Blueprint Change: Overcoming a suspension during undergrad

An Anonymous Interview

The Basics

Age: 23

Current occupation: Student, but will soon be working full-time in the semiconductor industry

Biggest and/or most recent Blueprint Change*: Overcoming a suspension during undergrad

*A decision you made or something that happened largely or completely out of your control

Past

Could you elaborate on your biggest Blueprint Change?

I briefly met a guy at a party and we exchanged numbers. It was just some random dude, and we were having a good time at the party. I got a call from him a couple weeks later and at that point in time, I was trying to quit using marijuana, but had some on me. He asked if he could get some and I told him, “Yea, sure, I’ll hook you up.” Afterwards, I thought, “That was interesting. That was my first time selling weed”. I guess it was a weird unintentional little life goal. Now it was off the checklist.

Later that week, I got a call from an administrative person at school saying, “Hey, we need you to come in to so-and-so’s office regarding incidences this past week”. I had no idea what this was about, so I go to this meeting. They tell me that there’s no meeting with an administrative person. Instead, it’s a meeting with two police officers and a friend of the guy that I sold to. The guy that I sold to had brought a cop with him, so it was a little bit of a sting operation. I found out then that I had to deal with all sorts of legal issues, and I ended up selling out a friend. That’s something that I honestly still feel bad about today, but when we get so far past things, there’s little we can do. Holding on to that kind of regret is only cancerous. Immediately after the sting happened, I did talk to the friend I sold out and expressed my feelings about the situation. I distinctly remember talking to him on a balcony outside, knowing that I screwed us and we were then in deep trouble. All for a gram of weed. I wish him the best as he is one of the more motivated kids I know.

Anyway, legal troubles aside, the school gets involved in this process. They presented the evidence that I sold weed to someone and suspended me for the spring and summer term of 2012. I draft several, several letters to try and work my way back into school, because I had a plan that I wanted to stay on course with. I needed to be in school that semester. There were classes that I wanted to take that were very pertinent to my career. So I tried my hardest to get back into school. I manage to get through a couple of the appeal stages and I finally send my letter to the President of the University, but the President of the University declines my appeal.

After that month of fighting the appeals in January, the suspension is finalized in early February, but reduced to only one term. At that point, I was supposed to move into a house with some other guys, so I got my replacement roommate figured out, couch surfed for a bit, and then I went back to my hometown, sulking and ashamed.

What was the most challenging part of this change?

[Going back home] was probably one of the toughest parts, because going back to my hometown meant that I had to face my friends who were still in California. I didn’t tell many people about what happened, because I didn’t think they needed to know, but I told a certain few people. Most people still believe I took a term off for a mental health vacation. I told my closest circle of friends – about 10 of them – about exactly what happened.

And it was interesting, because about 80% of my friends were extremely supportive. They were like, “Wow, man, that really sucks. I’m sorry that you had to go through all that. That’s really kind of s***ty.” And I appreciated their support at that time – tremendously. But there were also some other people – some people who I even called my best friends at the time – who looked at me and it was never the same. They started seeing me in a different light and I realized then that I couldn’t really control how they saw me. They were going to have their judgments one way or the other. And I learned after the first few weeks of being back that I had to keep doing my thing. I couldn’t keep worrying what everyone was thinking about me, about my suspension. So I went about trying to get a job, applying to all sorts of places like Nordstrom Rack – all sorts of retail places to find part-time work. I ended up teaching drums for free, which is something very close to my heart. And it was actually one of the best things that happened for my confidence.

How did you adapt to and overcome your situation?

Being able to teach helped me a lot, because I realized that there are certain things you have to do to be an effective teacher. And I think that effective teachers are effective people in general, so that was something that helped me a lot. When I started teaching drums for about a month in this organization, the kids really liked my vibe around them. I was very supportive but stern enough to drive their effort level higher. I taught the way I always wanted to be taught, with precise feedback without tearing apart anyone’s confidence. I tried to be almost a fatherly figure to them. I kept teaching drums for the rest of the semester all the way up to May. My suspension was actually reduced from 8 to 5 months – this was decided in February through that appeals process – so, in May, I headed back to college.  

This was pretty difficult socially, because I felt that I had absolutely ruined the kid that I sold out. That was one of the hardest things to deal with socially. I made my amends with everyone I felt like I did wrong, particularly my old fraternity.  When I made these amends though, I didn’t try to do it multiple times. It was really just a matter of, “I am going to talk to you like a man. If I did you wrong, we are going to talk about it, right here, right now.” I was very direct about it. And, honestly, that was something that came from the teaching thing. You can’t teach people indirectly. You can’t try to skirt around the bush.

Since my confidence was growing through the teaching stuff, it also started growing in regards to my interpersonal relationships and such. So coming out of this suspension, I was actually a lot stronger. Before this suspension, I was just a typical bro-ish slacker guy, running around, doing drugs, drinking, binge studying only when necessary, and not really taking anything too seriously. And after this suspension, it was a little bit of a wake-up call.  I don’t know if I would say that the suspension was a good thing overall, but it definitely changed my outlook. In the long run, things have changed. I either take things much more seriously or much more casually. I am much better at being to split up my work life and personal life. And I’m much more careful with the things that I get involved in. So there’s some personal growth there, some slight professional growth.

I felt like I got past the suspension, professionally, the summer I applied for graduate school. I had filled out my application by the end of July and had a couple professors and professionals fill out letters of recommendations for me. And it was amazing – each person that I asked to fill out a recommendation for me was absolutely supportive of what I was doing. And when I got the letter that I was going to be admitted to a graduate Engineering program, I was ecstatic. I felt like I had finally come back from being suspended and honestly, those little confidence boosters were what made me be able to come back. Personally, it took some years to get over the guilt. The guilt would come back in waves every couple months and it would be overwhelming, but I focused and meditated on it enough to put it behind me.

Present 

What are your thoughts on your Blueprint Change now?

If I am being very honest, I was in an absolute state of disaster and depression when this incident went down in December of 2011. I could only eat scraps for the immediate week after it happened. Basically, for the next two months, I walked around like a depressed shell of myself, thinking, “Wow, you f***ed up. You have made such a huge mistake. There’s nothing you can do to fix this. You made an incredibly stupid mistake and you have to live with it.” But by about March, I was in the full teaching swing and I was thinking, “Things happen in the past. Things happen in the past all the time and you can admit to them, but you don’t have to carry them like a badge of dishonor on your sleeve… you’re not just a f*** up who got booted from a university for months because of drugs. You carry yourself the way that you want to present yourself. Either present the failures or present something better.”

I think the thing that helped me a lot was being able to put the past behind me. I have a lot of things that I still feel bad about, but I realized that, at a certain point in time, there’s only so much you can do. You can offer your hand, say you’re sorry. But after you offer the apology, it’s on the other person. After you’ve done your work, there’s only so much you can do on your own side. You have to wait for the other person to say, “Hey, I forgive you” or “I don’t care”. They sometimes will say that they don’t care, or worse, say nothing at all. When I came back to school, I dealt with several people who knew about the situation and I apologized to them.  Even though they were indirectly involved, they wouldn’t forgive me. And there’s only so much that I could do after that point. The really interesting thing about these moments is that you really see where everyone stands. People are either friends with you for who you are or they are friends with you for what you are and what you do. It was pretty interesting to see the divide between certain people. And I mean, I consider myself lucky – I had a super supportive family through all this and I owe them so much. And I had friends who were able to support me. They understood that I had f***ed up, but everyone f***s up. Everyone makes mistakes. One blemish does not ruin a body of work.

And in the realm of changes in general - what are some Blueprint Changes you are most proud of?

The teaching experience was amazing. I actually went back over Spring Break two weeks ago to teach drums at the same organization as somewhat of a consultant. I don’t want to sound conceited about it, but those kids and the other teachers really appreciated my effort and I think what changed a lot was that I was able to bring a different style of energy. I can see that a lot of times what happens with these students is that they get so paranoid that they keep messing up and making errors and their confidence diminishes really fast. After 12 hour rehearsals and running the same music and choreography over and over again, I’ve become much better at being able to sense how their confidence and energy levels change over time and how that affects the way they perform.

I think I’m able to understand people better. Before – especially when I was younger – I couldn’t really read people for what they were feeling, because I had never really gone through anything that was really that difficult. I had an easy upbringing in all realities. Sure, I got yelled at when I was young and that sucked, but that is a somewhat standard upbringing. Once I was able to get past my own situation, I was able to realize that people deal with real problems. They have real s*** in their lives. And I was at least able to see inside their brains a little bit more, read their emotions a little bit better. That even applies into work. I am able to see when people are stressed out. I am able to see when people are out of their comfort zone. That’s been a place of a lot of growth. I was always motivated. That has never really been that much of an issue. It’s a matter of being able to see other people the way that I am able to see myself. So once I was able to get a little more in tune with what I was going through – especially during the suspension – I able to see a lot of what other people go through on a daily basis.

[Teaching also helped] me realize, “Hey, you’re not just another person going through s***. [You have] something of value you can give back. You’re more than just your suspension. You are a teacher. You are role model. You are all these other things. You are more than just your failures.” That’s the biggest thing that I took from all of this.

If you feel overwhelmed with change(s) now, how do you adapt?

I have a bunch of artistic escapes, but the two escapes that I use the most are music and writing. I think music and writing are two amazing things you can do for yourself in your free time. I have a little blog online that I don’t really tell people about and I read through my earlier posts and I saw that writing helped me understand and contextualize that was happening. Sometimes, it is so easy to get caught in your head. You’re thinking the same thoughts. You’re thinking negative thoughts. Negative thoughts breed more negative thoughts and you just end up in a downward spiral. But when you are actually writing something to express yourself– these could be poems, little works of fiction – you get yourself down on paper in a way that’s different than just your thoughts recycling themselves in your brain. You are able to write a couple paragraphs, look at what you wrote and go, “Okay, that’s what I’m going through right now” and you’re better able to understand. The more you write over time, you can also see how those passages change, how they grow more optimistic.

And this is something that I tell people when they are in rough parts of relationships or rough parts of their lives in general: there are really two ways you can go about things when your life is bad. You can either rebuild or you can deconstruct. And it’s really just a decision. I hate to put it such binary terms, but a lot of time, it’s just a decision of saying, “I don’t want to feel like a s***head anymore. I need to find something that I am good at. I need to find something that I want to be good at. Or some type of hobby …something…anything…that I can construct and build up. I am going to build myself up.”

Future

What sorts of Blueprint Changes would like to see happen in the future and why?

I am not a very good storyteller. I am an awful storyteller, and I’d like to get better at telling my story.

And I’d like to be able to express myself to people that I’ve just met and be more honest with people. It’s very easy for me to be honest with someone who I’ve known for years or decades, but when I’m meeting people for the first time, I’m still extremely cautious about what I expose, what I tell them. I still fear that somehow they are going to turn on me and what not. That’s something that I want to change. I want to get better at meeting people and being upfront with people and showing my personality. I want to be more open with new people.  I’m open to people I already know. It’s just with the new people – I’m shy; I’m a little bit of an introvert at heart.

What are you most looking forward to in the time between now and year end?

I am looking forward to starting this new job. The job was another confidence booster. I remember going into the interview – and I don’t like being that egotistical about things – but I remember the two guys I was interviewing against. I knew both of them and I knew that I was a better suited candidate for the position. I’m looking highly forward to being able to apply what I’ve learned in school and do something great for this company.

It’s scary; I’m going to be moving to a new city. I don’t know that many people there, but it’s going to be another time to start over, so maybe it will be a fresh start. Time to start over from an absolutely blank page and enjoy that. It’s one of those things that I’m anxious about, but don’t confuse anxiety with worry. When I say anxious, I think of excitement and worry and anticipation and bewilderment and a bunch of other adjectives. There are a lot of things that I know that I say I am anxious about, but the two words I would stress on the most is excitement and bewilderment. It’s like, “I don’t know what to expect, but I am really looking forward to it”.

It’s back to the rebuild or deconstruct. It’s like I can either live in my apartment, hang out by myself and do nothing….or I can go out, do new things, actually talk to people who I wouldn’t normally talk to, do different things than what I would have done in school. More outdoors…that’s something that I really want to do; I want to take more camping trips and hiking trips. But, I mean, I have that opportunity. Being in a job rather than school means a more stable schedule. I’ll have my weekends a little bit more open than ever. And I think that will be cool.

Could you share a piece of advice from your experiences (e.g. something that you thought about a lot during changes)?

I used to always look down upon it whenever our teachers would say, “Oh we are going to set some goals for the semester”. This was especially true in middle school. It was always like, “What do you guys want to get good at?” I just thought it was an exercise in self-gratification to say, “I’m going to get great at spelling” and other things. But when you actually take those lessons and apply them into a bigger context of life, it’s effective.

You want to know where you’re going. I know there’s this quote “not all who wander are lost” and I agree with it to an extent, but wandering for a couple weeks is different from wandering for your whole life. And it’s nice to have a direction. Even if the direction changes every year, that’s completely different. At least you can say, “I tried something. It didn’t really work out. I don’t want to do it anymore and I’m just going to go into a different direction.” But not having that initial direction in the first place is silly to me. I think you should at least have an idea of something that seems attractive to you…some goal. There are so many things you can do. And it’s not all professional, it’s not all personal. It can be little constructive hobbies. It can be music, it can be anything. There are so many things you can do in this world. And if you don’t at least open yourself up to try and pursue one of the infinite numbers of things you can do in the world, you are selling yourself short. I think there are better ways to go about life than wandering. Wandering short-term versus wandering in the long-term – I am trying to separate those two concepts.

And the other thing is that you have to accept your failures. You can’t be mad about them. Everyone is going to fail. Every CEO. I’ve read a couple of those books by Richard Branson and his message was something along the lines of, “Yes, sometimes you are going to start enterprises that just aren’t good. It’s going to happen. You are going to fail several times. You are going to dump thousands and millions of dollars into something that’s just going to fail.” But if you carry that failure around and you represent yourself by that failure, you’re not doing yourself a service. You have to move on. And it’s tough to move on. You don’t move on instantly. It takes time. It takes thought. It takes patience. But you have to keep going. Or else you’re just standing in the same spot, being swallowed by your misery. And that’s no fun.

Thank you so much for your honesty!