Thoughts on Higher Education
Background
In November of 2002, I was a brand new, 18 year old, enlisted airman. Freshly done with all my training, and at my first duty station, I had several quixotic delusions about what my role in the organization would be, and where I would end up.
My worldview at the time was rigid, mostly due to a lack of having it exposed it to any serious scrutiny.
A related pathology to my rigid worldview was a resistance to wanting to go to college.
I didn't know what I didn't know, but had you asked me at the time, my argument would've been something along the lines of "not wasting time in school" and "doing something that makes a difference."
It was ultimately the brash, over-compensatory insecurity of a young man that didn't feel smart enough to do well in college courses. The people that I knew who were headed off to college before I left had the distinct trappings and pedigree of the upper middle class and higher.
I didn’t have those markers. My parents did fine. We weren’t poor by any stretch. We were very solidly middle class. But we were also distinctly outside of the professional class.
I had reasonable potential intelligence, but I was intimidated by the thought of applying for University, and didn’t have the tools to articulate it, nor the critical thinking skills to solve the problem.*
There is much to criticize, and much to improve about the organizational culture of the U.S. Air Force, but one thing that it is really good about is fostering a culture of encouraging enlisted airmen to pursue higher education in some form.
I quickly learned, begrudgingly, that a part of my journey towards something that looked like success would eventually need to involve taking some college classes.
So, in 2003, I started where any aimless, non-major college student with a music hobby would: Introduction to Music, at Boise State University.
It took a while, but that one step planted a seed that would eventually grow into something that I never expected.
I didn’t have the background and qualifications…nor the SAT scores for that matter…to be competitive for a so-called “good school.”
It’s strange looking back on it: I got into college under what was, essentially, reduced requirements. The patriotism of the era meant that because of the mere fact that I signed up for the Air Force, I was now “college material.” And one of the massive perks was that the Air Force would foot the bill.
Discovery
I graduated from college for the first time in August of 2008. (For those keeping track, that’s about 5 years after that initial intro to music class.)
It was an Associate of Applied Science in Air and Space Operations Technology from the Community College of the Air Force (CCAF).
Basically, a lot of my military technical training was accredited. I also was able to take CLEP and DANTES tests for free, so I tested out of 40+ credits worth of classes.
I really only took probably 4, physical classes for that first degree.
Three major life events were all happening around this time that fundamentally began to shape my continued journey:
I got married, and we had a one month old baby
I was really tired after 6 years of active duty, and needed a change in my career
I had taken a class called “History of the New Testament” that was pulling at the threads of my worldview
For the first one, “new dad syndrome” had kicked in hard, and I realized that I needed a career that would support my daughter.
For the second, I had very mixed experiences in my active duty tours. After 6 years, I knew that I needed some sort of change. I decided to leave active duty and head to the Air Force Reserve. The goal was to use my GI Bill to go to school and be a Nuclear Medicine Technologist, and I would finish out the remaining enlistment in the Reserve, part time.
For the third, that’s a long post for another day…but to summarize, much of the self doubt of my early years was deeply related to my worldview. That was starting to crack, though I wasn’t fully aware of that at the time.
Trial Periods
To my disappointment, my CCAF degree didn’t do a whole lot for my career prospects leaving active duty. I applied to several odd jobs, one of which included being a flight dispatcher at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. They basically asked what the degree even was in the interview. I didn’t get the job.
But soon enough, I set my sights on healthcare as a career, and I went to school for Nuclear Medicine Technology for 2 semesters, while working in a Hospital ER as a registration tech.
In hindsight, it was great to get thrown into the fire like that, because I quickly realized that healthcare wasn’t a good fit, for a variety of reasons.
At that point, one year out from a few major life transitions, what’s another big change stacked on the pile, right?
Next came a change in Majors, and a semester in Psychology and Behavioral Science, as a last effort at salvaging something related to healthcare. I really enjoyed the subject matter, but in exploring the field, I realized that a minimum of a Master’s Degree was required to make any kind of sustainable income for a family of (soon to be) 4. That was 4 years away at that point, and my son was on the way. Essentially, that semester felt like a bust, even though I did well in the coursework.
At this point, I had stumbled into a gig as a government contractor doing a job related to my former Air Force career field. I was also a bit frustrated that in almost 2 years of mostly full time college, I hadn’t really found something that felt like a good fit…and more importantly…I hadn’t finished anything.
Along with the education, my foray into working in healthcare was a major eye opener. Also, my experience in the Air Force Reserve was conspicuously better than my active duty tours.
With that as a backdrop, I decided to enroll with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to major in Aeronautics. The goal now was to be an Air Traffic Controller for the FAA. It seemed like an easy fit, since it was loosely related to my previous experience.
I stuck with Embry Riddle for another year and a half, and got 7 classes away from my Bachelor’s.
Meanwhile, in my (now) Air National Guard career, I had rekindled some positive feelings for Air Force life, and I was working full time again in the military. Being so close to my degree being done, I began applying to commission to become an Officer.
This is yet another long post for another day, but the short story is that I didn’t commission, and that felt like another big letdown.
That was 2012. Not even 4 years after I left active duty, and I already needed another change.
That’s when I found the field of game audio. I started going to Berklee College of Music to pursue a major in Orchestration for Film and Games…
Noticing the trend?
Realization
Up until this point, there was an assumed-to-be-true principle that was guiding my journey. It went something like this:
Your goal in life, is to find your life’s purpose. Once you find that purpose…your passion… you run at it with your whole being and never look back.
It feels good. It’s romantic. It feels deep.
And, yet, I haven’t found that to be true in my life, at all.
In fact, trying to make my life fit that mantra meant that each successive attempt in a new direction was a “failure.” That I hadn’t yet truly found my “passion.”
But the thing is, I’m interested in all sorts of things. I pursue many things with a lot of gusto.
And the more I pursue different things, the more that I’m developing a broader, holistic picture of what it means to be alive. One interest informs the other, and nurtures it in different ways than if I was laser focused on one topic.
My interests are seasonal. They ebb and flow, and almost always come back around with more depth, or more nuance, or a fresh perspective, etc.
And that’s ok.
Lately, I’ve been giving myself permission to be proud of this journey.
It’s a portfolio of experiences that are pretty far off the beaten path.
And I only focused on education topics and careers. Mixed in with all these seasons were multiple moves, new jobs, new kids, new countries, new friends, new failures, new successes, and new challenges.
I don’t expect that changes will stop here.
Right now, I’m in college, yet again. This time, I’m going on campus at Webster University. I’m majoring in Interactive Digital Media, with a minor in Animation Production. It seems like a good fit. It’s offering new insights and new topics of interest, like programming and web design.
By default, I’m already pretty close to being done because of my collection of credits, which is good news for me.
But, this time, I’m also not expecting it to be anything other than what it is: another experience, and another opportunity to be better than I was yesterday.
*Those were my barriers as a white, middle class male. It’s not hard to extrapolate out to the intersection of poor and marginalized people how many more, systemic barriers they face to getting higher education, and by proxy, doing better than generations before them.
