The Right Choice?

CHAPTER 1

I just started a new job; well, I'd say it would be more of a career than a job.

Let's go back a few before I continue. I was very near to completing my foray into the college scene that I had started almost twenty years ago. I, like so many others, was not ready for college. Many people are not just not ready for it slightly, they are just not ready completely. I was one of those who was not ready completely.

Where and when I grew up it was "you better go to college or you'll be a nobody", or a loser, or really any type of negative name for a person one can come up with. This way of backwater thinking and projection on the youth was and still is a big problem. Too many people go to college that are not ready in either of the three categories that it takes to be ready: financially, academically, or mentally.

To not dally too much longer of that subject which I could write a book if there weren't already hundreds on the same subject; I was one semester away from graduating with a degree in Education. I was to actually start student teaching this fall, 2022. I was and am ready. I am old in age, 35, to really reflect on how unready I was back then. This go around in school I was a star student. Instead of failing out as I did the two previous times in college, I truly excelled. I made the Dean's List or the President's List every semester. I absorbed every bit of information I could from my professors. I was on the "right track" that would put me on my career path that I worked so hard for over the last few years.

Then, I got the notification.

My wife's father and brother both worked for the railroad. They both vouched for me on my applications that I would submit every few years. Every time I would submit an application, I would find some way of messing it up so I would not get hired, not intentionally of course. The railroad was and is good money. Way more than a teacher in south Arkansas. I would just be careless or clumsy with my application submissions.

Well, this time was different. We moved back to her family land after her dad passed earlier this year, January 1st actually. I joked with my wife that since we moved back, I should just work for the railroad. We laughed. Well, we were out one day shopping and I told her when we get home ill fill out an application for the railroad and if it works then it works. If not, then I was still to become a teacher. The problem was that the application that I would have to put in would be for a welder helped position 90 miles away; not as desired as the standard train crew position that was in Little Rock, only 40 miles away. We decided that if I was to get the welder helper position, I would just work that until I could transfer to a position a little closer. Well, we finish shopping then head home.

Then I got the notification.

"Hiring. Train Crew. North Little Rock."

How crazy is that? The job I have been trying to get off and on throughout the years. We looked at each other, laughed, then she said, "boy you better put that application in right now", so I did.

To keep from telling another tale on the ordeal just to get hired for the railroad, I'll keep this part brief, I got the job. It took three months of waiting and testing, but it paid off. I am just training currently, but I have loved every second of what i have been doing on the railroad and I hope I finish training so I can start the career that ends all careers for me.