Don't give up. It gets really hard. Sometimes you will feel overwhelmed, but if you can push through, everything will be okay.
The year 2019 started off probably the worst way possible. I was working a night shift at Maverik at the time. After my shift I went home, and I was about to go to bed. Then I got a phone call from our oldest brother, Tim; he informed me that his son, Nate, had died by suicide.
Over the course of that January, we had two funerals for him, and I worked the night before the first funeral. During that night, there was an attempted robbery that I stopped. The police came and dealt with it. Everything was done simply and correctly. After the police left and the first cook of the morning arrived, I started to come down from the adrenaline. I was actually making coffee, and the cook was setting something up. I don’t remember what he was setting up. But he looked at me and said, “Are you okay?” And I just started crying. I just let everything out. Within a week, I put in my two weeks’ notice. [I thought] I just can’t do this job anymore.
We were all deciding that we were going to move to Nevada. We have another brother that already lives in Vegas. They wanted to get away from the area and everything. I got a job specifically to save up money to be able to move down there. It was just a typical call center job. Everything at that place was falling apart. Two weeks into training, the entire management team for that company quit. Then things started happening with a lot of people’s pay, and I was just like, “I can’t do this.”
My brother [Dr. Alan Parry], for years, had been saying, "You should go back to college.” Finally, in the middle of 2019 … there was enough change happening that I was like, “You know, okay, get me an appointment with the English advisor and the history advisor. And if one of them has a program that sounds like something that I could pursue and be passionate about that, I would do it.”
Talking to the English advisor, Robbin Anthony, she went over the structure of the different emphases and how creative writing is actually extremely needed right now. Because for decades [people would say] don't major in English. There's nothing you can do with an English degree. So, everybody goes for tech degrees, and so now there's a shortage of English degrees. Everybody needs a creative writer, and everybody needs someone to run their social media, to write their websites — not design their websites, but to write the stuff.
As any English major will probably tell us, they want to be an author. There's a lot of luck involved in becoming a successful author. But just being in a career where I can use my writing talents, even if it's just to write training videos for a company, would be exceptional compared to what I have done before. And so, in the fall of 2019, I became a 33-year-old freshman.
For about a year and a half before that, I had been walking with a cane because I had pain in my hip. They found a herniated disc in my lower back that was pinching off the nerves. The surgeon came in and explained what was happening. He said the pain that I’m feeling is literally that the nerves in my right leg are dying.
So he ordered emergency back surgery to deal with it. When he got in there, the herniated disc was apparently so old that there was no way to clean it. So he performed, as I understand it, an extremely rare procedure called a laminectomy, where they actually remove the back piece of your spine.
I actually woke up paralyzed from the neck down. It took several days before I could move my arms again. But when I was finally able to move my fingers and control my arms and everything, I had this moment where I literally just said, “At least I can write.” Nothing else mattered. So even if I couldn’t ever walk again, I’ll be okay.
This happened in the middle of the fall semester. Over the course of my hospital stay, I began working with my professors to figure out how to continue with classes. They all were really receptive to working with me. I don’t know how I managed to get two As and a couple of Bs.
It was kind of affirming that I was doing the right thing because I was able to pass these courses not just with skating by, like a C, but I was actually able to excel in some of these classes while still dealing with this massive surgery. I had the surgeon, several nurses, and a couple of my physical therapists recommending that I drop out to focus on my recovery and my recovery alone.
So I think without Alan and especially without my stepmother, who actually did a lot while I was in the hospital to ensure that I was taken care of properly because I had no insurance, I wouldn’t have been able to succeed.
Here at UVU, I've actually been able to get published in some literary magazines, specifically Touchstones and Warp & Weave. I got a one-act play published in the spring of 2021. That dealt with some of the struggles that I was dealing with in 2019. I have another story coming out this semester in the new issue of Warp & Weave, so that should be exciting.
I would say don't give up. It gets really hard. Sometimes you will feel overwhelmed with coursework, but if you can push through, everything will be okay.
Links:
UVU English and Literature
Robbin Anthony
Dr. Alan Parry
Touchstones
Warp & Weave
