I just got home from my second
job, but there’s no time to kick back. I only have enough
time to grab a bite to eat and kiss my wife and son goodbye. Though
I’m almost 30, I’m in high school again and can’t
be late for class. I dropped out of high school midway through my
senior year back in 1996, not because I was lazy or some juvenile
delinquent — and not because I took or sold drugs — but because
jobs seemed a lot more real.
I’d started high
school in the city of East San Jose, Calif., but early on
transferred to a school in Monterey County. When I got there, I was
one of the few Latinos. I remember sitting in an office surrounded
by blue-eyed counselors and posters on the wall that said
“Dare to Dream.” When the counselors asked me what I
wanted to do with my life, I meant what I said when I answered:
“I want to help people. I want to be a youth
counselor.”
The room fell silent. One of the
counselors looked at me and said: “There’s too much school
involved for that; why don’t you pick a trade?” That was not
something I dreamed about, and the next few years seem blurred as I
went to school, worked at jobs all night and saw a girlfriend in
between.
I wasn’t a bad student. I maintained a
decent grade-point average. But with what felt like no support and
no real motivation of my own, I fell into the trap that a lot of
young people from the old neighborhood seemed to fall in. In a
funny way, I was no different from the kids who chose to sell dope
or steal as a means to get by. My fix was working as hard as I
could.
As my first job — working at a movie theater —
came and went along with a lot of other nowhere jobs, I began to
realize that dropping out of school had been a mistake. I remember
sitting in my grandparents’ living room looking at all the
graduation photos of various family members, when it hit me:
I’d become another statistic. I was stuck in a daze, staring
at my Uncle Tony’s picture on the wall, with “Mt.
Pleasant High class of 1970” written under it, when my
grandfather shook me up.
“Go back to school!” he said.
That’s exactly what he’d done. My grandpa was 58 back
in 1969, when he finally received his high school diploma from the
San Jose High Adult Education program. He truly embraced the value
of education, coming from a generation when Latinos were treated as
second-class citizens and school was a privilege not to be taken
for granted. He went from a poor boy who grew up in
California’s Central Valley picking fruit and vegetables, to
obtaining a contractor’s license and starting his own
construction company. And it was his high school diploma that
helped make it possible.
I tried dropping back in a
couple of times after that. I took some night classes and even
enrolled at San Jose City College. But it didn’t last. It was hard
for me getting into the school mode, since I’d been out of
school for so long. I felt overwhelmed. So I kept working, and for
the most part, everything seemed to be working out.
I’m now pushing 30, married with children, working two jobs I
love. And — can you believe it — one of them is being a youth
counselor. But that little piece of paper I once thought I could do
without is holding me back from securing a better future.
I’ve been working with a nonprofit organization as an at-risk
youth counselor, and I’d be a perfect candidate for a
permanent position with the school district — if only I had the
proper schooling. Achieving a high school diploma is the first
step. So I’m off to night school to finish what I started.
But this time I’ll do it one step at a time, with direction
and a solid plan. I’m only down a few high school credits, so
it wont be long before I get my diploma. Then I’m off to
pursue a college education. If you’re still in high school,
you might want to learn from my experience: Get it done the first
time. And to those who have dropped out: Remember, it’s never too
late. You’re never too old to drop back into school.
David Madrid is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He also works as
an editor for Silicon Valley Debug, a project of New America Media
in San Jose, California.
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