Much Ado About Something

The tale of my college education is a sordid one, and I'll give you the brief rundown before I explain how I ended up at Cal Poly Pomona.

I started out fresh out of high school on a mission to go to a Christian college, because my family wasn't particularly religious and I had become a born-again Christian between junior high and high school. I wanted to learn more about the Bible and to learn about science and history and literature through the perspective of a Christian education.

So, off I went, accidentally, to probably the most, or one of the most, conservative Christian colleges I have ever heard of. I had a Cal Grant (read: free money for school), and my parents were footing a good chunk of the bill. But, with the hefty pricetag that The Master's College carried, I was unable to live on campus or even afford an apartment. I lived in a travel trailer on a ranch. Twice a day I had to feed 5 horses and muck stalls. Plus I had to pay my utilities and for gas and car insurance, so I also got a job at Arby's.

Between the living conditions on the ranch and the bubble-like atmosphere of the school, I just couldn't hang.

I came home and decided to go to community college for a while so I could figure out what to do next. Meanwhile, I lost my grant because of inconsistent enrollment in school.

I sort of tried to get a paralegal certificate for a while, because law always interested me, and I just wanted something that paid well and let me have weekends off... but not really.

So I got a pretty decent job at Dave and Buster's, found it more interesting to party on the weekends for a while, then came back to the Lord and got an office job. Then I realized that I really did want to do that whole "school" thing.

I strongly considered moving up to Orland to be with my birth mother and family and go to Chico State. But that was just too far of a move for me. I gave some thought to moving out to LB and going to Cal State Long Beach and living with my cousin out there.

Finally I just dug my heels in and finished up my GE's at Riverside Community College. When it was time to transfer, I was living with a couple friends in Ontario. One of them went to Cal Poly, a school I had never considered for a second. She invited me to see Much Ado About Nothing, which ended up serving a couple of purposes.

Number one, I had no idea that the theatre department was any good at all at Cal Poly. I was pleasantly surprised.

Number two, I saw, for the first time in my life, the young man playing Claudio, whose first name is Aaron and whose last name happens to be the same as mine now.

He graduated the same quarter I began at CPP, and oddly enough about 8 months later we ended up dating at the behest of a couple of friends. Primarily Elizabeth, who is not the grim reaper of matchmaking, after all.

And a few of my favorite people in the whole world I know because of my time at CPP. Ashley, Becca (by proxy), Eliz, Justin, Wa, ACT, Sally, Dave (and now Sio), Joe, Nate, Liz L, Allison... all people I would have been missing out on were it not for my foot shuffling in regards to my education. :)

Maybe that's not all so much coincidence as "everything happens for a reason", and maybe those are kind of the same thing.