Going back: moving forward 2: Work at Orphanage Provides Inspiration

Editor’s note: The Aztec Press presents its award-winning series from Fall 2009. This series, “Going back: moving forward,” tells the stories of nontraditional students who have returned to school—some after a few years, others after many. “Going back: moving forward” won first place for Feature Writing in the Society of Professional Journalists regional 2-year/community college category. It reached the top three nationally, to become a nationalist finalist.

Story by Liza Porter
Photo by Jessica Canchola

When Christina Lee worked in an orphanage in Indonesia for six weeks during the summer of 2008, it changed her life. It is one of the reasons she decided to go back to college.

The 28-year old is tall and thin, with long brown hair and piercing brown eyes. She pauses as she thinks about what to say next, and laughs easily as she relates her experiences.

Like the orphans in Djakarta, Lee knows about starting over.

“I’ve been in a lot of really bad, abusive relationships,” she says.

She did not believe in herself. If you’d told her a few years ago she’d be attending Pima Community College any time soon, she might have called you crazy.

“I didn’t see any purpose for the academic side of high school,” Lee says. “I think it’s just because of the way I grew up, without any structure.” She had a hard time focusing in school, with all the chaos in her home.

When Lee dropped out of high school she went to work. She has worked many different jobs: camp counselor, house framer and painter, bartender, waitress and pastry chef, among others.

When she was 18, Lee passed the GED. “It was pretty easy,” she says, laughing.

Lee believes a higher power was watching out for her during her troubles earlier in life.

“Some people are taught what they’re supposed to do,” she says in a reflective voice. “Some people have to learn everything on their own.”

It’s almost unexplainable, Lee says. “When things got really bad and scary, something would happen to get me out of the situation.”

One relationship made her fear for her life.

“You’re so blind when you’re doing this stuff… you have to be slapped in the face” to realize you should be doing something different. “Sometimes several times.” She laughs again. Her sense of humor is part of what keeps her going. She feels lucky to be where she is today.

Working in the orphanage in Jakarta opened her heart to a different world. She’d worked with children before, but “never with kids that had been through the things these children had been through.”

The children in Jakarta were so afraid they had to sleep with their eyes open. “Some of the kids are beaten so badly, they can’t talk,” Lee says.

She realized her problems paled in comparison. “It’s one thing to hear about stuff like that, it’s another to see the effects, you know, of the horrible things that happened to the kids.”

Lee thinks people in the United States don’t know how good they have it. “You can do anything you want here and get help. There are resources for almost everything. It’s not perfect, but there’s no perfect place, anywhere.”

When Lee got back from Jakarta, her roommate kept telling her to go back to school.

“I had somebody who made me believe that I could do it,” she says. “And once I started thinking like that, that’s when I took the first class. It’s like you can’t go backwards.”

Lee tried an eight-week online psychology class. Her mind was “just a huge bubble of confusion and emotion,” she says. Studying psychology helped narrow things down, made her think about “why this might happen, why that might happen.” And she got a good grade in the class.

Her first on-campus classes at PCC were perfect. She wasn’t anxious, which surprised her. This time she was going to school for herself, and that’s all she cared about.

Political science opened her mind to a wider world. Her favorite part was “the study group. It was fun, it’s more fun to have somebody to talk to about what we’re supposed to be learning.”

In her financial accounting class, she learned the ways a business has to be organized in order to be successful. Though the class didn’t cover non-profit corporations, Lee would like to start one someday.

“Something to do with the homeless,” she says. “Giving someone a chance to kind of clean up and find a job, the people who are serious about it.”

But Lee is not yet sure what major she wants to pursue. As she goes through school, it changes. She’s only taken a few classes so far and feels it’s narrowing her path “to do what I need to do. Or want to be,” she says thoughtfully. “I kind of think everything’s going to fall into place.”

Finishing her first full semester with good grades made her realize, “I can do anything!”

Originally published October 1, 2009

1: Single parent makes college a priority
3: Self Taught ‘techie’ re-engineers himself
4: Life ‘controlled chaos’ for military student
5: Retiree takes classes just for pleasure
6: Renaissance woman enjoys life-long learning
7: Journalist switching careers to teaching