Life sure takes some unexpected twists and turns! If someone had told me 6 years ago that I'd be editing a newsletter some day, I would have assumed they'd spent a few too many hours in the pub! Six years ago I was attendinng St. Joseph's High School in Newry, Northern Ireland. I was 16, and for myself and most of the other students, this would be our last year of school. Higher education is only reserved for the very few top students, and I was not among that group.
Did I really care about school at that point? NOT REALLY. I knew that whether I got a 90 or a 40 on my final exams, in June I'd be a member of the unskilled, unemployed labor force at a time when there weren't enough jobs to go around. Having lived through the troubles and was starting to understand what was going on I was finding myself getting involved and wanting to make a difference.
TWIST #1 - My parents got a call from a family I had visited twice before in the United States through Project Children. At 12 and 14 years old I had spent six weeks during the summer at their house in Liverpool, New York. They were calling my parents to see if I could visit again in the upcoming summer. As my parents voiced their concerns over my upcoming and so called graduation and lack of opportunities, my "American friends" offered to have me come to Liverpool and continue my schooling. What did I have to lose? I packed my bags and headed across the Atlantic Ocean.
TWIST #2 - I enetered Liverpool high school in September 1993. Since my education background wasn't that good I had to be a junior instead of a senior. I went from a boy's only Catholic school of about 500 (and a lifetime of school uniforms) to about 2,000 Liverpool students of all different ethnic backgrounds! I was taking American History (which could have been Greek, for all I knew); Regents English (where my writing skills were so weak one paragraph could be 2 words or 200 words depending on my mood); and I had been dropped back to 9th grade math because my background wasn't equal to the regular 11th grade New York student. Needless to say, I looked forward to gym class! But what I lacked in background, I made up for in determination (a nice way of saying "stubbornness" a well-documented Irish trait). I had been given an unexpected opportunity, and I wasn't going to give up without a fight!
TWIST #3 - At the age of 18 I wanted to keep going to school. I made it through Liverpool and didn't want to quit there. Two years before in Ireland I didn't even show up for any of my final exams, and now I was looking for more! The next 2 and a half years at a community college not only taught me a lot out of books, but also a lot about responsibilities, relationships, cooking, laundry and American Football. At the end of my community college career, I really thought I had learned enough. I wanted to get a job and start earning money for my own car, my own place, and my own "stuff" (let's face it, what 21 year old doesn't have a list a mile long of "stuff" they absolutely need). Unfortunately, the Department of Immigration had a different opinion - If I didn't stay in school, my visa was no good, and I would have to return to Ireland. Well as much as I loved my family back home, and friends, and also my country I wanted to stay in the United States and finish what I had started. So after much cursing about the Immigration laws and debate with myself (and anyone else who dared offer an opinion about everything), I applied to the State University of New York at Utice/Rome.
TWIST #4 - I had made a good choice! In spite of the fact that the schoolwork was harder at SUNY, I was liking school more than I was in the past. The atmosphere on campus was so much different than the community college! There was more parties and people to party with that it made the choice of going back to college worth it. By living in the dorms, I got the benefits of having friends around all the time, not just during the class day. Also, the attitude toward schoolwork was more serious - these were all students who had successfully completed at least two years of school and understood the importance of a 4-year degree. That attitude and ambition can be contagious.
So here I sit writing and thinking back over the road that got me to this point and wondering where that road will take me in the future. What twists will confront me up ahead? Will I make good decisions? Will I know enough to take the hard road when it will benefit me in the end? Will I recognize an opportunity that may not seem obvious?
No matter what the answers to the previous questions, I hope that the past six years have taught me the importance of keeping an open mind, a nose to the grindstone, and an ability to handle whatever twists life hands me.
LONG LIVE IRELAND!!
Gary McGuigan |
