Throughout life we overcome many obstacles, some of those obstacles are bigger than others, but we all face them. Ryan though has faced more obstacles in life than anyone else I know. Since this month is autism awareness month (though let's be honest here, autism speaks is a crap organization, but that's a rant for another post) I want to make a post giving him credit for all of the things he has overcome in life.
There are two things Ryan has always been, driven and autistic. His whole life he has went through hell and high water to make sure he achieved his goals and he has worked through A LOT.
To begin, autism obviously posed some challenges. Social interactions in high school and before that were very hard for him. He didn't understand social scripts, he wasn't challenged intellectually in school, and he was a passionate liberal living in a predominately right wing community. He was very passionate about the ideas he held, he knew a LOT about them, but his lack of understanding typical social cues meant that he had a very hard time in conversations. His ideas ran deep, he just didn't have a very good understanding about how to express them in a socially acceptable way.
This in combination with the fact that Ryan is just a really goofy guy meant that high school was challenging. He was bullied and teased more than anyone I have met before, and all of that took place in a school that neglected the resources to cater to high functioning autistic people. Regardless though he still worked hard academically. He was one of the last men standing in his calculas class when many of the other students dropped because it was too hard, he did fantastically in the rest of his advanced placement classes, joined the swim team his junior year with no prior experience, and even managed to write a 600 page novel before even graduating.
While in high school Ryan always knew he wanted to go to Eastern Michigan University. He wanted to attend there for a few reasons, one, it was a fantastic teaching school, so it was the perfect place for an aspiring teacher, and two, it was the college at which his grandfather, whom he really looked up to had taught journalism classes. As he would come to find out though, Eastern would not come easily for a few reasons.
Growing up Ryan's universe was incredibly small. It was rare that he left the 20 mile radius of where he lived. Life outside of the town was elusive. His family often feared loosing their house and they didn't have much money to spare. So even though academically he would have been accepted to just about any college he wanted to go to, most schools seemed unattainable for 2 reasons, the first being financially and the second being the fact that life outside of the little town he lived in seemed almost non-existant to him, like some kind of dream that he would never quite be able to achieve. What about scholarships and student loans you may ask? Well, he was accepted into Eastern and would later find out during his second year there that he had actually been offered a full ride plus room and board, but as Ryan's luck seems to go, that got lost in translation. As for loans, he was terrified of them. Seeing the troubles his parents had endured as a result of borrowing money, he was determined to avoid debt at all costs. So he did his first semester at a community college, using the money he made the summer before washing dishes at the local country club.
After a semester of community college the numbers just were not there for him to continue going without taking out loans. So instead of being at school he decided to start working to save for more college, help his parents with the bills, and hopefully prevent their house from being foreclosed on. So he got a job at the local gas station and started working as much as they would let him, even if that meant working the swing shift.
In 2012 he made a decision, while helping his family was important to him, he also wanted to make sure he was staying true to his own personal goals and aspirations, so he started looking into ways to proceed with his degree. Given the low income of his family, he was hopeful that he would qualify for grants through fafsa, but after filling it out and weeks of anticipation, he was offered little besides loans. Out of desperation he came within one signature of joining the navy in order to have his schooling paid for, but ultimately decided to take out loans. While that might sound like the easy way out, it was not easy in any way for him.
It was May by the time he decided to make the move to Ypsilanti Michigan, pretty late in the game in terms of securing an apartment, getting the classes he wanted, and having his job transferred, and almost none of those things came easily. For weeks his job was in limbo, even though he had been a reliable employee at the Meijer gas station he worked at, transferring to another Meijer was still a challenge. It was weeks of Ryan's manager and the man who would become his new manager debating back and fourth before his new position was finally secured. Scheduling classes so late in the game was complicated too, he ended up taking an online class in order to accommodate working between 25 and 30 hours a week and a full 15 credit schedule.The real problems began though when he started looking for an apartment.
He was really late to the party in terms of the apartment hunt.T here were only two available and there was one other person viewing the apartments on the same day that he signed the lease. He ended up with the only thing he could manage to afford; a tiny 250 square foot studio apartment for just under $550 a month. That $550 did not come easily though. When running the numbers, he realized that he would not be able to afford the rent payment, utilities, food, books, gas, and car insurance, so he decided to leave his truck behind.
Without his truck he did not have many options to make the drive to work. He could take the bus, or ride his bike, and when it came down too it, a bus pass was not in the budget so, he set his sights on riding his bike to work. Now, riding your bike to work is not too huge of a deal, tons of people do it every day...but it was an hour ride to work and his shift started at 5:30 a.m., so that meant he needed to leave by 4:30 a.m. On top of that, little did he know, but he would be riding his bike to work an hour there and back through what would be the WORST WINTER ON RECORD for Michigan. So that meant we ended up with more snow than they did during the blizzard of 78 and record breaking low temperatures that bottomed out at less than -40 degrees with the windchill. So every morning he would wake up at 3:30, get suited up for the ride, brave the -40 degree temperatures, ride his bike an hour to work on a road covered in snow and ice, work his 8+ hour shift, end at 1:30 p.m., ride his happy ass all the way back, grab his books, make it to class by 3 p.m., and then have back to back classes until 10 p.m. some days. In the process he wore his bike into the ground, went through too many plastic bags over his shoes to count, and was hit by two cars. BUT he powered through.
That first year was rough. Even though he was riding his bike to work there were still a lot of places he had to make cuts. That year he survived off of hamburger helper almost exclusively, kept the apartment at 65 degrees through the winter in order to save money on heat, bought absolutely no new clothes, let alone any other "fun" purchases, and went without cable and internet.
The next year he was able to make enough money working full time over the summer to afford cheap a car and retire the bike. After another school year of hamburger helper under his belt he started looking for a more profitable job in order to move out of the little apartment he was renting and into another apartment that was still small, but at least had a separate bedroom. So he secured a job tutoring math for his third year of college and decided to work for a roofing company the summer before.
Roofing was AN EXPERIENCE. He was paid $12 an hour, a big step up from the minimum wage he was making at Meijer, but he learned very quickly that he was doing MUCH MORE than $12 worth of work every hour. While he was in good shape, hauling shingles up and down ladders all day is not for the faint of heart! He threw up on multiple occasions from working so hard, and on top of that the hours were undetermined. They started at 6 a.m. and worked until the job was done, sometimes that meant working until 5 p.m., but more often than not, it meant working past 9 p.m., and sometimes they didn't finish until 10:30 p.m. The working conditions were also less than stellar, he came close to falling off the roof on multiple occasions and would often times be removing asbestos shingles without a mask. Needless to say, it was not an easy job.
The next year he fell into a rhythm, after quitting his roofing job he was working exclusively in the math lab at Eastern. While he was still living paycheck to paycheck, it was an easy year in comparison to the 2 previous. Challenges would present themselves again though in the next year as he would in his last semester at Eastern and would be student teaching.
Student teaching is not easy. It is basically the same as teaching, you have to get in front of the class, teach lessons, write lesson plans, answer student questions, and do all of the same things a teacher does...except get paid. Which does not sound HORRIBLE, except for the fact that it takes up so much of your day that you can't have a regular job...and contrary to popular belief you are NOT allowed to sleep at the school during student teaching, so he was faced with 4 months without income of any kind, but still basic needs that would have to be fulfilled.
In order to get through student teaching he decided to move in with 2 friends. He though it wouldn't be a big deal, as college students live with friends all the time. Little did he know...it would not go as planned. In order to keep their business private, I will not go much into detail about the problems his roommates created but trust me when I say to take the worst roommate you could every possibly conceive...and then multiply that by 1000. THAT was what his roommates were like.
Ryan worked his butt of student teaching and was able to secure a job teaching immediately after graduation as a result. It would become the first school though of 2 charter schools in Detroit that he would teach at. Both schools had insane class sizes, very few administrators, very few teachers, and even less support for those few teachers. After beginning a third year of teaching in Detroit he decided that enough was enough and moved to the school he is currently at and loves. He bought a house close to the school, married me, and we now have our beautiful daughter.
It was A LOT. And all of this happened as he was navigating a world built for neurotypical's while developing the coping mechanisms he has today. If you cannot tell after that post, he overcomes obstacles LIKE A BOSS and has worked harder than anyone else I have ever met. This fall he is planning to start his masters degree so he can become a principal, I am sure he will face more challenges, but I am also certain that he will blow them out of the water!
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