience.
I graduated from the academy in the early 70s, from everything I’ve heard they actually have toned down plebe year a lot, which I think probably is the right call in some ways. Some of the psychological bullying and stuff I think pushed some otherwise good people out of the service.
TL;DR answer: open a letter.
And I guess it kind of depends on what you mean by “young”…
At age 29, ca. 2010, I was out of work (height of the Great Recession, at least in my county), my wife was out of work, and we had 2 little kids to raise. We were living on $119 / week in unemployment. I had a barely-running vehicle which made job searching problematic. My wife wanted to do some home daycare to make some extra money. Our saving grace, as it were, was that we were living in a house owned by a family member and they waived the rent, so at least we didn’t have that bill to worry about.
I found a job digging ditches for a fencing company. After they got an order for a fence install they would mark the fence lines and I would spend a day or three with a shovel digging by hand down 18 inches or so so that the fence could be buried and made dog- and rabbit-proof.
Digging ditches by hand. In the winter. For minimum wage.
And then my car died.
So I wrote a letter to my grandparents asking for a loan for a used car. They were rather well-off and I knew they could afford such a loan without even feeling it.
A week later I got in reply a 4 page letter from my grandmother that, essentially, implored both me and my wife to go back to school so as to have a path to permanent stability – teach a man to fish, and all that. My grandmother shared her experience of being homeless during the Depression, of her struggles going to school (female PhD candidate at UCLA in the 1950’s), and the vast personal and financial rewards completing school had provided. They would not buy me a car, they said, but they would send me to school.
And they would send my wife to school. As in, books, tuition, fees. Paid.
So that’s what I did. A community college, just a class at first, then a few more. My wife did the same. When I think back on that first term or two I know I did not believe in myself, and I’m pretty sure I went back to school to a) please my grandparents, and b) get away from that shitty dirty job. I was a high school dropout with a GED whose math skills were on par with a 4th grader’s. (Seriously. That’s the level I tested to. I had to start at the absolute lowest level of remedial math.) I had no social skills. I had no idea what hoops I had to jump through to get a degree, and I had no idea what kind of degree I wanted. School wasn’t really a means to an end, it was a way of relieving some of the misery I was feeling.
But I stuck with it. Somewhere around the early part of my sophomore year I was asked by an English teacher if I would be a writing tutor – she liked my writing ability an felt I would make a good tutor. So I did.
And realized I loved teaching. And school became a means to an end, and suddenly finishing and finishing strong was not just a vague goal, but a set-in-stone plan that I would not deviate from under any circumstances.
I ended up moving away from our small town to finish my BA while my wife stayed behind to finish her AAS. We were apart for 19 months. Two months after finishing my BA I had job offer as a GED instructor at the same CC I had graduated from. I also had a grad school acceptance letter in hand. My grandmother passed away two months later. She knew I finished my BA and had been accepted in to an MA program.
9 ½ years after receiving that letter from my grandmother urging me to go to school I graduated with my MA. It was last May, in the middle of the pandemic, so there was literally no fanfare or celebration. I received a package from the university with my diploma, diploma cover, a couple of sealed copies of my transcripts, and that about it. I bought a robe and hood for a graduation I never participated in. But I graduated.
Right now as I type this I’m in my own classroom at the boarding school I teach at. I’m full-time, tenure track faculty (technically I’m still employed by the same CC I first went to in 2011). I bought a brand new car on Christmas Eve 2019 – a Honda Civic, nothing fancy – and I paid it off 2 months ago. My wife and I are under contract to buy a house. We put 34% down. My son just earned his driver’s license and after we close on the house and assess our financial standing we’ll likely be able to buy him a decent used car. We’ve spent years working towards this so it’s not like we won the lotto or anything, but if you would’ve asked me 10 years ago if I’d have an essentially new car that was paid off while being under contract to buy a house that we put a significant down payment on while planning to buy our son a car I would have laughed in your face.
Sitting next to me is an L.L. Bean messenger bag that I bought ca. 2012 as my school bag. I wanted a red one but they sent me a baby-shit green one by mistake. I figured rather than go through the exchange process I’d wait till this one wore out then replace it with something better looking. Joke’s on me, the damn thing is still in essentially new condition despite being used almost daily for 9 years minus the 11 months we were teaching from home (protip: L.L. Bean makes seriously rugged stuff). Inside the front pocket is the letter my grandmother sent me in 2011. It’s well worn and at one point something spilled on the front or maybe it got wet from rain, but the letter got damp and mildewed a bit. But it’s still there, reminding me how far I’ve come and just how impactful her decision to urge me and my wife to go to school was – and our choice to follow her request.
Thank you so much for sharing.
A profoundly moving account.