I have a weirdly hard time selling myself and I don't think that highly of myself. It has always been one of my weird flaws. It's a weird mixture of a lack of confidence and tons of life experience telling me that I'm not that important. And when I really think about my life during the last few years, I should honestly be amazing at bragging about myself, all the time.
A few years ago I was guy bouncing between awful jobs that paid little, offered even fewer benefits and were run by total idiots who had never heard of streamlining and safety rules. I was a guy being bit by boredom and the occasional felony while working in a liquor store for almost 2 years under an owner who had 0 idea as to how he's supposed to run a store and even less of an idea of how to talk to women. I was a guy who was proving his dirt bag, deadbeat uncle right by not being in school, or even taking the time to finish high school and having no idea of what direction I wanted to take my life. I wasn't unhappy with my life, but it wasn't the life that I wanted to live and when work started drying up, I realized how much I did not like being the last one hired and first one fired.
Bouncing between awful jobs in the middle of a recession and getting stuck with weird, unworkable hours at minimum wage with no benefits kinda forced me to reassess my life. Did I really want to hit 30, 40 or 50 breaking my back for someone else while watching some jackass who had no idea how to do what I do orders me around? When I realized that the answer was no and that I would probably end up having to smack the dog shit out of the supervisor at one of my old jobs if he ever stepped to me the wrong way again, I decided to focus on finding out what I wanted to do in life, and what better place to do that than college? With that thought in my head I decided to enroll and at least take a shot at getting a life that allows me to save up for retirement one day.
My experience in college so far has been a weird one. I have never been more frustrated by not knowing things in my life, while at the same time I have never been happier at how much I already knew and how much I'm actually learning. I'm not just learning that I still hate math and can basically mop the floor with most people when it comes to knowing history, I'm also learning what actually gets my mind turned up. I've learned that, when I want to be, I'm not terrible at writing. I've learned that I'm not bad when it comes to the subject of politics. I've learned that I'm not only good at sociology, I'm great at it and can explain why Denmark, as it is today, may actually cease to exist one day. Of course the biggest thing I've learned is that I can kinda mash all of those things together and make my own direction in life, and if I'm passionate enough, this letter notifying me that I've made the dean's list will only be the beginning of great things for me.
Not bad at all for a guy who dropped out in the 10th grade all those years ago.
