The Homeless Graduate...How I got to Liberty University's Class of 2012: 25 Days to go

This morning epitomizes why I think a college degree is so valuable, even if you never work in the field you studied. Let me explain why I hold this belief...
You go through a lot to get a degree. It's hard work. I know there are trust-fund babies and kids with rich parents who pay for everything and send their kids off to college with a credit card and a new car and who never do much more than party their way to a "B" and go work for Daddy in his law firm when they graduate. We've all seen "Animal House" and we think that's what college life is about. But it's not that way for most people.
Most college students...especially adults who return to school later, and who are leading a full time life while taking full time classes...are pushing the envelope. They work a 40+ hour week and they study an average of 2 hours per class per day and they have family opportunities (family is never an "obligation") and social responsibilities and church and home ownership...all the things we do every day that taxes our time, a college student who returns to complete or continue their education does them too. On top of the additional 4 hours or so per day of schoolwork. (if you're taking 2 classes per sub semester)
My time is so tight that I have to "schedule" going to the grocery store. And sleep is optional for me right now. That's not me being extreme, that's the truth. This last semester has been the most taxing of the 6 it has taken me to graduate. When I make it to the end and I graduate, I will look back on a 3 year journey of hardship, sacrifice, trial and testing that I have not endured in my life before. My divorce, 12 years ago was a soul-killing difficulty. But I had my job and I was successful at it and I owned a home and I had fewer worries about the day-to-day living issues that I have now. Learning the mortgage business 14 years ago was difficult and stressful but I had a good group of co-workers who rallied around each other and motivated each other.
This entire pursuit of my degree has been fought alone. I have some folks back home who care for me and love me, and ask about my schooling, but my immediate circle is empty. In TN I don't really know anyone well enough to be able to "vent" as I occasionally need to. I am seldom ever asked about my studies or how I am doing with my educational pursuits. I have learned the value of encouragement by feeling the vacuum of its absence.
If I were an employer, and an applicant came to my office for an interview and told me he just finished his degree later in life I would instantly know he has far more qualifications than just what the transcript tells me. I would know, from my own experience that a person who finishes college...

• Knows how to budget his time because he has more demands than the average non-student. Especially if he returned to school and juggled family and job obligations along the way.
• Knows how to adapt and be flexible. Because not much goes as planned in a college pursuit, particularly, again, where the student is older and has "real life" obligations.
• Is fiercely determined. Because this is not easy, regardless of what you are studying, higher education is tough, you will be tested.
• Manages his life. Because every second...I mean every second is precious in this life I lead. I could honestly tell an employer that I'd be amongst his most productive employees merely because I have developed the habit of making the most of every second I have, because I have to.
• Is confident. If only because of the battles he's won and the ability he has to look backward with pride at what this degree cost him and what that cost gave him.
• Is honest. Face it...if you are going to cheat your way through life you can find some mail-order school to grant you a degree without any study at all. If you go to the trouble of getting a degree you most likely did it with integrity. Case in point...the Algebra class I'm taking is killing me. It's what is keeping me up late into the night and again in the morning. It's why I am stressed and suffering from terrible vertigo. I could, as a friend suggested, probably find a High School student who could come to my house, sit at my computer and for $100 whip through this class for me and nobody would ever know.  I'd be lying if I told you I hadn't considered it. But that would render my degree useless as far as I am concerned. I would rather go sleepless and actually learn the algebra. I think 99% of the students who go back later in life feel the same way. I can tell you that my classmates feel that way...I can see it in their Discussion Boards and Blogs and class assignments. These are a passionate bunch who are all giving it their very best. A cheater would be easy to spot in a group like the people I go to class with at Liberty U online.
• He is no quitter. Of all the lessons I learned I guess this is the one that has shaped me most. I didn't quit on my daughter when I lost my home as the mortgage industry collapsed and I was downsized right out of a career. I slept in my car instead of slinking away to some other city where there was work. I stayed and endured the humiliation and crushing weight of homelessness because I am a dad. I endured the workload and demands of finishing my degree because I wanted a better life for us both. I wanted something to be proud of again. I wanted to know what it felt like to have a college degree and be a real alumni. I wanted to have something to look at in a life marked with some very recent losses and say "Here's where I won. And if I could win this, I can win any battle I face, if only because I outlast it" 

So...there you have it. This is what a college education gives you that the degree and the transcript doesn't say. Tough times don't build character, tough times reveal it. A person learns a lot about the character they have when they pursue that degree. I know college isn't for everyone, but it's not just the classroom education that you're getting. You are learning about your major, but you are also learning about yourself. I know I've learned more than I thought I would about my major--Religion-- and my minor--Life coaching. I also learned more than I thought I would about  myself. I learned how fierce I can be when I want something this much. I learned how much I will endure to get someplace better. I learned how important hope is. I learned what encouragement is worth. Because I learned those lessons, in 25 days I will be...
Craig Daliessio
Liberty University
Class of 2012

Until tomorrow...

The Homeless Graduate...My Journey to Liberty U Class of 2012

'Mornin everybody...
I just got a lump in my throat and my eyes welled up as I wrote the title to this post. Every single time I mention the number of days until graduation, or speak of it with someone, or stop for 30 seconds and remind myself that I am graduating, I instantly see the picture in my mind of me in my cap and gown, (cap very likely not fitting) sitting amongst my classmates, getting my degree. The image is so strong in my mind now that I believe it completely. In my mind, it is already graduation day.  Zig Ziglar talks about this in his "How to Stay Motivated" series. Once you see an image in your mind of an accomplishment you are striving for, and once your mind begins to accept that image...it's as good as done. We move towards our strongest impulses.
I am starting a new week and it feels like an extension of last week...and the week before. I worked until 7:30 last night. I hadn't planned on spending almost 9 hours on this job but there were some difficulties and it took a lot longer to finish than I expected. I worked 10 hours the day before on a different job. Today I am working until 5 or 6. I am busy right through the end of the week, but hopefully I'm taking the weekend off to spend with my daughter. The crush of finishing my degree is imposing itself on the time I spend with almost everyone, but I keep every other weekend free for Morgan. When I lost everything, so did she. We went three and a half year without being able to spend our weekends together like we'd always had until then. Now that I have a place to live again, I guard that privilege like gold.
I have two tests, a paper on Daniel 9:24-27, and some comments on classmates blogs for my Life Coaching class all due tonight. Child's play.
Honestly I am sad to see this ending. I love to learn. I love learning anything at all, but learning more about my faith has been amazing. The life Coaching minor is essential to the career plans I have so I enjoy those classes as well.
I plan on going straight into a Masters program this fall if I have time. My Christmas book is coming out in Sept. and I will be traveling a bit and doing some speaking for that. I am starting a new book this summer with my friend Tony Luke Jr. and I am starting a new job in May, once I graduate.
After the first of the year I have a new book of my own I want to get started on. It's a modern retelling of the story of the Prodigal Son.
Life is busy for me but I have always been one to bite off large chunks. I like new things and I thrive on challenges. So doing all these things at once is just the way I like it.
Well this entry is a bit tame, but I didn't promise every day would be scintillating. Tomorrow I plan on sharing my thoughts on why a college degree...in anything...matters so much. But for the moment I have algebra to do and then I have to go to work.
Until Tomorrow...
Craig

Homeless to Graduate: 27 days to go

It's Sunday morning. My opportunity clock went off at 4:30 as usual and I actually allowed myself the luxury of hitting the snooze and sleeping until 6AM, at which point I woke up feeling guilty as if the day had already slipped by. I've always been a very early riser so it's not just because of my school work load...it's just that I like being up before the rest of the world. I get more done in the early hours.
Today is another overload, as usual. I did math for an hour then worked up a quote for replacing a deck, now I have to go finish painting another deck and hopefully I'll be done my days chores by 1 or so and I can come home and study. I have a paper due for my Bible class, an exam for that class and an exam for my Life Coaching class.
I've had to give up a lot of things to get this degree finished. I suppose the bitter irony is that I am a Religion major and I haven't been to church in weeks. Sunday is the only day I can get a lot of school work finished uninterrupted and I need the entire day to do it. Today I am working as well, but that's only because the vertigo battle cost me a few days of production and I have to get caught up. I hate missing church but It's a necessary casualty for one more month. I don't even spend as much personal time in prayer as I used to. Not that I'm a mendicant  or anything, but I do try to pray daily for those I love and for direction in my life etc. That is suffering as well as this grind marches on. I feel like the guys on "Deadliest Catch" going weeks with about 3 hours sleep a night...except my life isn't in danger.
I've turned the corner on Algebra now...it's not easy for me but it's no longer costing me hours on end looking at one problem just trying to figure out where to start. I can't relax on it, but the worry about graduation is subsiding. I'm going to make it on time and everything will be great.
I was thinking yesterday about the lessons you learn in college that have nothing to do with your major.
I've learned a lot. I learned the value of my dreams. And sadly...I've learned that your dreams will never matter to anyone else as much as they matter to you. The exception to that is when someone really loves you...I mean really loves you. If you really love someone you care about what they care about and you celebrate their victories as if they were your own. That's why my list of people at graduation is going to be pretty small. This is a victory I only want to share with the people who knew and understood how much it mattered to me. People who never let me quit or take the easy way out, like settling for an associates degree or resuming the pursuit "later" because they knew it would be hollow or "later" might never come. People who called to check on me and who asked me what grades I'd gotten when the semester was over. People who asked me what classes I was taking and what did I learn from them. Those people love me.
I learned the difference between loving what you do and doing what you have to do to survive. Sometimes you have to do both. But the truth is that as admirable as "being a survivor" is, it's nothing to pursue in the long run. A homeless man living in a box under a freeway overpass is a survivor too. A heroin addict breaking into someones house to steal a few items to score more dope is a survivor too. I have been surviving for a long time now...it's time to thrive and flourish.
Even doing carpentry...that's merely survival for me. I have big dreams and plans and I long to get them going. Graduating from college was the cornerstone of those plans and dreams. This degree might be in Religion, but in reality it's a degree in overcoming. It's a Bachelors in confidence and perseverance. It's A Doctorate of Hope.
Today on my motivational speaking account on twitter (follow me @Little_Old_Ant) I wrote this: "You can look forward to a challenge and say "I CAN!" only when you can look back at your difficulties and say "I DID!" I love that. I lived it enough now to verify it's truthfulness. You can never look forward to a challenge with confidence if you have been a quitter or if you've settled for less. Pushing myself through this last 2 1/2 years as I completed my degree has shown me what I am capable of. It's shown me the value of finding your "one thing" and going after it with all your might. Even if you have to do it under the harshest of circumstances. It's not easy to study in a restaurant every day. Or FedEx, or sitting in a cold cramped Volvo 850 with a flashlight. But it's a lot easier than working a job you hate and spending every day until you die wishing you had graduated from college, or started that business, or married that girl, or lost that weight, or learned that language. Amongst the things I learned along the way to May 12, 2012, I learned how priceless it is to have goals and dreams and a vision. Proverbs tells us "Where there is no vision the people perish". People perish all the time because they live without a vision for their life. A vision of who they really are, what they are capable of under duress, how strong they can become when they have to become strong.
...and how much they'll endure because they love their child.
My daughter will be one of the few people with me at LU next month. Because this was for her. She saw her daddy build a life, then saw it all gone when his world exploded. She saw me drifting and lost as I tried to figure out what I would do next to get it back. She saw me choose homelessness, when leaving her here and going where there was work would have been easier. She saw me battle back slowly until I had a place for us to live again.
Next month she will see me graduate from college at 48. She thinks I'm a hero. She has absolutely no doubt I love her.
Someday when she is in college and she feels like quitting, I will give her the "Daddy Lecture" about not giving up and taking the easy way. And she will have to listen. She watched me live it out in front of her. That was the lesson she learned from my college experience.
College taught me a lot more than just what a Bachelors of Religion offered. Finishing this degree taught me who I am and what I'm made of. And it opened doors within my own soul that were welded shut. I am walking taller, more confident, and honestly...I know I can handle just about anything now. For me the hard way was the best way.
I hope there are a few of you out there who might stumble across this blog and decide maybe you'll try something you've only dreamed of until now. I can't tell you how hard it will be but I can tell you this. Endurance is sweeter than the bitterness of your biggest failure. Go for it! Live with High Hopes.
Until Tomorrow...
Craig
LU 2012

Homeless to Graduate...How I got to Liberty University Class of 2012

Goood Morning campers! The ticket window is open! (My Philly friends will remember those words from "Bubba" John Stevens)
The opportunity clock went off at 4:30 this morning but I was already awake. Don't know what woke me up but there I lay...caught between sleep and awake, and the bell rang once again. This morning's schedule is...Math for 2 hours followed by work all day then come back and work on a paper for my class on the book of Daniel. I have to do a full exegesis on Daniel 9:27...the prophecy of the 70 weeks. It's my final bible class and the first one where I had to do an actual line by line exegesis of a passage. I'm looking forward to it. Sometime tonight I have to draw plans for a couple of decks and a carport.
I have no plans on going out tonight and now you all know why.
This has pretty much been my schedule since February first. After this weekend I'll be caught up enough in Math that I'll feel good about going back to the gym in the mornings. I'm looking forward to that.
No one has asked me yet, but I'm sure somebody may be wondering so I'll answer a question here..."Why are you writing this 30 day journal before graduation?"
Well the answer has a few facets. First of all I am pretty sure I will be the first homeless graduate of Liberty University. Technically I'm not homeless anymore but I was until January. That means that of the 6 semesters it took for me to finish my degree, I completed five of them while living in my car. When you are enduring something like that you don't see it as inspiring or character-revealing or whatever. It's just a humiliating grind that you wish wasn't true and you want to get away from as fast as possible. But once the finish line is in sight, and you have hung in there and made it through...you begin to appreciate the path you just walked and you see how others can look at you and be inspired. So I'm telling my story because I know...as sure as I'm sitting here...that there are people out there who had to bury some dreams at some point in their lives. Maybe it was finishing the degree...maybe it's starting it in the first place. Maybe it's starting a business or losing weight or taking the plunge and getting married. Whatever it is, I'm hoping more than a few of them find this blog and read about my own very difficult path and say "If he can do that...I can do my thing too". I hope so. I hope I get a few more emails and tweets from people (I've received a few already) who decided to enroll at LibertyUOnline (or another school) because they heard about me.
Let me interject a sidebar here...I was a resident student at Liberty University for two years so for me, the decision to finish there online was natural. But if you are considering a school...especially an online option...please consider my alma mater. This road I trod to get my degree was NOT easy and I was frequently of ill humor as I battled the joy-killing grind of homelessness. I never told anyone at LU about my homelessness until this last semester because I didn't want to use it as an excuse, so there were times I snapped at some poor adviser and they undoubtedly had no idea why I was so cranky. But without question...every single person I dealt with at LUOnline was as helpful and kind and truly concerned as they could possibly be. They really approach this from the perspective of having a burning desire to see you all the way through. They want you to graduate.
My other hope is that people will see my struggles and be encouraged to endure in the everyday grind. Some people have dreams that have nothing to do with returning to school or finishing an education. For some it might be a career change or a personal change or whatever. But I hope they'll see--underneath it all--that God enabled this journey. I could not have survived what I went through without the grace and strength that my faith provided. Paul says "His grace is sufficient for me..." Sometimes sufficiency means overflowing and sometimes it's just enough grace to hang on one more day and not give up and become tragic. For me, most days were the latter until this past year. Since August, when the goal moved into clear view and the finish line was plain and it was apparent that I was actually going to graduate, my hopes have been higher than any point since 2007 when I lost my home. Hope is everything! I want people to read this journal and take away some hope. Listen...I've taken courses in Bible, U.S. History, Creation Studies, Anatomy and Physiology, Algebra, and Life Coaching. As valuable as all those classes were to me, the lesson of hope was equally important. Maybe even more important. With the hope of graduation came hope for other successes as well. If I can do only one thing for the readers of this blog, I want it to be bestowing a little hope on them...on YOU. This has been the hardest of journeys but I would not have it any other way. Exactly 28 days from today...two hours from the time I write this...I will file into Williams Stadium to begin Commencement Exercises. Sometime around 1PM I will assemble with my classmates from the School of Religion and take the walk. The walk that concludes at Liberty Mountain...where it began, half a lifetime ago. I learned as many lessons along the way as I did in the classroom. But that is tomorrow's story. Factoring Trinomials beckons...
Until Tomorrow...
Craig...
Class of 2012 (In case you forgot) :)

Homeless to Graduate...my journey to Liberty University Class of 2012...Day 2, 29 days to go

29 days...
This time next month I'll be in Lynchburg Va. for my graduation.  The long and winding road comes to a destination at last. I'm sure countless other journeys will spring from this one but this one has been such a big part of my life for so long now. In the 32 years since I graduated High School, I have worked at a plumbing supply, a chemical plant, a roofing and siding supply, an HVAC supply, and I was a carpenter for 14 years. I was a mortgage banker for 10 years and I was homeless and basically picked up odd jobs for the last four years. In all that time, and in all of those various incarnations...I longed to finish this degree. It was the one thread that wound through everything else I was doing.
I should have graduated in 1986 with the rest of my class who graduated High School in 1981.  But again...there wasn't a lot of premium on education in the house I grew up in and I was trying so hard just to be something, that I missed the chance. I grew up hearing the benefits of working in a factory somewhere. Or being a plumber or an air-conditioning technician. Not that those careers are bad, or even less. But they weren't the thing that burned in my heart. There were a few conversations like the one "Rudy" and his father had at the bus terminal. "You can work at the steel mill Rudy...run a crew one day. There's nothing wrong with that" Rudy's response..."It's not what I want..."
Conversations of any kind were pretty scant where I grew up. For a lot of reasons.
I had to take a crazy and winding course to get to where I am this morning...up at 4:30 making coffee and doing algebra.
I have a doctor appointment this afternoon to see if we can rein in this vertigo. I know it's stress related, because I went through this once before. Once I graduate and can focus on my new job and a few other things and don't have the crush of school going on, I'll relax a bit. But for now the schedule is grinding. I'll do math until about 7:30, then head for the job site (today I'm finishing up painting a deck ) then get back here around 6PM and do homework until I literally fall asleep.
Last night I was at it until 11PM. That's an early cutoff for me but I was literally falling asleep at the computer. My head snapped back a few times and I realized I'd been doing the same equation for 20 minutes. So I went to bed and I'm at it today.
It's a grind and the thought has crossed my mind a few times that I could just drop the Algebra, finish strong in the two other courses I have and take Algebra in the summer. That would work except I wouldn't be allowed to walk with my class and I'd have to wait until next May (2013).
I've seen myself walking across that stage too many times now to give up. I've heard Chancellor Falwell telling my story during Commencement and I've felt his handshake and Jonathan's and I have seen...in my soul...my degree.
As soon as I scrape together the $217 I am ordering my cap and gown and announcements. I already filled out the form online and they sent me a proof:

The Board of Trustees, Chancellor
Provost and Faculty of
Liberty University
announce that
Robert Craig Daliessio
received the degree of
Bachelor of Science in Religion
at the Commencement Exercise
Saturday morning
May twelfth, Two Thousand and Twelve
at ten o'clock
Williams Stadium
Liberty University
Lynchburg, Virginia

It's all I can do to maintain my composure as I read those words. It's why I am up at 4:30 and up still at midnight. It's what drives me to the finish line. This is what I was put here to do. And this hard way...that was part of God's plan apparently. Whether He designed it that way or not I know He'll use it. I have already received emails and "Tweets" from a few older people who heard of my story and decided to take the chance and enroll at LUOnline themselves and pursue  a dream burning within their chests. I didn't start out to inspire anyone else...I just needed one thing to go right in a world that had broken all around me and left me homeless and ragged and ready to quit. Along the way I became an inspiration.
I love the movie "Tombstone". Val Kilmer steals the show as Doc Holliday and there is a scene where right after a riverside gun battle that defies logic and reality, Wyatt Earp's men are reloading and getting ready to ride off and one of the men says,speaking of Earp  "If they were my brothers I'd want revenge too".   Holliday says "Oh make no mistake, it's not revenge he's after...it's a reckoning"
Maybe that's what this degree means to me...a reckoning. After 28 years I still had what it took to finish this. After four years of homelessness I was able to find something I could do that would work. After losing my home, then my career, and all my dreams and hopes I had one thing left I could attempt that I could succeed at. If nothing else, this degree was well-timed.
That's what this means to me. For 3 and 1/2 years I endured the humiliating crush of homelessness while those around me ignored my presence in their midst. I caught, in the occasional storefront window, the reflection of a man who was running on fumes and stubbornness. I was singular in my determination not to leave my daughter no matter what. I grew up without my dad...I would not see her endure that. And so I stayed in that car, and showered in that rec center, and studied at Panera Bread Company, or the library, or FedEx Office, or in my car by flashlight, because that's all I had at my disposal. If this was the price I would have to pay for my degree I would pay it. If this is what inspiration looks like...so be it. I'm an inspiration I guess.
So I have to endure four more weeks of insanity and stress and even vertigo but I will do it because I will be there May 12, and I will hear Chancellor Falwell tell my story and I will hear them call my name and I will walk across that stage and get my degree. 
And nothing...not another economic collapse or another career failure or a divorce or anything else, will ever take this from me. Last August was the last August that I will ever feel regret about seeing kids go off to college and me not going with them. By this fall, when college kids go back to campus and begin, or continue their education...I will have completed mine. 
...the formal part at least. One never really stops learning.
Algebra beckons. Until tomorrow...
Craig Daliessio
Liberty University
2012

30 Days until graduation...High Hopes got me here!

Okay, as promised, here is the first installment of my final 30 days until I graduate.
It's 5:45. I've been up since 4:30AM. I have been getting up early all my life because I was always a paperboy, or I was going hunting or fishing. The truth is I really like being an early riser. Something about an early start that makes me feel like I'm getting more done. But 4:30 is really early...especially every single day without a break since February. But I have to do this. I have a mandatory Algebra class I am taking and it's very hard for me. I am learning it as I go and it takes me 3 times as long as any of my other classes. I spend an hour to an hour and a half per day on each of my other classes. Right now those classes are Bibl450 which is a class on Daniel and Revelation together, and Lifc301 which is a Health and Wellness class for my life coaching program. Earlier this semester I had Life Coaching 201 (a basic Life Coaching course) and Bibl364 (The Book of Acts). Online semesters at LU are 17 weeks long but they are divided into three sub semesters lasting eight weeks each. (One sub semester overlaps the first and the second, but few people take courses in those)  Plus there are some classes that run all 17 weeks...like this algebra class. My other courses are eight week classes so I had the first two from Jan 17 until March 12 and this set runs from March 21 until May 11. It's a great system as long as you keep up. If you are a resident student the same material takes 17 weeks to cover, so online you are covering the material in huge chunks. If you fall behind even one week you really run the risk of failing. With the additional study time I've needed for math, this has been a hard semester. I've been sleep deprived and stressed to the point of my vertigo returning. I had shingles about two months ago. Both of these are stress related. I am so pressed for time that I stopped going to the gym, which makes me feel even worse. Starting tomorrow I am going back. I am close enough to being caught up in math now, that I can spare the 2 hours in the morning.
In all this, I am still happier than I have ever been. Getting this degree means the world to me. It's been the first good thing that happened to me in the five years since I lost my home to foreclosure and the 4 years since I first became homeless and was sleeping in my car and showering at the gym. It's been a hard road and my degree completion has been the only thing that I've tried that worked consistently throughout the last few years. Liberty University online probably saved my life in a lot of ways. At very least it saved my belief in myself and my tattered self esteem.
I started at Liberty in 1984. I had been out of High School for three years and each fall as my friends left for college I would be severely broken hearted. All I wanted was to go to school and become who and what I felt I was supposed to be. I could spend pages writing about why that didn't happen right away but suffice it to say that I didn't grow up in a home where education was valued or respected. I was told that a good factory job was what I should pursue and I should be thankful for whatever I got. That's partially true, but it's also mind-numbingly sad. I was a brilliant student in high school. I scored a 29 on the ACT. (The highest score possible is 32) My English aptitude was off the charts. My advisor at Liberty my freshman year said that with scores like mine I could have gotten scholarships galore had I applied right after high school and that I could CLEP up to a Junior level in English right away.
I got one year at LU in 84-85 and another in 94-95. Then I got married. Then a year and a half later I became a dad. Then I became a mortgage banker. Then a homeowner, then a divorcee. In 2007 I lost my home when the industry collapsed and in 2008 the career I had grown into and had tremendous success in was gone. I had been a national award winner. A Branch-of-the-Year nominee for the largest privately funded mortgage company in the world. I had earned six figures.
By May of 2008 I was living in my car.
August 9, 2009 I was sitting in that same car, in the parking lot of Panera Bread Company and I had just hung up with my advisor at LU online. I had an old envelope in my hands and I was reading the words scrawled on the back. "Bibl110, CRST290 History of Life, HIUS221, THEO202." This was my class schedule for Fall 2009. I was back in LU and once again pursuing my dream of graduating from there. In the midst of my homelessness and desperation I had something to look to and work towards. I cried in my car for about 15 minutes. I had forgotten how much this meant to me and how badly it hurt that I'd never completed this journey.
For the next three years...six semesters online, five of them completed while living in my car...I pursued this goal. It was the one thing that I could look at and say "At least this isn't failing. This is working out". I dropped a lot of classes and attempted them more than once. It's not that any of them were especially hard...it's just so hard to do your best when you are limited by where you are living and you can only study at a restaurant or the library or FedEx office...or by flashlight in the front seat of your car.
But I did it. 30 days from today I will wear that cap and gown and walk across the stage on Liberty Mountain and receive the degree I have chased for literally more than half my life.
But today I have to get back to studying and then go paint a deck, and draw some plans for another deck and pressure wash yet another before I return home this evening and study a whole lot more.
Typically I am up until midnight. 4 1/2 hours of sleep each night is not much...even for a guy like me who has been sleep-avoiding most of my life. But in 30 days I can relax a bit. So today I'll press on.
See you all tomorrow...