For this portfolio project, I was assigned Adrian Samuel from our English 1102 class. I interviewed Adrian two separate times, learning how he behaves as he approaches school, and how his life affected these behaviors. Adrian asked that I keep his age private but add that he is, quote, “way older than me”. I am 17, so do with that information what you want.
Adrian was born in New York but quickly moved down here to Stone Mountain. He attended Hambrick Elementary School, but he doesn’t remember much about it. For Middle and High school he went to Stone Mountain Middle School and Stone Mountain High School. He reported that he did not have good experience with either institution. It is important to note that Adrian grew up with little to no technology, so he was not used to it.
After graduating High School, Adrian decided to pursue the military instead of college. He told me that his mother had gone to college, and was in the medical field, but it was not a big interest to him then. To escape college, Adrian went to the army to pursue a career in linguistics, only to be turned down. His next option was to be an air traffic control personnel, but they determined he didn’t have the qualifications for it. The military then offered him a position in the Medical Corp, which he accepted begrudgingly. Adrian commented on this saying, “The medical field is what I was trying to avoid, and that is exactly what they offered me.” After some odd years serving as an X-ray tech in the military, all personnel was given an email to contact loved ones when deployed. Adrian told me, “I never touched the email, I just kept using the phone”. This story reinforced his distance from technology.
After 11 years of service, Adrian was given the chance to go to GSU under the GI Bill to get the education required to qualify for a career. Though after only one semester he was offered a job at Grady Hospital as an X-Ray tech. After 8 years of working, Adrian maxed out his position and wanted to expand his horizons to a new field: Nursing.
Adrian is back at GSU this semester to get a degree in Nursing. He is being paid to go to school here but is still working at Grady. He talked to me about how challenging it is to do both school and work when getting a degree, but that he still needs the money. On top of this, his issue with technology grew as more online assignments were implemented into the GSU curriculum. When I asked him to explain his dislike of computers he told me, “Every professor has a different way of organizing assignments, and all the tabs are hidden and jumbled. It gets confusing and I can’t find where things are.” Adrian likes to follow his own system, and so seeing other organizational methods can be hard to decipher.
Adrian told me that he didn’t want to be in the medical field, and instead, his dream is to be involved in politics as a policymaker. He told me about his love of government and listening to topical issues, and how he wants to find “what issues there are, how it affects us, and how we can change it for the better.” He talked about how there is an evident difficulty for lower-class families to go to college because they lack proper funding and that he would want to work on that kind of policy. This example struck me because of how similar it was to one discussed in the TED talk: College is Creating Poverty. The TED talk mentioned bright students who got into their desired college but couldn’t afford basic necessities because of tuition and other costs (College). His love of policymaking outweighs that of the medical field, but he continues at Grady regardless.
School realistically played a very small role in Adrian’s life, so his academic self reflects that. When directly talking to him about it, he said that he was interested in practical knowledge, subjects a person can tangibly use. He doesn’t like philosophy because you can’t interact with thoughts, you cannot use them physically as you can do in an experiment in biology for example. He always approached academics with the mindset that: if you are required to take a class, but don’t like it, “just get it done.” I noticed through interviewing Adrian that he is a very organized person. He attempts to keep aspects of his life separate. For example, he has 4 phones, each serving a different purpose. Keeping them separate helps him focus one at a time. Throughout all of our conversations, I learned that Adrian Samuel is a very educated man, trained not by school, but by the school of life.
Adrian Samuel (credit Adrian Samuel)
Works Cited
Adrian S, Evan P, et al, Profile Project Written Transcript, January 2023
Sara Goldrick-Rab, TEDx Talks “College Is Creating Poverty,” YouTube, 1 July 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSqW43aTuRM&feature=youtu.be.
Rebecca W, Ph.D.; Major Project 1, Academic Profile, January 2023, GSU Clarkston