Randy Lockett says making the decision to go back to school changed his life.
HOPE YOU GET a chance to ready my column in today’s Herald-Whig about Randy Lockett, who is pursuing his dream of becoming a writer. Click here for the column.
Lockett attended John Wood Community College and is going to the University of Michigan this fall.
Here’s his essay about chasing dreams ….
DREAMS
I fondly remember the moment when I decided what I wanted to do in life. I remember standing in my aunt’s dining room on the long plastic mat she used to protect the carpet, the gaudy red and white patterned wallpaper filling the room like some strange psychedelic dream. I was talking to my uncle; he had asked me what I was going to be when I grew up. I was thirteen years old. I don’t know exactly why, but I told him I wanted to be a writer.
I look back now, some twenty years later, and wonder what happened to that kid, why did he never follow such an amazing dream? It is so easy to be bogged down by the normality of this world, and to lose one’s way in the forest of life. I know because, it happened to me. Sometimes in order to see where we really are, what we are really doing with our lives, we need a good solid kick in the pants. For me this came in the form of being unjustly fired from a job I didn’t even want. In the daze that followed I suddenly saw everything so clearly. “What in the world am I doing?” I asked myself. Why was I wasting life’s best years working for people who didn’t appreciate me? I don’t want ever to feel that way again.
I had a dream to become a writer. Can a person make their dreams reality? I enrolled at John Wood Community College at a low point in my life. I was approaching my mid-thirties, had no job, no career prospects, and a high school diploma that, to be frank, I barely earned. I came here with the thought: “I’m going all in.” It felt like a huge gamble. I was determined, however, to play this hand like it was my last chance, my best chance to transform myself into what I had always envisioned I could be. That is how community colleges change people’s lives. They give nontraditional students, like me, a port in the storm, a place to belong, a place where the normally elusive second chance is there for the taking, and empowering those of us who choose to steer our own paths through life. How we end up at a community college really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that without these Islands of Misfit Toys many of us who deserve second chances and want to take that opportunity seriously would be left adrift.
With the help of the faculty and staff at JWCC, I am changing my life and getting an education in the process! At the end of this semester, I plan to transfer to the University of Michigan, where I hope to eventually earn an MFA in creative writing. None of this would have been possible without the institution of the community college. Will I succeed in my dream of becoming a writer? Well, you are reading this aren’t you?
— Randy Lockett
