Let me take you back a few years. It was summer and I was asleep. My phone rang and like a lazy bum, I hit ignore. A persistent friend called again. This time I answered.
“Hello,” I said in my barely alive tone.
My friend’s name was Ramses. He was home from school and was calling for the first time in a year.
“I can not believe you are asleep,” he said. “What have you been up to?”
I quickly thought about lying. All summer I had repeated the same robotic answer when someone asked what I was up to. I’d say, “Oh, nothing much … just working; taking the summer off from school” etcetera, etcetera.
But mostly what I was doing was sleeping.
After a brief pause, my friend led me down memory lane. Frankly, he was surprised I wasn’t doing more. He had already graduated from college, moved back home and would be starting a new job soon. And, what was I doing?
As cheesy as it may sound, his guilt trip gave me the motivation I needed to rethink my priorities. And like a jolt of lightning I enrolled in community college that same day. Just like that, I was going back to school.
A year later after graduating from San Antonio College I went on an interview with my older sister Naomi at Texas A&M-San Antonio.
“This place is very small for a university,” I said glaring at the tiny sink in the women’s bathroom.
At that point, the university was in its infancy and located at 1450 Gillette Blvd in a leased elementary school located just a mile from the construction site of the permanent campus at South Zarzamora at Loop 410.
I think the university was once an elementary school, Naomi said.
“So Texas A&M couldn’t afford a high school,” I joked.
Although the campus was small, and the walls freakishly reminded me of my pre-K days, there was something comforting about the environment with its large cafeteria transformed into a student lounge space.
“I should apply here,” I said. “I don’t know what I’d major in, but I think I will. What degree has absolutely no math involved?”
Communications probably, Naomi said. Bingo.
So I applied to the tiny campus, got accepted, explained to my friends and family that I was not an Aggie and began my quest in earning a degree.
Jolt! Little did I know, however, that the major I so half heartedly chose would also be one of the hardest and most fulfilling experiences I’ve ever had.
At times I felt like a yo-yo. One day I was on cloud nine loving every minute of every class, and the next I was screaming with fists in the air yelling, “What was I thinking?!”
Nevertheless, I learned over time the demands of a communications degree and what it really means to write and produce on deadline.
I discovered that the communication majors wrote for the online news outlet, The Mesquite. I finished my obligatory semester, then signed on for another resulting in an experience that feels both like the thorn in my shoe, and the reason why I come to school every day.
I’ve shared classrooms with amazing people and had some of the best times of my adult life at Texas A&M-San Antonio. Last summer, I even once poured a bag of flour on my professor’s head. Top that.
As I prepare to graduate, my advice is to my fellow undergrads is to make your university experience academically challenging, rich and diverse. Get involved with student organizations, take a chance and challenge yourself. Don’t be afraid to take a leap of faith. Sometimes that’s all it takes.
Now with the opening of the two new campuses — Main Campus Building and my personal mecca Brooks City-Base Campus — my experience will be one to remember as I take my leave and graduate this coming May 18.