“You’ll never grad­u­ate from a four year col­lege.” Those words, albeit harsh and abrupt, were given to me by my high school coun­selor, her response to my deci­sion to drop my Alge­bra 2 class in favor of tak­ing Ceram­ics 101.

I remem­ber the day like it was yes­ter­day; a light wind swept through the cam­pus as I strode to the Guid­ance office to tell my coun­selor about my deci­sion. When I reached the office door I had a flash­back to my early years of education.

I’ve never been excep­tional at Math. Dur­ing my grade school years, my fam­ily moved a few times in those crit­i­cal years where stu­dents learn how to add, sub­tract and mul­ti­ply. When I was around 7 years old my par­ents divorced which had a pro­found effect on me, both men­tally and emo­tion­ally. The men­tal aspect affected my abil­ity to learn math­e­mat­ics along­side my class­mates, wherein inevitably I would fall behind.

I owe it to my grand­mother who did try her best to keep my “wits about me”. When school wasn’t in ses­sion she would home school my brother and I. Many times this meant wak­ing up early in the morn­ing, sit­ting down at the table and work­ing through 25 or so Math prob­lems after break­fast. Which reminds me, did you ever read the back of the cereal boxes?

Any­ways, when the words “You’ll never grad­u­ate from a four year col­lege” slipped from my coun­selors mouth and smacked me in the side of the face I looked back to the times where I tried my best to learn the mechan­ics of Math. Despite my attempts to resur­face what I had learned in grade school, Alge­bra and Geom­e­try got the bet­ter of me, to the point where I decided to drop Alge­bra 2 (of which I was fail­ing mis­er­ably) and replace it with Ceram­ics my senior year.

My coun­selor, a petite Span­ish woman with a slouch, peered through her thick glasses peck­ing at the key­board, grunt­ing under her breath. She slid open a drawer in her desk, retrieved a piece of paper and pushed it towards me. “You real­ize this might effect your over­all GPA? Drop­ping a class, espe­cially Alge­bra 2, will hurt you later on in life.”, she said try­ing to warn me of impend­ing doom on my part. I nod­ded and signed the Class Release paper, fill­ing in the replace­ment course with Ceram­ics. She clipped the paper to my file and added, “One more thing. The Ceram­ics class is full, which means you’ll have to enroll as a T.A. or Teach­ers Assis­tant”. At that point it didn’t mat­ter, so long as it wasn’t Math I was con­tent with what­ever sit­u­a­tion lie ahead.

At the end of our lengthy and drawn out con­ver­sa­tion, as I walked out of the door­way, she reminded me once more, “You’ll never…”, but she never was able to fin­ish because I walked away. When I got to my Ceram­ics class, fully pre­pared to assist the teacher, I won­dered if other high school coun­selors were as “encour­ag­ing” as mine.

Look­ing back I can’t wait to prove that lady wrong. I have every intent to obtain my degree and send Mrs. Orso a let­ter describ­ing how I avoided her advice, but thank her at the very least for pro­vid­ing an exam­ple of what a bad coun­selor can be. After­all, these are peo­ple who are paid to guide our chil­dren through­out their aca­d­e­mic careers, not with words to crip­ple their aspi­ra­tions, but advice to pur­sue suc­cess with every intent to become a bet­ter person. 

In a last ditch effort to save on our esca­lat­ing car insur­ance rates (no thanks to insur­ance fraud) my wife and I decided to sign up for a Defen­sive Dri­ving course. Accord­ing to the AAA, tak­ing this course would drop our insur­ance by 10% (for each dri­ver) and as an added bonus, decrease our over­all dri­ving points by 4.

The class lasted 6 hours, with spo­radic breaks inbe­tween includ­ing a lunch at noon. Our instruc­tor, a retired NY state police offi­cer who served for 26 years, shared his philoso­phies, humor­ous quips and sug­ges­tions for dri­ving bet­ter and defend­ing your­self against Lazy Larry, Fast Eddie and Bee­line Betty.

These tips included:

• When you’re on a high­way or free­way, your speed should match the pace of the other dri­vers. Even if the posted MPH signs say ‘65MPH’, if the traf­fic is going at the rate of 75MPH it’s best to go with the flow.
• Police offi­cers grant dri­vers with what is deemed and mea­sured by the “tol­er­ance meter”. Mean­ing they will give you the ben­e­fit of the doubt if your speed is at 75MPH, only if that’s in accor­dance with the flow of traffic.
• Police offi­cers are human, despite what you might think oth­er­wise. There are the go-getters; the offi­cers who pull over those who break the law at break­neck speeds, the pro­cras­ti­na­tors; offi­cers who show up at 2 in the after­noon, cir­cle their juris­dic­tion and go home, and finally there are the hard work­ers; those who pull peo­ple over but also are more likely to give dri­vers the ben­e­fit of the doubt.
• As for how much room you should leave between your vehi­cle and the vehi­cle ahead of you, it’s sug­gested that you pick out an object in the dis­tance, wait for the vehi­cle ahead of you to pass it and then count how long it takes you to get to that same object. If it takes you less than 2 sec­onds (one-one thou­sand, two-one thou­sand), then you should back off. A good rule of thumb is that if you see their back tires, you’re keep­ing a safe distance.

To be hon­est, I think we both learned that about 99.9% of dri­vers suck at dri­ving. After about age 20 our per­cep­tion, judge­ment and com­mon sense take a dive and it’s up you to take pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures in order to save your life and the lives of oth­ers. I’m not preach­ing, just mak­ing a point that prac­tic­ing good dri­ving habits pro­vides a wealth of advan­tages. Next time your stuck inbe­tween Lazy Larry and Bee­line Betty, maybe you’ll think twice before you slam your breaks or exude frus­tra­tion at the sit­u­a­tion. Assess the sit­u­a­tion; that both dri­vers (Larry and Betty) are only adding to the prob­lem. They need to work that out amongst them­selves, it’s not up to you to prove a point and slam your breaks or cut some­one off.

Just coast off the off-ramp, smooth sail to your dri­ve­way, put your car in park and vent your frus­tra­tions on a com­puter game like Unreal Tour­na­ment or Medal of Honor. Com­puter games, unlike real life, allow for saves and continues.  

Tonight I con­tinue my quest for knowl­edge, fame and for­tune, or at the very least one of those. After an almost 3-year hia­tus and 60 cred­its later, I’ve decided to go back to col­lege to obtain my bach­e­lors degree in Visual Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Graphic Design.

An odd sense of dejavu over­came me last night when I was load­ing up a shop­ping cart with peechee fold­ers, pen­cils and note­books. It made me think back to when I’d day­dream in class, won­der­ing if I’d ever reach my pro­fes­sional goal in life and if I’d be happy with my decisions.

My goal sev­eral years ago was to work in the field of graphic design and web devel­op­ment. After mov­ing to New York in 2002, I got a job at KBToys, work­ing there for 5 months and barely mak­ing ends meat. Even­tu­ally I answered an ad for “data entry” at a local tech com­pany and men­tioned my back­ground (both self-taught and edu­cated) in web devel­op­ment and design. After a year work­ing under the title, sub-contractor, the com­pany I work for offi­cially hired me, with ben­e­fits, on their full time staff.

I’ve heard of peo­ple tak­ing a break from edu­ca­tion, promis­ing they’ll return and never do. Many times it’s due to increased respon­si­bil­i­ties or dis­trac­tions and in this case you can’t blame a per­son. How­ever, I see this as another step­ping stone in my life and some­thing I need to do in order to feel sat­is­fied about my career. Not only that, but it’s guar­an­teed that this will open other avenues in my life; per­son­ally, pro­fes­sion­ally and spiritually.

Last night my 8-month old daugh­ter and I sat down to watch Charlotte’s Web on DVD. She sat through the entire movie, rest­ing her head on my leg and sip­ping on her bot­tle. Dur­ing the film, Char­lotte reminds Wilbur the pig to keep his chin up. It’s a mes­sage for every­one, to keep our chins up and make our way through life, worry less about frus­tra­tions and focus more on bet­ter­ing our­selves. It’s some­thing I’ve reit­er­ated before, but it’s true and some­thing to remem­ber in order to keep your­self on track with your goals and desires. Remem­ber that there will always be a reward for hard work and per­se­ver­ance and it’s only up to you and the sup­port of your friends and fam­ily to reach your goals.

My daugh­ter, still an infant, may not be able to under­stand “keep­ing her chin up”, but some­day she’ll fig­ure it out and when she does, I’ll be there to sup­port her 100 percent.