CounterBalance College.

When you’re a full time student normally your life is pretty busy. You're normally always thinking about when assignments are due or whether or not you turned an assignment in. For me I couldn’t handle it. I needed a place that would get my mind off school. I decided to get a job, I got a detailing job at Corwin Toyota of Bellevue. My brother Dylan is a sales and leasing consultant there so he was the one that helped me find the job. At first I was not a big fan or very good at detailing, but it was taking my mind off school. After about my 3rd week I had good friendships with pretty much everyone that worked there. My job was the one place where there wasn’t any though of school in my mind, no computer,no pencil,no notebook, absolutely nothing about school would ever cross my mind. I would just go to work detailing a car or 2, then hang out with co-workers who became some of my best friends until it was time to leave.  

The workload definitely wasn’t easy being a student with 15 credit hours on top of working 25-30 hours a week was definitely a challenge. For me I just had to flip a switch in my head and tell myself that I was able to do this for 4 months and then summer would be here. I started waking up around 6:30 everyday packing a lunch and getting ready for school. I would always bring clothes with me whenever I left the house, I never knew when I would have to run to school or work so I always had a change clothes in my back seat if I needed them. I would think in my head everyday on whether i should quit my job or just drop out of school. I was close to doing both at one point. The thing that helped me stay strong was my friends at my work, they understood that when I came into work, I was going to work hard for 5-6 hours and then that last hour was for playing cards or cracking jokes until we were able to leave. 

School was never in the cards for me. My parents didn’t go to college nor my older 2 brothers. I knew that breaking the cycle was going to be difficult but having as much stress on my plate as I did was super unhealthy. I needed something to counterbalance college and that was my job.