I didn't want to disappoint anyone.
I have to backtrack to about 4 months prior to when I started school back. I had a little over a month sober and I knew I could remain sober if I continued to use my A.A. resources and keep doing what I was doing. I hadn't found a job yet, so I began to consider going back to school. I went online and applied for financial aid. Wayne State University wasn't too far from my parents' house and I had went there for a short period of time directly out of high school in 2002-2003. Unfortunately, at that time, I wasn't prepared to be successful in college. After about a year and a half, I dropped out due to a lack of focus. I was hanging around with the wrong crowd, cutting class and not taking school serious. I actually love school and I knew college was important, but I was there for the wrong reasons. I was there because one of the first questions older people asked people my age was, "Are you still in school?" If you said no, they were going to tell you how important it was and may even suggest that you go back; but if you said yes, they were instantly going to show you a certain level of respect that they may have not have otherwise given you. Then they were going to ask you what school you went to and what you were studying. I wanted to be able to answer of these questions to the acceptance of my elders. Also, I wanted to keep my parents happy. All they wanted me to do was to go to college and make something of myself and I didn't want to disappoint them. Between my elders, my parents and society norms, college was what was expected of me. The only downside to all of this was that I wasn't in school for myself. I was in school to please everyone else. And that didn't work out to well for me.I took the bus to Wayne State.
Eventually, I enrolled at Henry Ford Community College in 2004. This worked out well for me because it was a lot smaller than the university, it was closer to where I lived and I was a little bit older and more mature by now. I adapted well at the community college because it acted as a middle-ground between the high school and the university level. I graduated 3 years later with an Associate Degree. Since I had already conquered community college and was finally sober, I now figured I was in the perfect position to go back to Wayne State and obtain a bachelors degree. In order for me to get to back and forth to school, I would have to catch the city bus because my license was still suspended. So one day I was at a gas station on Warren St. and I saw a bus driver get out of the bus and walk into the gas station. I asked him the best bus route to get to Wayne State and he told me that all I had to do was take the Warren bus down to Cass. It was a straight shot. I didn't have to transfer or anything. The next day I got on the Warren bus and headed to Wayne State.My transfer credits allowed me to come in as a junior.
I spoke to a counselor at Wayne State and she told me that since I had taken classes there in the past, I would be able to use many of those credits toward a degree. Also, some of my credits from Henry Ford transferred over, which allowed me to come in as a junior. Since I had dropped out of Wayne State previously, during my first semester of classes back, I had to be put on academic probation. This meant that I couldn't get anything less than a C in any of my classes. I registered for 3 classes which put me at 11 credits, 1 credit below full-time.I started school at Wayne State University in the fall of 2010.