Ricardo

“We all need to stop fighting each other. We need to realize that we're all the same, we're all little people and we have to band together and be strong.”

These powerful words are from Ricardo, a student in his early twenties. Ricardo spends his days working, attending college, and learning about the state of the world in his attempts to make it a better place.

Ricardo attended Watkins Mill High School. He displayed his leadership skills at an early age and was voted to captain of the varsity basketball team in his sophomore year. He continued to serve as captain, leading his team to victory for the remainder of his high school career.

When high school was over, Ricardo enrolled in an HV/AC program at a local college. He only stayed a year before he decided to join Americorp and spend a year of his life dedicated to serving the community.

“My grandma was so giving and she was always helping people,” he says. “I get it from her. I love helping people and seeing the smile on their face when they see good things happening in their lives.”

Americorp took Ricardo places he had never thought of going. He built houses for Habitat for Humanity in Oklahoma City, helped rebuild homes destroyed by hurricanes in McAllen, Texas, and tutored underprivileged children in Huston. But his most memorable experience was at Cal-Wood Education Center outside of Boulder, Colorado. Surrounded by the breathtaking beauty of the Rocky Mountains. Ricardo helped teach children about the environment, built and refurbished trails, and engaged in forest fire prevention. Ricardo was introduced to people who had completely different life experiences, and he learned to accept people for who they were without judgment. In Americorp he made friends who he still stays in close contact with, and enjoyed every moment of his experience.

“Americorp was one of the best times of my life,” he says. “There were some hard parts but I would do it all again, the good and the bad.”

Upon returning home, Ricardo took a job at a car dealership. Though he wanted to be a mechanic there were no apprentice positions open, so he instead worked at the car wash. Through his desire to take more of a leadership role Ricardo worked his way up the ladder to become the night manager at the dealership.

“With my money from that job I bought my very first car,” he says. “It was a green Hyundai Elantra that had headlights that wobbled when I hit a bump and had 100,000 miles on it but it lasted me a while and got me everywhere I needed to go.”

Ricardo moved on from that job, pursuing his passion for cars to work at a small detail and body work shop and decided to go back to school for HV/AC. He enrolled in the program at Montgomery College, close to his home in Maryland where he lives with his girlfriend of three years.


Today, Ricardo is halfway through his course of study and works as a porter for a Cadillac dealership. He is responsible for picking up and delivering cars all over the mid-Atlantic region, meeting new and interesting people every day.

In his free time, Ricardo satisfies his curiosity about the world by following the news and reading deeper into topics that particularly interest him. He is deeply concerned about the path that the world is going down and believes that things need to change.

“I feel like my generation has to work double-time to get things done,” he explains. “The world has changed so much in all these deep ways during our lifetime with things like 9/11, the wars, the first African American president. From what I see and what I've experienced, the generation coming after us doesn't have as much respect for themselves or the world around them. It's up to us to teach them and bring the world together.”

Ricardo believes change in policies has to start with voting. Young people have to get out and make good choices about who is going to be in charge of society. He says that recent attempts to block access to voting for some groups has to stop, and the millennial generation has to get out and vote if they want to start making changes. Ricardo wants people to be more aware of the world they live in and the responsibilities each person has to one another.

“So much needs to change and I feel like it's almost out of my hands because I'm only got two hands. It's going to take everybody. People need to open their eyes to whats going on around them and band together if the world is going to get better.”

Through his leadership skills developed in high school and his service in Americorp, Ricardo has already proven himself to be a capable young man with big plans for himself and for the world. It is without a doubt that he will continue to help those around him and contribute to the sense of community he hopes everyone will someday embrace.

Sara

Throughout high school, we are told that we have to get into a “good” college, that we have to get our grades up, participate in after school activities and make SURE that we get good marks on our SATs, all in the name of getting into a “quality” college. And in the last decade or so, that college can end up costing tens of thousands of dollars.

There is an answer, and it's always been there, providing diverse programs at a reasonable cost. It's called Community College, and for many, it is the answer to their prayers.

Sara had always been interested in food and nutrition. She became a vegan in high school, and had to learn what foods would provide the vitamins and minerals she needed without turning to animal products. But she was intimidated by the thought of going to college for nutrition. The programs seemed overwhelmingly science based, and Sara was afraid that her professors and peers would ridicule her veganism. So after her high school graduation in 2005, instead of pursuing her passion, she went to a local private college, Dowling, for communications.

“I absolutely should have taken a year off,” she admits. “But I felt so pressured to go to college and do something that I went.”

Communications seemed like a major with many different possibilities, but it was one that Sara had no real interest in. Following a year of poor grades, she transferred to Five Towns College for film. She met the same difficulties here that she had at Dowling.

“Film is such a hard industry to work in, and I wasn't interested in it enough to want to claw my way to the top,” she says.

Sara tried to make this new college work for a year, but the pressure to do well and the anxiety over money was often completely overwhelming. She left Five Towns after two semesters, finally deciding to pursue her passion: nutrition.

Sara dipped her toes into the field by attending a certification course for integrated nutrition. It seemed a less threatening option than another semester in school, but the quality simply wasn't there. The program didn't really teach her anything useful or based in science, and she realized that if she was serious about going into the field, she would have to go about it the right way.

Instead of attending another private school, Sara truly began her path to becoming a nutritionist at Suffolk Community College. At first it was just to ease the financial burden, but as the weeks went on, she found herself flourishing.

“My professors were great, and I felt so motivated!” she says. “I was happy with what I was learning, I was doing really well, and the other students around me were enthusiastic. I was afraid of this field for so long, but if I had just taken a year off after high school, I might have ended up here first and avoided all that anxiety.”

Not only was the nutrition program at Suffolk motivating, it was challenging. Sara interned at several different locations, including hospitals, schools, and long term care facilities. She earned a two year degree in applied sciences and she felt more than prepared to take her first career exam. Sara passed with flying colors, and became a Dietetic Technician.

Sara had done so well at Suffolk that she earned a full ride to the nutritionist program at C.W. Post.

“At C.W. Post I felt so much more prepared than the other students,” Sara says. “I think people really need to look closely at community colleges because they offer so much more than people think they do.”

She graduated from C.W. Post in May of 2014, but is staying with the school for another year to complete her internship program. Like Suffolk's program, the internship offers her a taste of nutritionist work from a multitude of vocations. She also began a part time job working at the Renfrew Center in New York City, a facility that helps women overcome eating disorders. The work was intense, but extraordinarily eye opening. Sara has become interested in community work, in teaching classes about nutrition.

“It's funny when I think about how shy I was in high school,” she says. “I used to be excused from oral presentations, and now teaching groups is one of my favorite aspects of what I do.”

Sara will be taking the test to become a full Dietician in the spring of 2015. She is incredibly grateful for the opportunity that Suffolk gave her to pursue her passion without fear or ridicule, and she hopes soon to pass on her love of nutrition to a new generation.

Vacation Week!

Hint: It's not really a vacation.

I'm very happy with how this project is going, and I'd like to make it even better. My editor and I are taking a week off from posting, but not a week off from work! We are interviewing, writing, and investigating new stories and art for our readers to enjoy. So do not fret, and we will see you bright and early on Monday with a brand new story!

Doug

Photo courtesy of Vianca Maldonado

Film is one of the most difficult industries to break into. The pay is often little to nothing at all, the hours are incredibly long, and jobs are frequently based on favoritism rather than skill.

Doug knows all of this and, after a few years of working corporate, he still wants to go freelance.

From an early age, Doug has had interested in film. He considered himself a “computer nerd” in high school and liked to work with digital video. In his junior year at Babylon High School, he took the opportunity to attend a video production course at a local BOCES campus. This course was a mixture of both film and TV production techniques and involved lots of hand-on work such as camera operation.

While taking this course he earned an internship at a local production company.

“I remember the first shoot they ever took me on,” he says. “It was stressful and there was money on the line and it was a long two days but it was so exciting! I knew from then on that film was what I wanted to do.”

Following the advice of his teachers, Doug attended NYIT Old Westbury after graduating high school in 2007. He admits that he should have done more research on the program, but Doug thought he was doing the right thing by saving money and staying local at a school that offered him a scholarship. It didn't take him long to see that he had made the wrong choice.

“I feel like in this industry, it's not so much the skills you have but the connections you make in school,” he explains. “At a commuter school like that, I barely made any friends in my department and I certainly didn't make any connections that would help me get production jobs. I felt like the other students weren't serious about their major and the teachers didn't really give us any motivation.”

Doug applied to the school of Visual Arts in New York City toward the end of his second year. Although he was accepted, the school offered him nothing financially, and so he was unable to attend. He finished out his bachelor's at NYIT, but felt that he hadn't really learned much from his college experience.

During his senior year, Doug worked as an editor at a wedding photography company. Although Doug didn't have much commercial experience, the owner took a chance on him. The company even worked around his college schedule for which Doug was incredibly grateful. He kept the job a year after his graduation, but he knew that New York City was where he was meant to be.

“Any better job would be in the city,” he says. “There's being a staff member on film productions, working freelance on whatever comes your way, or working at one of the broadcast companies. Whatever you do, it's all happening in the city.”

His chance came in the fall of 2012, when a Florida-based company hired Doug to work at their New York Office. This business was involved with streaming video all around the world. Doug's job was to to take the incoming video, convert it to web format and send it out to websites. He enjoyed his work for a time, as it took him back to his days as a teenager, playing around with digital-based video. However, after the other employees in the office were let go, Doug found his days incredibly lonely.

“They treated me very well, but I was working long hours totally alone and I still wasn't doing what I went to school for,” he says. “At this point, my goal became to get out and do what I wanted to do: work on productions in TV or film.”

Doug quit his job and went freelance. This is hard under normal circumstances, but because it had been so many years since college, Doug felt like he had to start over completely. He had very few connections and even less credits, but he was determined to follow his passion. Without his own equipment, jobs became extremely difficult to find.

“I feel like there's this ongoing debate in the film community right now,” he explains. “ A lot of people think they can buy their way into the industry with equipment and that convinces a lot of people that this is the norm and individuals should have all this expensive equipment. It raises expectations to an untenable level.”

Without a great deal of connections, Doug was forced to used websites as his main source of incoming jobs.

"I do have some equipment,” he says. “I've spent a few thousand on that equipment because of that very notion that people are expected to have something. I've tried to keep my expenses reasonable, and I wrestle with wanting avoid purchases because professionals shouldn't be buying most of their gear and buying stuff in the interest of acquiring gigs.”

He was able to working the production side for the video streaming company, and that gave him a foot in the door to the rest of the industry. He made enough money on these shoots to take more educational, albeit unpaid, work in hopes of climbing further up the ladder. At one of these shoots that he made a friend who connected him to one of his most important jobs yet.

“I got to work on an incredibly popular reality TV show,” he says. “This is a massive credit on my resume, because so many TV shows don't want you unless you already have TV experience.”

Doug has a few major future goals. He would love to be a camera operator and eventually a cinematographer, but he feels like he “hasn't even started because [he's] so far down the ladder.”

He also wants to start his own company that caters to commercial film interests. Recently, he has begun to approach several businesses in regard to their interest in online video advertising.

“If I can get this off the ground, I know it will be endless work,” he says with a laugh. “But it's something I would absolutely love to do.”

Finally, he wants to begin shooting personal projects, but he wants to go about it the right way.

“The industry doesn't have to be exploitative. If I do this, I'm going to pay my staff what they deserve. I'm not going to require them to have their own equipment, I'm going to feed them decent food and treat them like human beings. I'm finally getting my confidence back, getting the production itch, and it's incredibly exciting.”

Doug works part time streaming video for Major League Baseball, leaving his Saturdays completely free to work on productions. Although his path might not be the most conventional, he tackles the challenges he meets with spirit and resolution, ensuring his eventual success. 

Kristina

College is expensive.

No one is arguing this. College can cost tens of thousands of dollars, but students deal with the cost because colleges are supposed to be institutes of higher learning, training them to be experts in their chosen field.

“Colleges are businesses,” says Kristina.

Her opinion comes from more than four years in Stony Brook University and just over two semesters at Hunter college. Kristina graduated from Rocky Point High School in 2007 and entered college in the fall. Her chosen major was chemistry, but she switched to environmental after a year. Environmental science was not what she had imagined it would be.

“We once spent an hour an a half of class time discussing which type of orange juice was more environmentally friendly,” she says, laughing. “I took some random classes after that, and I finally found I liked anthropology.” She decided to become a forensic anthropologist, and has dedicated the rest of her educational career to achieving that end.

Kristina had to stay an extra semester to finish her degree, fighting her adviser’s lack of knowledge about he major the whole way.

Kristina took a semester off after attaining her bachelor's to apply to grad school and work as a bank teller. But her experience at Stony Brook had not been ideal, and she didn't get into any of the schools she applied to.

“They all wanted someone who had field experience,” she says. “Stony Brook only offered field experience for another $15,000. I had enough loans to pay off already.”

One grad school, Hunter College, made her an offer. If she took some classes as a non-matriculated student, they would let her become an official student the next time she reapplied. Though it was costly, Kristina accepted, and by the fall of 2013 she was officially pursing her masters in Anthropology. She moved with her boyfriend to the Bronx where he had a job and she could be closer to school.

In addition to being a part time student, Kristina works at Barnes & Nobel as a head cashier. The pay isn't minimum wage, but the high cost of living in the city means that she still struggles with finances.

“If my loans weren't on hold because of school I'd be losing about 2/3rds of my monthly salary trying to pay them off,” she says. “I have no idea what I'm going to do after graduation. I've tried to talk with the loan company on the phone but they're so frustrating.”

Kristina doubts that her experience at Stony Brook was worth any of her trouble and money.

“College was a waste of my time,” she says. “If my major wants field experience, why aren't there field schools? Why do I need my master's and a PhD? I have yet to take a single scientific statistics course or a class on interpreting data. The only thing I've learned in six years is how to do research.”

Post graduation, her future is uncertain. Some Hunter graduates work at the NYC medical examiner's office or the 9/11 Museum. There are internships available for these locations, but they are extremely competitive.

One thing is for sure, Kristina is excited to leave the Bronx and move to Queens next year, which she says is much more friendly toward people her age.

“The Bronx is very family oriented,” she says. “But in Queens there's more things to do and more people our age living there.”

Kristina may be uncertain about her future career, but she has shown great amounts of dedication to her field of study, fighting through less than ideal circumstances in her dogged pursuit of her degrees. Any internship or company would be lucky to have such a committed individual on their team.

Abby

There's been a bit of controversy over minimum wage lately.

Some say that raising the minimum wage would destroy small businesses. Others claim it isn't right that someone should work 40 hours a week and not earn enough to support a family.

Abby has been working for minimum wage or close to it for the last six years, and she can see both sides of the argument.

Abby graduated from West Islip High School in 2006. She moved to San Diego, California, the afternoon of her commencement ceremony. She lived in Pacific Beach with her sister and her sister's husband, and started working at a clothing store in neighborhood.

“I didn't have any plans for higher education when I got out there,” she says. “I just sort of kept doing things on a whim.”

Her whims eventually led her to school for massage therapy. She attended classes while still working, but her education hit a dead end when she struggled to find field experience.

Abby was making just enough at the clothing store to move out. She moved to another house in Pacific Beach that she shared with roommates, then went to live in a large, open floor studio apartment in downtown San Diego.

“I was really struggling with money,” Abby recollects. “I couldn't afford a car and I was still trying to pay off all those loans from school. I was just barely covering rent.”

She decided to move back in with her sister's family, who had relocated to a neighborhood on the outskirts of San Diego. For a time, her future seemed to be coming together. In 2009 Abby met her boyfriend, Adam. She took a job at Bed Bath & Beyond, which was close enough to the house that she could walk to work. But it was also at this time that she incurred serious debt, taking out a cash advance on a credit card to help pay rent.

“I can't believe I did that,” she says. “It's five years later and I'm still trying to pay that off.”

Unfortunately, in 2010, the landlord evicted the family in order to sell the house. Forced to move again, Abby could no longer work at Bed Bath & Beyond because she still had no car. She did odd jobs here and there for friends and family, but it was not enough.

Abby and Adam decided that perhaps they needed a change of scenery. They packed up and moved to Seattle in 2011. Abigail quickly found a job at a thrift store, and later with Forever 21. She finally had a plan for her education, and began to save up enough so that she could go back to college to become a physical therapy assistant.

But Seattle proved to be even more expensive than San Diego had been. Abby and Adam both worked full time, but with their expenses all income seemed to be out the door again before it ever touched their hands.

However, Abby was proud of one thing.

“I got my per-requisites done!” she says, happily. “It seemed a lot of money for a community college, but I got something done while I was up there!”

After more than a year of barely making ends meet,. Abby and Adam decided to move back to San Diego. Abby was able to transfer and keep her job with Forever 21, although now she works part time instead of full time. She is currently searching for another job and looking forward to starting school again in the wintertime.

“My life is like a constant struggle of little minimum wage jobs,” she comments. “I owe Adam so much, he takes such good care of me.”

Despite all of her experiences, Abby is still on the fence about any kind of drastic minimum wage increase.

“I know it would hurt a lot of small businesses, and I try to support local,” she says. “But at the same time, I know that lots of corporations could pay their employees so much more than they do. It's a tough call.”

Courtney

How does one define a family?

Is it the relatives we see every Christmas? Is it the friends that we chose to keep close to us? A combination of the two? Perhaps a family is simply the people who pick us up when life has beaten us down.

Courtney graduated from Massapequa High School in 2006 and entered SUNY Farmingdale that same year. She went to study graphic design, which at the time seemed to be a lucrative field. But problems cropped up even before she left college. Her school altered the requirements for her major halfway through her experience. Her adviser didn't understand the new program, resulting in Courtney taking unnecessary classes and graduating a year late.

She began applying to jobs immediately after graduation. However, she graduated after 2008, and no one was hiring. Courtney received only one phone interview after sending out countless resumes and then never heard from the company again.

“I just felt that everything was wasted,” she says, expressing a sentiment familiar to our generation. “All that money and five years of college right down the drain.”

Courtney was living with her mother and sister and dating Austin, who is now her fiance. Her dad had disowned his children and walked away from his family, leaving them with nothing.

And Hurricane Sandy was about to take what little they did have away.

“Sandy claimed my house, my car, and all my worldly possessions,” she laments. “So I was suddenly homeless in a blizzard.”


Rebuilding a life in New York was financially impossible for Courtney and Austin, so the pair moved down to Florida, where they live in a relative's condo. Austin works for a car rental company and Courtney is returning to school to study cosmetology, her generous mother paying her tuition.

“She's superwoman,” Courtney says. “She's always been two parents for me and she gives me more love than I could get from an eight person family. She's my best friend and even though she has so many people to take care of, she still takes care of me.”

Her mother's support reaches beyond sending her back to school. She also buys most of their groceries, as the majority of Austin's paycheck goes into paying student loans, gas, and insurance.

Courtney and Austin struggle with money every single day. Although they together with a reasonable rent, it comes at the cost of living one hour away from both Austin's job and Courtney's school. Before they managed to save up enough to have two cars, Courtney was driving four hours a day. Even now, they both wake up at 5:30am every morning to be at school and work on time. Austin's hours were recently slashed, and now the second car has become yet another financial burden.

“Even though we live together we barely see each other,” she says. “We see each other for about an hour before it's time to go to sleep and do the whole thing over again tomorrow.

Courtney still applies to jobs every day, and every rejection letter or wordless dismissal heaps on more stress and frustration.

But she refuses to let her hardships define her.

She has found renewed purpose as a cosmetologist. Her school is partnered with a program that helps recently released female convicts get their life back on track after their incarceration. She styles their hair and applies their makeup, all to prepare them for job interviews. Courtney takes great pride in this.

“I know that these women have it rougher than me,” she says. “But I feel like I help them and I'm so proud of my work.”

Courtney and Austin will be getting married on October 25^th. It will be a very small wedding: just the couple, her mother and her sister. As Courtney puts it, “it's all the people who matter.”

“We've been together through everything for five years,” she says of her relationship. “Of course we fight because money problems put stress on everything but you always have to remember who's important.”

Courtney sees this stage in her life as a particularly steep set of stepping stones to the next. She takes nothing for granted and is astounded daily by the amount of love and support she receives from her mother and fiance. She knows now that she is on the right track. Despite all the frustration she is eager for the next stage in her life to begin.

“On days when I don't think I can possibly make it, I remind myself that I have a 100% success rate of getting through bad days.”  

Nick

In the 21st century, college is presented less as a choice to students and more as an absolute necessity. After all, what are all those standardized tests and ranking systems for if not to market students to universities? 

But for many, this system does not work. People change. Maybe something that seemed like a good idea one year is a terrible idea the next. In college this natural personality evolution can cost thousands of dollars and untold numbers of hours. And as the changes keep coming and the debt keeps racking up, it can take all of one's strength simply to stay afloat.

Nick graduated high school in the spring of 2006. He won the history department achievement award and decided that he wanted to be a history teacher. Nick began his higher education journey at Temple University that same year.

Unfortunately after one grueling semester he decided that perhaps he didn't want to be in front of a classroom for the rest of his life. He finished out the year in spite of it all, and chose a new direction for the next school year. Nick invested in a trade school instead, deciding that becoming a plumber would mean he could do something fulfilling and earn a steady income.

But by the time he was ready to get a job, the economy had spiraled out of control. Although the school attempted to find him employment to get experience in the field, no one was hiring. Why would they, when there were a whole army of plumbers with experience who had just been laid off and needed a job at any price? Any of new graduates that were hired were friends or relatives of those with already established businesses.

“I never understood how much nepotism there was in the industry."

Nick worked to pay off his debts. He washed dishes and served tables at a local cafe at night and worked on lawn sprinkler installation during the day. He decided to go back to school for psychology, attending a local community college to keep costs down.

After earning his associates with honors, Nick was accepted to one of the most competitive state schools in New York. This school was nothing like the local community college he had just finished.

"Let's just say it wasn't a great fit.”

 Between difficulties in the classroom and with a challenging roommate, Nick moved back home to Long Island once the year was through. He enrolled in another, more local state school, still pursuing his degree in general psychology.

Throughout all of this, Nick was working. He washed dishes and served tables at a cafe, worked in the stock room in a retail store, and installed lawn sprinkler systems. He describes how hard he pushed himself in the summer before his final year in college.

“It was insane. I was working two jobs, working like 60 hours a week and that was just for food, gas, and insurance. I wasn't getting anywhere with my loans, just barely paying the minimum on them.”

By the time he was completing his internship, his schedule had become even more hectic. The internship, working at a facility that used rescued horses as a therapy for those with physical and mental disabilities, was both educational and enjoyable. But he was still working and still taking classes at a college that was 40 minutes away from were he worked and lived.

“Working early in the morning, then getting to school and staying up late for class, plus all the driving, it all really starts to add up.”

All of his hard work finally paid off, and he graduated with a degree in general psychology in the spring of 2014. He had taken time to find himself and discover what he truly wanted to do. Now the only question was how to find a job.

Nick did not wait around Long Island for a job to burst from the ether. He and his girlfriend moved just about as far away from New York as they could get while still being in the United States.

They went to Alaska.

Nick now lives among the same beauty that has captured artists and writers for generations, and his situation has vastly improved.

While his girlfriend manages a pet supplies store and pursues her degree in environmental ecology, Nick works as a mental health specialist for adolescent boys.

“I love it up here,” he says of the culture. “Everyone is more independent, I think they're a bit nicer. Plus I'm actually doing what I went to school for!”

Does he still work long hours? Of course. But going to a job where he feels fulfilled every day doesn't feel so much like work. After so many years of searching, Nick has found the place where he belongs.

Allie

 “We have a very misunderstood generation. I value service and honesty over money and status. It's so hard to carve out a meaningful path in a society that defines success by how many dollars I have in the bank when I measure my worth in a different way.”

Such are the words of Alli, 26. She has been living in Denver for the last two years, working for different non profit organizations. She is also an alumna of the Americorp NCCC program, in which young adults are placed in teams around the country work for groups such as Habitat for Humanity or the Red Cross. In addition, NCCC teams are often dispatched to aid recovery efforts for national disasters. Alli was stationed at the Americorp campus in Denver.

Alli became interested in service while at college. She went to school for political science, originally with the intention of becoming a lawyer.

“Life sometimes throws you curve balls and changes your perceptions about things, you know?” she remarks. She became more interested in giving back, to helping people and communities. This desire brought her to Americorp and here she flourished.

Living with ten others was difficult at first for Alli, a natural introvert. But she learned a great deal about the art of balancing social life with inner reflection. She learned how to deal with different and sometimes difficult personalities and became experienced in putting differences aside to get the job done.

She worked in the 9^th Ward in New Orleans helping a city still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. In Denver, she helped low income families fill out their tax returns. But it was her final deployment that moved her most deeply.

Alli arrived in Joplin, Missouri, in the summer of 2011, after a tornado had swept away a huge portion of the town. The destruction was devastating, but it was the people that affected her the most.

“It was so bittersweet. Here all these terrible things had happened but there were people from all over, all fifty states and even other countries, all just coming to help. It was beautiful. I would do if for the rest of my life if I could.”

Alli has volunteered to help victims of disaster long past her tour in the program. She helped with recovery from Hurricane Irene in the fall of 2011 and, this year, has volunteered her efforts to help those affected by the tornadoes in Oklahoma.

After Americorp, Alli moved back to New York for a brief time. She tried to work on career goals and building a future but quickly realized that in order to feel fulfilled she would have to change directions. She knew that if she wanted a job in the city - any city - she would have to move.

“I convinced a friend to come with me back to Denver.,” she says. “We packed a few bags and bought one way train tickets. We had no place to live but we weren't worried. We stepped off the train on a Thursday and by Friday we had signed a lease. We started our lives all over again, and we've built something pretty incredible out here.”

Alli found a job as a tax consultant with a company she had worked for during Americorp. Now she had come full circle, and was teaching the incoming Americorp members what she had learned just a year ago. But one job was not an option if she wanted to stay afloat. After tax season ended she took a job at a local pub and another at a non-profit. Alli found herself working from 7am to 10pm every day.

Alli was becoming frustrated.

“It's so hard to have a healthy work and life balance when you have to work so many jobs just to get by without feeling like you're getting anywhere.”

Alli wants more from her life. Her extensive experience with non-profits had inspired her to begin her own someday. She has just accepted a financial position at firm in Albany, and will be moving at the end of October. In addition to working as an analyst, Alli will also be assisting a friend with a new business venture. She is thrilled to be living so close to New York City, and eagerly looks forward to the day when she can fully immerse herself in an organization she truly believes in, like U.N. Women.

She is proud of what she has accomplished so far, and even more proud of her generation, despite what some baby boomers might say.

“We're a very optimistic generation,” she says. “I know so many extremely intelligent and innovative and talented people that want to leave the world a better way then they found it. We want to stop treating the symptoms of our society and cure the disease. We need to nurse our souls. It isn't a bad thing but I don't think its understood by other generations.”

Her dreams of starting her own non-profit are still in the ether, but she knows the direction she wants to take.

“I know I want to be an advocate for women or help them in some way. I don't know what that looks like yet but I'm excited to find out!”

Below is a video Alli created about her and her NCCC team's work in Joplin, Missouri.

Nicholas

What's your dream job?

Have you considered it? Are you working toward it? Does your passion for it drive you, consume your thoughts and your actions?

If you asked Nicholas, all of his answers would be a resounding yes.

Nicholas has been training with Victory Martial Arts since he was 13. Martial arts was a gateway for him to develop dedication, ambition, and discipline. By the time he was fifteen, he was assisting teachers and helping his peers to train. When he was sixteen, he experienced one of the most important moments of his life.

“I remember the day that my boss couldn't come in,” he says. “He gave me the keys and told me I had to open the place up. I went in and sat in the big man chair and just thought 'This is it. This is what I want to do.'”

He decided in high school that he would go to a local college and pursue a degree in mathematics. But this was ancillary to his true dream: opening up his own school and imparting his passion for martial arts to students both young and old.

Nicholas spent his final high school years balancing his AP classes with his constant training and teaching. If he was to become a great teacher, he had to become strong in both body and mind.

“I believe that life is about having a passion and a drive. I said that this is what I was going to do – every person who ever met me knew that this is what I wanted to do – and I put everything into it.”

At just 21 years old and fresh out of Stony Brook University, Nicholas saw his dream came true. He opened a new school under the Victory Martial Arts name and dived right in. Now at 26, he continues recruiting students, developing classes, and building a rapport with everyone that walks through the door.

For the younger students, classes aren't about just learning punches and kicks. He sits down with even the four year old students and asks them what they want to be when they grow up, what makes them excited, what they strive for.

“I had a kid who told me he wanted to be a dinosaur when he grows up. I couldn't tell him no! If he grows up to be a dinosaur he'll bite my head off!”

Nicholas tries to be a role model for his younger students, someone they can look up to, even talk through their problems with.

“Sometimes I feel like these kids are so underestimated. But they're amazing! I see their potential and I just want to show them how great they can be.”

For the adults in his school, Nicholas wants to create a safe place, where people who never would have crossed paths can become great friends through their shared love of martial arts. He strives to facilitate connections between his students and beams with pride when he talks about how he feels he has affected positive change in their lives.

“I love martial arts so much, it's taught me so much. Now I get to share it with all these different people and make a livelihood out of it! I don't work a single day in my life.”

But the constant physical exertion Nicholas puts himself through hasn't come without a price.

In 2006, right before he was supposed to complete the test for his first black belt, Nicholas noticed some pain in his knee. He struggled to ignore it but eventually had to visit the doctor. Not only was his ACL torn, the doctor couldn't even find it on the preliminary test. He tore his second ACL not long after, and has also injured a ligament in his shoulder.

The long recovery time was frustrating, but it also gave Nicholas time to think. As much as he loved martial arts, he knew he wouldn't be able to put his body through so much forever.

Luckily, a new avenue opened up for him almost by accident. Nicholas slowly learned about search engine optimization, and began implementing certain practices on his own school's website. In a few months, he no longer had to pay for Google placement and by the time the Regional Director of his school did a quick search, Nicholas' school was the number one result. Nicholas was hired to do the same for the rest of the schools in the region.

“I didn't really like the state the pages were in,” he says. “So instead I just decided to build them from scratch.” Through YouTube tutorials, manuals, and simple trial and error, Nick was building websites.

“One day I realized I was barely looking at the design page and just writing in source code. I don't even know how that happened, but it was an incredible feeling.”

His website and marketing ability has expanded beyond the school and he has decided to open his own private business instead of working freelance and relying on word of mouth.

Nicholas has begun ventures into real estate. He owns two houses and is in contract for a third. He buys in the Stony Brook area, renting out to students who want to live off campus. Just like in his school, he wants his tenants to look at his houses as a place where they can feel safe, welcomed, even part of a new family.

“I love the school – love every second of it. But I know that I want to do even more, something different. I'm just always trying to look at the bigger picture.”

Nicholas wants to keep buying and is now considering commercial real estate along with residential. At only 25 years old he owns and operates a martial arts school in, runs a website building and marketing business, and is looking to add to his real estate portfolio.

Nicholas doesn't wonder about his dream job, doesn't sit around building castles in the air. He combines his passion and ambition to forge an incredible life for himself that he is constantly looking to share with others. He inspires his students and his peers to strive for more than they have, to use what drives them to create and grow as people.

If you live in the Long Island area consider taking a class with him at Victory Martial Arts in Setauket. There are dozens of different classes for all age and experience levels.

James

“I have no control over my life situation right now and it is terrifying.”

James has a decent job. He has an apartment he shares with his girlfriend. He's going to grad school. He is doing everything that he is “supposed” to do.

And he feels trapped.

James is 23 years old and works as a teacher in the New York City Department of Education. He is employed through a teaching program that places teachers in low-income areas nationwide.

James went to school for teaching, but he made his college experience into so much more than mere pursuit of a degree. He became both a tour guide and an RA at SUNY Binghamton, and took personal pride in witnessing prospective students he had seen in the spring move into his building in the fall. James, along with several other students, founded a new club called Explorchestra, an orchestra that only plays music composed by the students. This club, which is still around and still exploring new forms of music today, has had a huge influence on the lives of its members.

“Many of the people who wrote music for the club had never composed before,” James says. “My one friend totally changed his life trajectory because of this club and became a Music Psychology major.”

James carries this love of music through his life, although its absence is agony.

“I haven't written a note in eighteen months and it's been awful.”

James became interested in the teaching program while in college, and applied as soon as he graduated in 2012. The program wanted to place him in Arizona, but when his mother was suddenly diagnosed with cancer, James chose instead to stay close to home, declining the offer. He took two part time jobs, both as an associate at a major pet supply store and as a teller in a local credit union.

“I used to work at a convenience store and I thought the worst smell was the garbage there,” James says. “It's not. The worst smell in the world is that ferret cage,”

In between the jobs, James had a great deal of free time. He filled it with creation. He wrote and recorded his eighth and ninth albums. These albums are dark, directly inspired by his experiences at the pet store. He succeeded in his personal challenge of writing one poem a day for an entire year and published a blog full of poetry. He continued his high school hobby of developing unique board and card games and testing them with his friends. These games were better, more refined than the ones he had created as a teenager and he wondered if he could build a future for himself using these little building blocks of creativity.

“Creation is my life blood,” he says. “Having no free time to create makes me feel unproductive.”

The second time he applied to the teaching program, they placed him in New York City. He took the job and moved with his girlfriend to their current apartment in the Bronx. They live near Fordham University, where James goes to grad school. But attending this school was not a choice.

“The program is great, I mean, they pay for 90% of your master's. But the school they chose is expensive and they only pay for as long as you stick with them. If I get kicked out or something happens and I have to drop the program, I'm suddenly unemployed and $40,000 in debt.”
New York is an expensive city to live in, and although he works full time he still hasn't saved much. Teaching is a job that he has to bring home with him, and he admits that sometimes, without his outlet of music or poetry, he lets the pressure get to him.

“I just feel like I need some free time back.”

Despite the difficulties, there is still creation. James finds time in between writing lesson plans and grading essays to work on building card and board games. He is starting a game company with friends from college. The have a website launch next month and are planning a Kickstarter to fund their first game in January.

He has also just returned from a reunion with many alumni of the Explorchestra in. Binghamton. They met with the current members to play music together. He is impressed with the direction in which the student composers have taken the club.

“One kid had this awesome hip-hop arrangement he was setting up,” he says with a smile. Seeing how something he created has blossomed and grown is nothing short of incredible.

James' career is looking up as well. Having already completed one year of teaching in a challenging environment, he is beginning this year with far more confidence and finds teaching much more enjoyable.

He is currently developing a game about medieval siege weaponry and cats. It is called 'Cataclysm' and features cat puns on every card.

You can find James' music and poetry at the links below, and as soon as the Kickstarter for his first game is up, you can bet we will let you know.

SoundDrawn

ItswhoIAMB

Ashleigh

What do you do when all the jobs in the career you've trained for dry up just as you're about to graduate college?


You say “screw it,” and start your own business.


But the road for Ashleigh, 26, hasn't been an easy one.


Like so many of us, college wasn't really an “if,” as it was a “when.” Beginning right out of high school, she wisely chose the college that would give her the best deal in terms of scholarships. It was 2006. The job market was good and the future looked bright for a graphic design major.

"I worked my butt off in school. I took extra classes every semester, interned, volunteered, and worked part-time.” So what if she had to work a part time job that barely covered books and expenses? Ashleigh believed that if she did good work in college, if she worked as hard as she could, then a job in a field she loved would be waiting for her when she graduated.

Then came 2008.

Lehman Brothers closed its doors. AIG did took a nosedive and the market plummeted. Businesses closed, people lost their jobs and no one was sure how long the difficulties would last. Ashleigh and her family were no different. Her mother was laid off and the income from her father's commission-based income plummeted. The future, once so clear, was now murky and threatening.


But she was not one to be shaken easily.


I decided to try my hand at being an RA my junior year,” she explains. “It had a paycheck and I figured I could handle it. They agreed to let me keep the part-time job, too.” She took on these two jobs on top of being the art director of the student paper and a 22 credit course load, the absolute maximum allowed.

Everyone has their breaking point. Ashleigh's was higher than most, but even she had to face that she was doing far too much. She suffered a breakdown and stepped down from the RA position to rest and recuperate, but of course, not for long. By the summer she landed an unpaid internship with a newspaper doing page design while still working her part time job to cover costs for next semester.

By graduation, it all seemed worth it. She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelors in art and two minors in English. These academic achievements, combined with her extensive job experience, created a resume that anyone would have been proud of.

“Ten years ago, I would have been set,” she says, ruefully.

Not one job prospect.

Ashleigh decided to return to school to earn a master's degree instead of waiting for the inevitable bills for her student loans to start coming in. “Since we figured we'd never pay off our loans anyway, it was a quick fix for putting off the bills,” she states, speaking of herself and many of those in our generation.

It was also around this time that she began experiencing several health issues. Back problems, problems sleeping, and of course no decent health insurance to go to the doctor.

But there was good news!

It was also during this time that she was married, and along with a brand new life with someone she loved, she was also able to finally get appropriate medical care through her husband''s provider. Unfortunately the outcome was not ideal.

"In the span of one year, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, social anxiety disorder, fibromyalgia, two herniated disks, migraines, and a few other pains,” she says. “Nothing I have can be 'cured,' so to speak. All the treatments I have are therapies and I'll have to do them for the rest of my life. But it's like brushing your teeth. Everyone has to do it for their entire life and it just becomes a routine you don't think about.”

 Things have also settled down for Ashleigh financially. Although she and her husband still rely on a Christmas-Holiday-Birthday money emergency fund, life has become easier with two incomes and allowed her to break out of a stagnating corporate market.

 Between taking part time jobs that allow her to work around her medical issues, she has started her own business, CharmCat. Although she says that starting a business is difficult, and expensive to set up, Ashleigh enjoys the freedom it provides her. She designs, creates and sells beautiful wedding invitations and stationary that she can make on her own schedule, almost all of which are hand painted.

"Most of the painting is done at 12:30 in the morning while listening to some 90s alt,” she says with a laugh.

Please check out her beautiful artwork at the link provided below. You are not going to believe the amount of care and dedication that goes into these designs until you see them.

CharmCat

Kevin

Please click for hi-res.

These pictures are private property shared with consent of the artist. Any unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

VITAL INFORMATION FOR YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE

 I'm happy to announce that I have an update schedule. We will update with articles every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Sunday, we are going to do something special. It will be a no text art post, where we showcase an artists of our generation and the awesome work they do. It might be photos, watercolors, oils, textiles, sculptures, whatever, as long as it's awesome. If you would like to have your artwork featured on a Sunday post, please do NOT hesitate to contact us!

Todd

They're working long before any students arrive in school, and they'll be there long after the last one has left. They spend their days elbow deep in bleach, brooms, mops, and that crazy powder they pour on the ground whenever that sick kid throws up all over the place. They are the unsung heroes of the education system.

They are the custodians.

Todd has been hard at work as a custodian in the public school system for eight years. He's been bounced between the elementary and the junior high schools in his district because, as he put's it, "one of the worst parts of the job is that they can put you in a new position whenever they damn well please.”

For a long while, from the time he left home at 18 until about 2005, Todd made his own way in the world. He worked dozens of odd jobs in addition to cleaning up the buckets of finger paint and juice stains that are so prevalent in elementary school classrooms. He's been a delivery driver, stock boy, clerk, cashier, and, of course, the guy you call when your computer is doing the weird thing again. He spent the time in between jobs at several local colleges, trying to earn enough credits to attain his degree in IT.

In 2009, realizing that although he had a good job he wanted more, Todd signed up to join the U.S. Military as an airman. He began basic training in October of 2009, eager to begin a new chapter in his life. Unfortunately here too, he met with plain bad luck. An injury sustained during basic training revealed an underlying medical problem that forbade him from serving. He was let go from the Air Force and returned to his job in the school.


With rent, food, tuition, gas, and the lost months given to the Air Force, there wasn't much room to save up for a future. But Todd was always thinking ahead. He dreamed about flipping houses in another state with his brother, or opening a dojo somewhere in the Hudson Valley. He was and remains a dedicated man, having the work ethic and drive to do whatever he put his mind too.

All of that changed in 2011, when he married the love of his life, a beautiful artist. Things for the pair changed even more several months later when they welcomed their son into the world.

Todd is a family man now, and has begun to look beyond his work in the schools to pursuing a career in the corporate world as an IT specialist. Although his background in computers is sound and his ability with them extensive, companies are reluctant to hire someone who doesn't have that lovely slip of paper with a B.A. or B.S. on it that most of us are still paying for.

Todd stays positive throughout it all. "I see both sides to the degree thing, as far as employment is concerned. But a degree doesn't actually show how much knowledge someone has or even how smart some one is. It just evidence that shows how much work someone is willing to put in to attain something. Not having a degree doesn't mean not having work ethic. It just means you don't have that evidence, that proof of work ethic.”

 He's determined, he's got the know how and he has that ethic. Now it's only a matter of time.

Margie

You have a B.A. in communications. You've graduated from a fantastic university with distinction and gained a Masters in Fine Arts. You're well spoken, intelligent, and have had your poetry featured in an acclaimed online community.

But every prospective employer only sees your wheelchair.
Such are the difficulties that Margie, a 29 year old graduate from Hofsta University with cerebral palsy, faces every day in her quest for employment.

Margie attended the Henry Viscardi school, a school for students with physical disabilities, from sixth grade until her graduation in 2004. She excelled in her classes, made lifelong friends, and formulated her plan for continuing her education at Dowling College. She dreamed of becoming a radio personality, and completed her first college experience with a Bachelor's in communications and a minor in English. Due to complications arising from back problems during these years, Margie was unable to work a part time job and go to school. But she wasn't worried.

“I thought if I got a good education and put together a solid resume based on that, then my lack of work experience wouldn't really matter that much,” she says of her time in college.

But it was also during this time that Margie stumbled across her first solid barrier: transportation. At her radio internship with a local station, Margie was put on phone and office duties. She watched other interns attend different events and grow their name, but due to the fact that she does not drive she was unable to join them.

“I didn't much want to do radio after that.”

One professor at Dowling, a superlative educator who has been a driving influence in many students' lives, pushed her to go to grad school. Margie, deciding that the job market wasn't that great anyway, went to Hofstra to focus on her poetry. She graduated in December of 2013, and has been trying to find a job ever since.

Margie reports that this is a common problem among her friends with physical disabilities.

“We're no different than anyone else,” she said. “We want to work, to contribute. One of my friends has a degree in teaching and can't even get a subbing job because half the schools that call her aren't accessible. We were so naïve when we graduated high school.”

Despite the difficulties, Margie is determined not to be deterred. She spends her days scouring the internet for possible employment, babysitting her adorable nephews, and making connections in the job market. She is also attending physical therapy to develop her muscles and no longer be restricted to her chair. She brainstorms ideas for new poems and stories, but admits “My confidence has gone down a little” in terms of her ability.

We have several links below to her wonderful poems. If you read nothing else today, please check out her prose piece, “Letter to My Younger Self.” If it doesn't affect you in some way, I'd suggest contacting the police immediately because your soul is missing.

Letter To My Younger Self


Margie's poems featured on GimpGirl

Emily

No future comes with a guarantee. After three years of attending
Five Towns College as a film student, Emily learned in the summer
before her last semester that the college had fired everyone in her
major's department, would lose its accreditation, and was on the
brink of dissolving her entire program. The reality turned out to be
somewhat less apocalyptic and she succeeded in earning her degree
despite the fact that not a single educator graded or even looked at
her final project. But don't worry, the College still charged her for
the full semester as if no debacle had occurred.

Now a year out of college finds Emily working freelance jobs, as
most members of the TV and film industry do. Sometimes these jobs are
paid but most are not, and so Emily works two additional jobs. She is
a waitress at a diner on the Nautical Mile and a prep tech at a
camera rental company in New Jersey.

Yes, New Jersey. Her four and a half hour long commute features
cars, trains and buses and begins at 6am. She returns home by 8pm, if
she is lucky, giving her just enough time to eat dinner, shower and
go to sleep. She'll have to do it all over again tomorrow.

“I get two paychecks a month, and one of them just goes right
back into public transportation and half of the other goes into my
student loans” she reports. When asked if her job would give her
any sort of compensation for her long travel time, she laughed.

Somehow, Emily still finds time to create and contribute to funny,
well written, professional, and original content. She has
credits as both writer and producer of the web series Tiny Office.
Emily is also a member of the
the Thursday Shoots production company which has put out several
quality short films every year for the last three years.

Emily is hoping that her financial woes will end soon. She looks
forward to the day where she can join her local 600 camera union,
giving her a guaranteed wage and benefits. Unfortunately, the test
she must pass comes with a price. This price, combined with the one
time initiation fee, comes to thousands of dollars.

“There's a payment plan,” she says with a shrug.


Emily's work can be found on Thursday Shoots' Youtube channel, but
we have featured here the very first episode of her series, Tiny
Office.

The Project

You've heard it all before. They're lazy. They live at home at 25. They're not doing anything with their lives. They call us spoiled. Entitled. Too wrapped up in our phones to know what's going on in the world.

 I'm pretty sick of it and I know that you are too.

 This project is devoted to busting the myth of the "Lazy Millenial." To that end I'll be featuring profiles, articles on businesses, even art portfolios, all dedicated to the work that we are doing and just how hard it is.

 Are you working two or three jobs while staring at your mountain of college loan debt? Or maybe you still live at home because you can't afford to both move out and eat. Maybe you started your own business or work outside of conventions in order to both provide for yourself and make yourself happy. We want to hear from you! Send us a message in the sidebar telling us why what you do is important. If we dig your story, we will contact you via email.

 Let's build up some legends and dynamite some myths together.