“I’m gonna make something of myself.”
My advice to anyone who may be living the lifestyle that I was living; try to stop and think about what you are doing, because life moves so fast when you're outside in the real world. Take a minute to evaluate yourself introspectively, look at everything you have that’s closest to you, and appreciate everything that you have. Essentially, everyone is potentially one wrong mistake or choice away from losing everything that they love and cherish most in life. So don’t make it to where you have no choice at all to rectify a situation you may be in. Remember, you still have an opportunity to make amends, so don't let that opportunity expire. The worst feeling in the world is when you're sitting in a cell contemplating your actions and you no longer can write your wrongs because time has expired.
Before incarceration, I was going to the Hollywood Art Institute of California for their culinary arts program. I was enrolled for three months before having to drop out due to financial issues. I then enrolled in Concorde Career College to become a certified Medical Assistant. I was only two weeks away from graduating before I got incarcerated. Now that I’m here, I’m pursuing education again. My dad helped me out and paid for a correspondence course through Blackstone Career Institute, to get my certificate as a paralegal; I ended up graduating from that with distinction. I then took a two-year course in Theology from Herbert W. Armstrong College Bible Correspondence and then I ended up enrolling at Bakersfield College - which I am a year into now. I just finished two classes; Archeology and Communications, Oral Debate, and Argumentation. Now, I’m in the summer semester taking Psychology.
Now that California is doing some prison reform programs, I’ve been blessed and have been going to college for free. Statistics show that once you graduate college, the recidivism rate is extremely low, and then, on a BA degree, if you graduate, the recidivism rate is lower than 2% and that's diametrical in comparison. You know, prison is a perpetual revolving door of hopelessness. It used to be CDC (California Department of Corrections), but now it's CDCR (rehabilitation), and especially in California, certain states are just throwing away the key - an eye for an eye mentality. From what I have learned - an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and when you're faced with the reality that you're never going to come out, it’s so easy to say fuck the world, and everybody in it. Prison just trains you to become a more lethal weapon in a variegated way of different outlets. But once you get the opportunity to make something of yourself, and you put effort into pursuing it, it's amazing what an individual is capable of.
“There’s two things that define you; one is your patience when you have nothing, and your attitude when you have everything. ”
— George Bernard Shaw
What my goal is right now, is that I want to graduate with honors. And so far, in every single class I've taken, I've received an A. So, that's something I'm proud of, and I’m trying to continue that progression. I want to have an opportunity to make something of myself if I ever get that chance. The juxtaposition of the man I once was in comparison to the man I am today is night and day. Ever since I was a little kid, my goal was to become a professional baseball player or to own a restaurant. I just want to live a normal life and I want to start a family of my own. I'm having a bit of a dilemma or a conundrum right now. I’m unsure if I want to get into the legal field and become a lawyer, or to earn a degree in business and become an entrepreneur. I’d love to become a general contractor or architect and to renovate and build my own homes.
I'm addicted to school and education and anything I can get my hands on, in the form of knowledge; I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's from horticulture or anthropology. Or history, philosophy, or psychology. If I don't know it, I feel like I have to know it and I'm going to dissect it inside and out just to gain that knowledge. I want to know how things work, and I started to see that side of me once I hit 28. That's when my mentality went from criminal thinking to craving pure knowledge.
Prison is designed to strip you of hope, and the most powerful tool is hope. Just to have a scintilla of hope is the strongest weapon that we have in our arsenal. I want to get out, and if I do, I have to make something of myself and that’s been fueling me right now. I told myself if I could put in that same determination and passion that I put towards hate and gang banging, and apply all of that negativity to what I was doing, but towards knowledge and doing something good, I know without a doubt I would succeed, and that's what I'm going with.
All my hard work that I have been putting in has been paying off, my sentence went down 15 years from 64 years to life. Every college class or program I complete, time gets taken off and now my earliest parole date is 2048. My goal is to keep dropping it lower and lower, so I can make my dreams a reality.