It’s hard to believe where I am in my life right now. I’ve changed so much from the person I was before I joined the Navy.
One day during my senior year of high school, a Navy recruiter was giving a presentation at my school and I walked out in the middle of his brief. A couple of days later, I had a meeting with my guidance counselor. She warned me about my attendance and that if I continued routine absences, I would not graduate. I always made good grades (sometimes average) in school, I just had a problem with getting there. The Navy recruiter happened to be standing nearby and he overheard the conversation. A week later, he saw me leaving school early and he told me that if I took his practice test he wouldn’t tell anybody.
I ended up joining the Navy because when college came around, I didn’t have a lot of options. When you go up for scholarships they look at everything. My attendance was my biggest downfall. The people that were giving these grants/scholarships would always ask the winning question, “What happened with your attendance?” I had already decided that I wouldn’t take out loans because I knew people that were still paying off their college loans when they were 40 years old!
All during this process, the recruiter was trying to get me to join the Navy. He used to show up at my job and say, “So are you ready to step into the good life?” He was something else! With everything not working out for college, I gave in and set up an appointment to hear what he had to offer me and here I am four years later. Haze gray and underway. Being out to sea gives me the opportunity to reflect about a lot of events that happened to put me where I am today and I have no regrets. I’ve realized how much I’ve grown not only as a sailor but as a person as well.