Founder Posts | Doing College the Hard Way: My 3 Tips for Success.

I graduated from college at the age of 25. My path through it wasn’t easy, nor was it straightforward. 

I attended three different colleges before I graduated, and I didn’t have a single semester where I wasn’t at least working full time. I took classes online, some even while deployed to Iraq. I took classes at night. I took classes on the weekend.

It all worked out in the end, but it certainly wasn’t easy. I often get asked, “how did you do it?”, so I’m going to share a few of the things (that in hindsight) were instrumental to my success.

1. I had a plan. I didn’t stick to it. 

I had meticulously mapped out every single course I had to take to graduate from college, and had a financial plan in place for how I would manage both my classes, and the personal (and financial) responsibilities I had. 

In the summer of 2004, I was accepted into an Army program called “Green to Gold”, which was supposed to take me off active duty and put me into ROTC for the Fall of 2004. Great? No. Not really. Unfortunately, someone had “lost” my enrollment paperwork, and my entrance into the program would have to be delayed a year. 

In the meantime, I deployed to Iraq with my unit instead.

The plan I had crafted was completely unviable. However, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t useful. 

Since I knew every class I had to take, I concocted a new plan where I would take online courses at a community college while I was deployed. This would allow me to take care of several of the general education courses I needed to take. All in, I ended up taking 7 online courses, saving me about $50,000 in tuition that I would have had to find a way to pay out of pocket. 

If I didn’t have a plan, I wouldn’t have been able to quickly pivot when things didn’t go the way I hoped. I also had to have the frame of mind to pivot instead of lamenting the fact that my perfect plan didn’t work out as I thought it would.

2. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, or get in people’s faces as the case may be. 

I don’t know this for sure, but I’m pretty confident in saying that I was probably one of the first enrolled students at American University who had to ask for a deferment to go to Iraq. 

It took a little bit of effort to find the right person to talk to, but they were more than accommodating in allowing me the time I needed to get back to college. However, that wasn’t the end of it. 

I also asked them to connect me to the person who would have been my academic advisor if I had actually enrolled, which was a highly unusual request. However, I knew I needed someone to sign off on my plan to take online courses before I actually enrolled. 

I walked them through my plan, and asked them to help me understand which courses I could or could not take at a community college and have them transfer back towards my degree. Some courses were straight forward, others required that I  submit a formal appeal. 

Meanwhile, I had to convince my company commander to sign off on the tuition assistance paperwork while we were in Iraq. He obviously had more important things to do with his time, fighting a war and all, but this was my life too. I wasn’t about to take no for an answer. 

In both cases, asking for the help I needed was the requisite first step to getting it. Also, in both cases, not being afraid to press the issue and get in someone’s face about it was critical to making it happen. As you go through college, find the right people to ask for help, and ask them for that help. 

If you don’t get what you want/need immediately, don’t be afraid to ask again, or to find another angle that gets you closer to the end goal. After all, this is your life.

3. Find your community. 

I loved American University. I learned a ton, and met a lot of people who have been great friends and instrumental to my success over the years. 

It was also DRAMATICALLY different than any place I had ever been. I was a long way away from the barracks of the South Side of Chicago. 

On one hand, very few of the people I was in college with had any appreciation of the unique challenges I had in going to their institution. On the other hand, none of the people who understood those challenges understood what it meant to be successful at an institution like that. 

So, it was imperative that I found people who had both perspectives. Fortunately, I received a fellowship from the United Negro College Fund for people of color looking to go into the field of international affairs. Through this I was able to spend a summer in Atlanta at Spelman/Morehouse, and at the University of Maryland with people like me, who were trying to do the same thing I was. 

Last year I was at a wedding for someone in this group, and I remarked to my wife that this felt more like my college homecoming than my actual college homecoming. These people have been my rock, and resource over the past 15 years, and I can not imagine what college (and the rest of my career) would have been like without them. 

It’s important for you to find the community that you can call your family, that can help you not only maintain the connection to where you come from but also build the bridge to where you are trying to go.