College Blog #14

The End Is Near

By Terrence Cain

Well just four more weeks and this semester will be over with. Honestly, it feels a bit strange for me to be 28 and in college seeing the college life through my eyes when the majority of all college students are between 18 and 22 years of age. When I was 18 I never thought I would be going to college because my parents couldn’t afford to send me to college and there were no loans being granted to me to go to a junior college because my parents made too much, and yet they could send me to a vocational school, so they did.

Unfortunately it was a waste of time because it didn’t help me find any work, no one wanted to give me a chance and the education I received was quite inadequate at the time. Fast forward ten years later and here I am in college going for a degree in print journalism, which is what I wanted to do ten years ago. It’s funny how life can throw you down different avenues until you get where you want to go.

I feel I have been very fortunate these last eight months to have a second chance at actually getting an education that means something to me and that will help me in what I want to do. I feel even more fortunate that Cindy Smith has given me a chance to tighten my skills as a writer here for Howard College’s blog site. So as you can tell, no doubt, I am in a very positive state of mind and that I am looking forward to another semester in the fall with Howard College.

That’s right; I will be back in the fall not the summer. I am taking the summer off to use that time to do some things I need to do to get things back in order because with college life you don’t have a whole lot of spare time for the personal things because you study so much and work so hard to try and get a passing grade.

So this is one of five final blog posts this week. Only four more will be posted and then silence will hit until the fall. I hope you all have a great remaining semester and will be in class every day until the week of May 9^th when we take our final exams for this semester.

Now the coolest thing I can say about my week is that my Creative Writing class is showing us how to write scripts for movies and television! If you get the chance next semester, and attend the Howard College in Big Spring, I do highly recommend taking Prof. Kelly-Anderson’s Creative Writing class. She will unlock your mind and free your potential as an artist. We had two choices for our final project. Write a novel…or…write a script. Well we unanimously voted for script writing.

We’ve all read novels, we all pretty much know how those are composed, but I don’t think that any of us know how a script is made for television or movies. Well I know I don’t so this is a treat for me. This is why I am so happy to be in college.

I didn’t have any of these teachings in that vocational school in 2001. We were just taught how to use a computer for business purposes and that was it. Now I am in a real junior college thanks to federal Pell Grants; so I do feel very fortunate to be in college at my age. Sometimes the tragic events in one’s life will give them an open door to walk through to have better life than the one they had before. That’s how I feel about all these things that have gone on in my life that led me to going to college at my age.

Well that is all I have to say for this week. One more important thing before I say adios; Big Spring’s Howard College will have a Rodeo from April 14^th – 16^th, so come on out and enjoy a true West Texas sport this Friday and Saturday. Until next week, this is Howard College’s blogging machine, over and out!

Peace - Terrence