SJVC student finds true passion in Aviation Maintenance program

Editor’s Note: SJVC Aviation Maintenance Technology student Thomas Ringel originally turned this essay in for a class assignment. We loved it so much, we had to publish it on the SJVC blog!

A few years ago, I had absolutely no clue what I wanted to do with my life. I started training to be a firefighter, but soon realized that I did not want to do that.

After making that decision, I started going to a community college. I have never been one to be excited for school. I lacked a lot of self-motivation. I honestly would rather sit at my friend’s house playing video games than actually attend class. This led to me getting bad grades and failing some classes. That’s when I lost all desire to go to school.

I told my parents that I “missed” my registration and that there was no chance of me getting the classes that I needed if I did late registration. I told them that I would not let this happen the next semester.

I absolutely loved not being in school. I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted when I wasn’t working for my brother. I could sleep in, stay up late, play video games, and hang out with my friends until my heart’s content.

That’s when I realized that I was going nowhere with my life. I became that lazy guy that still lived with his parents that had no desire to do anything with his life. I started realizing this and started thinking about my choices. I was living my life with no direction or motivation. The sad part is that I was OK with it. I truly did not care.

My dad really started getting on my case about not going to school or anything. At that point, I realized that the life I was living is not a life at all.

My uncle, who is an international pilot, has been mentioning to me that I should get into aircraft mechanics. Then one day, I heard a radio ad for SJVC’s aviation maintenance program. This was around the time that I would have to be registering for community college.

I sat down with my parents and had an honest conversation with them saying that if I went back to a junior college, I would end up not going and it would be a waste of time and money. I told them about the SJVC program and they could tell I was really interested in it. So after a lot of thinking, I finally made the decision to start going to SJVC.

I have never been happier to start going to school again. Also for the first time, I was actually excited to go to class because I finally found something that I was interested in. Now I am on a path to a great career and future and my family couldn’t be more proud.