Community College Success Stories

ftblplya1
Fri, 09 Aug 2013 10:52:58 +0000

I was inspired by a similar thread on this website many years back so I thought that I should pay it forward to the next kid who may not have much inspiration.

When I was in high school, I was not a serious student. I hardly did any work. If I had to take work home, then it wasn’t going to get done. I lived in a poorer area where being smart was not “cool” and I followed the peer pressure to not study/do homework etc. I finished with around a 2.6, which, in actuality, was better than I deserved.

During my senior year, with adulthood right around the corner, I had to decide what I was going to do with my life and what I decided was that I was going to be an aerospace engineer (a.k.a. rocket scientist). There was a program for this at a public ivy close to where I lived that had placed many people who ended up being very successful. They accepted a few community college transfers each year who had a GPA of around ~3.8.

I got job at the grociery store near where I lived so I could pay for school and enrolled at the local community college in the hopes of transferring in two years. A couple of weeks before starting school, my Dad, who worked in construction, told me he could get me a job as a roofer. When I replied that I’d rather be an engineer, he rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath as he walked away.

When I was at the community college I devoted a significant amount of time to studying. My bar for understanding was higher than the teacher’s because my assumption was that the professors at the university were much more difficult than the professors at the CC (this was only partially true). While I was there, I met a former friend who informed me that two of my high school classmates that had worked hard and got into the university I was trying to get into from high school had flunked out of the engineering program.

In two years I finished my associates degree with high honors and was accepted to the aerospace engineering program at the University of Washington. I finished with a 3.6 and a NASA sponsored project on my resume.

I then went to graduate school at the same school, with funding from a research grant, finished a masters and went to work as an aerospace engineer with an initial salary around 75k/yr with retirement, health benefits 401k etc.