Achieving Excellence through Adversity

(picture from:images.google.com)

Diversity & My Study

By Adam Pinkney

Synopsis:

My graduate project is a personal documentary. This documentary will focus on different aspects of my life. It is the story of a young man name Adam Pinkney who is pursuing a masters degree. He was the only one in his whole family to go to college and in 2008 he received his bachelors degree. He was born the fifth child of eight children in his family. The color of his mothers skin was white as day, and fathers dark as night. He had conflicting issues growing up as a mixed breed. There came times in his life were he had to chose sides, from the simplest fact of checking his ethnicity on paperwork, to the ultimate fact of being accepted and rejected. Adam faced many hardships in life however he chose to stay positive and strive through adversity.

Adam is one of those success stories we hear all too often; poor boy from a small town turned college graduate. But Adam’s story is a little longer than that. A common phrase that relates to his story is “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger,” if this is true, Adam is a very strong person. Adam grew up with six brothers and sisters and his parents in a three-bedroom house in McAlester, Okla. I wish I could say that was the hardest part of his childhood, but I’d be lying. He knew more slang words for drugs by the time he was ten. For other people, “visiting relatives” was a family vacation, but for Adam, it was visiting his dad in the state penitentiary.

 

But none of that discouraged Adam. If anything, it was the motivation he needed to make something of himself. He wanted to do something for himself and his family, so he moved to Norman and started the next chapter of his life at the University of Oklahoma. He made great friends, great grades and decent money working various on-campus jobs.  Things were going perfect for Adam. For once, life was good.

 

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. On Aug. 30, 2007, two weeks into his senior year, Adam received a phone call that would change his life forever. His mom, Carolyn, and 17-year old brother, Jesse, had died in a car accident, and no one was sure if his 16-year-old sister, Jessica, would make it. At that point, many students would have dropped out of school and spiraled into a deep depression, but Adam knew what he had to do for his mom and brother, for his family, for himself.

 

Adam went home that week to comfort his family, pray for his sister and attend his mom and brother’s funeral. The next week, he was back in class, with a new determination to make something of himself. He was going to do something his brother would never have the chance to do. Adam was going to graduate.

On May 10, 2008, Adam walked across the stage with his dad and siblings applauding from high in the stands, and his mom and brother applauding from even higher. He smiled from ear to ear as he shook hands with the dean and received his diploma. To others, that diploma represented four years of tests and homework, or $80,000 of tuition. But to Adam, it represented his life, every struggle, and every accomplishment. It also represented his strength and his drive for life.

 

This will be one aspect of my documentary in setting up my life. As a whole my documentary will be impacted by diversity. This is due to the mere fact that I grew up with a white side and black side. Through my research on poynter.org I found an article called Diversity in Hard Times. After reading this article I found feedback to this article. The feedback was more interesting and compelling to me because it was more personal and I could relate. One post on the feedback that I could relate to included these words: “The main problem here is the parallel often drawn between diversities of opinion and issues, and the diversity of skin color. For any company or organization to be as progressive as they ought to be in issues of workplace diversity their emphasis should be placed on the individuals up for hiring or firing; what their personal background is, past beats that were covered, and issues that concern them as journalists and as people.”

 

Ultimately diversity made me who I am today. However the color of my skin does not automatically make me diverse.  I have to choice to open my mind up to diversity. My documentary will include diverse subjects from my moms side of the family and my dads side of the family. I will also include diverse subjects from my close friends. All of the sources and views combined will impact my documentary with diversity.

My Choice

My Choice – Amber Theinert

I hate my choice options. The open-endedness of such a blog makes it difficult to decide what to do. I could write about my research, but sometimes I bore of that topic (since I am so immersed in it on a relatively frequent basis). So, I think I will contribute to this blog by writing a mini survival guide to getting a Masters degree while working full-time and being a full-time mom. As much research as I’ve done in sports public relations, I definitely know much more about this topic then anything else.

1. Find a job that will work with you and understand your school commitments.

This is actually quite difficult, as I soon found out. First, I moved backed to Oklahoma as there were no schools within close proximity to where I lived in Texas that offered my degree. Then the job I moved for that promised complete understanding no longer understood after a year. Luckily, I finally fell into a job that seems to get it (although there are still issues at times).

2. Have a strong support system in place.

Having family that gets it and an awesome spouse that is willing to spend a lot of lonely nights with two children under the age of three seems like it would be impossible to find. However, a simple conversation explaining all the crazy time commitments can go a long way to save a marriage. Also, knowing that if your spouse has to work late that you have other family willing to take care of the kiddos while you are in school is of the utmost importance.

3. Although you have no time, be ready to make time.

This is the hardest thing for me to do. I still find myself doing a lot of things last minute (like this blog), but time is really difficult to make and often times I need the deadline to kick things into high gear. Luckily, I’ve always worked my best under pressure. I’ve learned quite a bit about time management by getting my Masters degree that I never learned while getting my Bachelors degree.

4. Getting a Bachelors degree is very different than a Masters degree.

This is good knowledge for every student taking this step. The whole undergraduate process is geared toward practical knowledge, training you to get a job upon graduation. However, graduate school requires more thinking, asks that you learn more about the why rather than the how of it all. So, all studying skills that were effective for a BA are almost completely ineffective for an MA.