When I was in high school, I knew I was going to be a civil
engineer, and, I knew I was going to go to Iowa State University. The reason I knew that (actually from about 6th
grade on) is because my dad was a civil engineer and he went to ISU, his
brothers went to ISU, my older sisters went to ISU, and my older brother went
to ISU. Most of those people became
civil engineers. I wasn’t told I had to
go to ISU to be an engineer, however, it was kind of implied that I was going
to do that. That’s what we did in my
family.
So, in high school, that was my goal. I took a lot of math and science classes to
prepare myself. I didn’t think outside of
the box and look at other careers.
High school was not that difficult for me, I was able to get
to ok grades without too much effort.
After I graduated, I did go to ISU.
When I got there, that’s when I found out how difficult college
was. I was overloaded with homework and
there were about 26,000 students enrolled at ISU. It was very overwhelming. I didn’t do very well my first year of
college at ISU. I did so bad that I did
not go back there. The next year, I
attended a community college, and, eventually, I decided that maybe college
just wasn’t for me. So I quit going to
college and worked on a land surveying crew for the next 8 years.
After working for 8 years outside in all kinds of Iowa
weather, I decided that maybe it was time to go back to college. I had a brother-in-law who had been an
elementary teacher and then became a principal.
I liked kids and decided that would be a good career for me to pursue. So, I quit my job, quit earning money, and
went back to school full time as a 28 year old sophomore.
When I started back to college, I was fortunate enough to
get a job in the financial aid office helping students go through the process
of getting money to help pay for college.
I worked 20 hours per week when school was in session and 40 hours per
week during breaks.
After a year of being successful in my classes, the time
came for me to do a field experience in a 4th grade classroom. It was kind of like a job shadow experience
where I would help the teacher, work with the students, and find out what it
was like to be a 4th grade teacher.
After 16 weeks of that experience, I went back to my academic advisor
and told her I did not want to be a teacher anymore. I found out that that career was just not for
me.
At that point, I realized what I really enjoyed, what I
really wanted to do for a career, was to work with college students. I ending up getting a master’s degree in
College Student Affairs and working at a community college before coming to
ICAN to work with students before they became college students.
John - ICAN Waterloo