Alexander Diaz

Reflective Essay

The Path To Enlightenment

Coming to VMI I was obviously destined to not be ordinary. And living by the slogan why should my progression through majors be any different? I came to VMI looking for something different, something more challenging but what I encountered was something vastly different than my expectations. If VMI has taught me one thing, it is that life doesn’t always go exactly how you planned it to be. My experiences here at this school has lead me up to this moment where I can truly be free. By this I mean VMI has given me the ability to realize that you have to make the best out of a bad situation. Things will never go the way you see it, that plan A will never work the first time around. So I sit here today, writing this paper, using the skills I have learned over the last two and a half years, skills that taught me how to write properly and add my own style and flair, how to use my own rhetoric to persuade people to my own point of view, how to speak confidently in front of a crowd of people without falter, and how to critically analyze any situation taking in the various angles that people might see it by. These years of jam packed fun have taught me that the English major is more than just reading books or writing well, it is an endless source of knowledge that helps you find the best version of yourself.

I had applied to VMI to join the military and live a life of death and danger. But unfortunately things didn’t go as I had planned them to go. For one, the major I was in for the first time, Biology, bored me to death. The study of plants and cells did not interest me in the slightest. I had merely picked that major because I had done really well with it in high school. But I soon realized it was not something I wanted to devote my life to doing. So I had quickly changed to computer science, a major I thought I would enjoy because I was heavy into tech stuff and loved to learn about the progression of technology.  But once again my hopeful dreams of the future were soon clouded by reality. Two major blows had hit me during this time, and it was one that would change my life forever. During the end of my sophomore year, second semester into computer science, I had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. This being a lifelong disease and ultimately making me insulin dependent, I was forced to leave the Army and give up on my dream to serve in the military. Suddenly what I had envisioned for my future was gone. To make it worse, I was two semester deep into the computer science major and had realized that the entire department was a joke. The teachers did not care about you or your grades and they would sooner fail you then see you succeed. So in one fell swoop, my dream job and my fall back plan both fell through at once. I was devastated, stuck in a void where I saw no way out. I became a pack a week smoker, trying to smoke away the worries and the daunting questions that loomed over my head. I was lost and I didn’t know a way out. That was until I had met the angel named Col. Ticen.

It was truly a breath of fresh air. A sort of night and day situation. For the first time I had felt like a teacher had cared about me and my future. For the first time I had been excited to go to class and do the work. For the very first time I had hung out with my teachers after class and talked to them and connected with them and didn’t avoid them like the plague because they offered smiles instead of dirty looks and a condescending tone. I have learned so very much from the English major, because it has given me the opportunity to take that window exit when the door closed on me so long ago.

Now here I am working on the final project for my major, my senior capstone. It has been a long time coming and the weeks drag by as I race to end my fifth and last year here at the institute. My capstone idea was something I had thought of last year during my fieldwork class. One of the things I love about the English department is the level of freedom they give you in picking your assignments, and this was surely one of those times. During my fieldwork, me and a partner had to complete a website that would attract those from outside of Lexington into this little city and show them that this town was more than just a few blocks of bars with two colleges attached. So me and my partner did our website on the different ghosts we found here in Lexington. To our surprise, there were many ghosts that lurked these streets. From famous ghosts tours to ghost books, Lexington oozed with mystery and the supernatural. But to learn more about Lexington and its ghosty goos we had to venture to the W&L archives to find the information we needed. There we found the head archivist and after some chatting he had shared with us that he had done his capstone on the study of demonology which I had found interesting. So when my own senior capstone came around, I knew I had to incorporate demonology into my project because of how interesting it was to me.