Tulip City Dispatch

 The time is nigh - AskReddit has begun asking questions like " What advice would you give to an incoming college freshman ?"  Since life ebbs and flows like it does, I find myself returning to academia this fall - and with a decade of struggles under my belt , I've been contemplating these questions myself:  Compared to last go-round, what am I going to do differently this time?  What would I tell myself when I was 18?  Would 18 year old me even listen? I went from Dean's List to Academic Probation within 2 school years - I got cocky and developed a piss-poor attitude, plain and simple.  What I'm doing differently this time is what led to that dean's list success in my first semesters:  Arranging study groups and outside class activities to build rapport among my classmates and further our mutual understanding of the course content.  My success as a freshman can be directly correlated to external study groups and being social among my classm...

I've had a lot of jobs.  I've been the new guy at work more than I care to admit.  It was losing a job that inspired me to start writing this blog.  It's bleak, but I've learned that nothing is permanent, and that companies expect absolute loyalty from their employees while giving nothing back.  In 2014, when I was let go with an injury, I spent a lot of time in my own head - introspecting, praying, and trying to work out a new plan.  It was then that I came to realize that life is a series of moments.  I was at a crossroads of every single moment in my life - if any of those previous moments hadn't happened, I wouldn't be where I was that day.  I was (still am, TBH) the result of every single moment in my life; every single decision I'd ever made.  And, I was exactly where God wanted me at that moment. The first job I was forcibly removed from was a job at a factory producing plastic wrap.  When I got a call from a temp agency, I thought tha...