Associate of Arts

Greetings,

Your dear Reverend Humpy finally did it. I just completed my math final, which was the last thing I had to do in order to graduate with my AA degree. I ended up with a 3.6 in the class, which, by my preliminary calculations will give me a 3.87 GPA for the quarter and a 3.45 cumulative GPA.

I am feeling quite a bit of relief over this, as you might imagine. Now that I am at this destination, I thought I might take a moment and tell the story of how I got here - which will hopefully better explain why a 31 year old man can be so excited about an AA degree.

In the summer of 1995, if you would have asked me what my post-high school plan was, I would have told you that I intended to pack my belongings on the day after graduation and head west to Seattle, where I would pursue a career as a professional musician - even if that meant playing guitar on the street corner for money. I had absolutely no intention of going to college or doing anything other than playing music for the rest of my life.

That fall, however, I fell in love with a girl who'd just had a daughter. That ended up changing everything. By the time I finished high school, this particular girl and I were already talking about getting married. This meant that I would have to find a way to hold down a straight job, so that I would be able to provide for my new ready-made family. I decided to take a year off of school and worked at a guitar store until September of 1997, when I enrolled for the first time at Spokane Falls Community College. That year, I attended school part-time and worked full-time, and in any of my free-time, I helped raise a toddler. By February of 1998, however, my relationship had gone sour and ended.

I finished the school year, but didn't return the next fall because by that time I had become very involved in an evangelical church (when your fiance' leaves you for a volunteer firefighter, Jesus seems like a pretty big help.) I had become a youth group leader and a full-time member of the praise & worship team. I had also started a Christian rock band, and decided to pursue music again. For the next few years, the band grew, put out a couple of self-produced CDs, and went on a couple of mini-tours before I finally realized that I didn't want to be a part of the Christian music scene anymore. I quit the band, and looked at my life. I was unemployed, had no higher education, and things were looking pretty bleak. It was then that I decided to join the Air National Guard.

If you had told me in high school that I would join the military, I would have laughed at you while giving you the bird on both hands. Nevertheless, I suddenly found myself in need of a fresh start, and I thought that the ANG could help with that. I signed my enlistment papers on September 26th, 2001 and headed for USAF basic training on February 13th, 2002. I completed basic training, USAF Electronic Principles school, and USAF Satellite, Wideband, and Telemetry school and returned home on October 23rd, 2002. I had my fresh start, and 36 months of GI Bill benefits. In January of 2003, I re-enrolled at Spokane Falls with a full credit-load, and my eye on a career in Psychology.

During this time, I was also working full-time as a customer service rep for a health insurance company (a job which was at least as terrible as it sounds). I did pretty well in school for about a year, then I started slipping a bit. I had a really hard time getting up early to go to school and then putting in an 8-hour work day after that. I failed a couple of classes, and quit SFCC only a few credits shy of my AA after the Spring 2004 quarter.

During the summer of 2004, a trifecta of misfortune fell upon me. I was arrested for DUI on July 4th, I dislocated my knee about three weeks later, and about a month after that I was fired from my job. Nevertheless, I started attending Whitworth College, a private Christian school, in September 2004. I worked hard for the first semester, but quickly let depression get the best of me - which resulted in me failing all of my second semester classes and dropping out in May 2005.

The Whitworth experience had a direct effect on my rejection of the evangelical Christian faith, and it had an even more devastating effect on my self-esteem. I began to believe that I was just not college material. A couple of months later, however, I began courting the woman who would become my wife, and my motivation was resuscitated. I was still to broken to go back to school, but I went back to work in the insurance industry for a couple of years, before coming to the realization that I am definitely cut out for corporate office work.

After my fall-out with life as an insurance agent, my wife and I decided that a new career plan was definitely in order. I began teaching guitar part-time and worked some temp jobs for about a year. I found that I really loved teaching guitar, and that I was really good at it. Then one day I decided to look into how difficult it would be to go back to school. It turned out that I only needed to take a couple of classes in order to get my Associate's degree.

With unbelievable support from my loving wife, I went back to Spokane falls in January of this year. I got my first 4.0 GPA last quarter, and as I wrote earlier, I should have a cumulative GPA of 3.45. This summer, I need to take the entrance exam to be accepted into the teaching program at Eastern Washington University. I have about three years of work to go in order to earn a BAE in Physics. It will be a lot of work, but with the support of all of the wonderful people in my life, I finally have the confidence to see it through!

Thanks for reading.

I am the Reverend Humpy, and I have approved this message.