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Stories written by Employee/Apprentices
So where is so-and-so?
Becoming An Adult
Christelle Smith - Adult Learning Centre – Cycle 22
June 2004
I think people become adults when they start taking responsibility for their actions, when they are able to make their own, wise decisions, and when they are able to stand on their own two feet.
When I was 14, I thought I was smart. I thought I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, wherever I wanted. I dropped out of school, moved in with my boyfriend, and started using drugs and drinking heavily. I blamed everyone else for my problems and habits. I blamed my mom, my dad, my teachers. I didn’t want to take responsibility for any of my actions. I was not making wise decisions and I was definitely not standing on my own two feet.
I was still always running to my mommy whenever I got hungry or if I had a fight with my waste-of-time boyfriend. I thought I was smart, but in all honesty, the life that I was living was very stupid and I did not look smart at all.
I had been out of school for some time and I started to feel stupid. I was burning out and I was burning out fast. I never had any money other than my dead-beat boyfriend’s drug money and a few bucks here and there from wherever.
I think the day I started becoming an adult was the day I told myself that I had to change. I could not live the life that I was living. I broke up with my boyfriend, and moved back in with my mom. I started cleaning up my act. I started working here and there. It took some time to clear the smoke from my brain, but once it was clear, I felt good.
After a couple of years, I decided I needed an education so I applied at the Adult Learning Centre. The day I was accepted was the day my life started down the right path. I moved out of my mom’s house, got my own place and started paying my own bills. I was breathing my own air and living my own life. I started taking responsibility for my own actions, making my own decisions and standing on my own two feet. I think it takes a long time for someone to do all these things, but when they do, they become an adult.
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The First Step to Success
One tends to wonder, “What does the future hold, and what will I become?” Without education and work skills, the future doesn’t look appealing. Fortunately, there is an educational facility that offers both education and work skills.
The Adult Learning Centre (ALC) program of Multicultural Enterprises Inc., located at 1112 Winnipeg Street, was able to answer all of my questions, to educate and to place me in the career of my choice.
The next question is, “How bad do we want to succeed?”
MEI guided me down the path of success and restored my self-esteem. I wish I had taken these steps toward real success earlier but like many of my friends, I was not living in the real world. I left school at 17 years old with a grade ten education. At age twenty three, I had to drag myself to the Adult Learning Centre. I made this decision without knowing too clearly what I was looking for, but I was not happy with the direction of my life. I thought that I did not need more skills and had enough street smarts to bounce here and there, make a few bucks, have my kicks and squeeze through life well enough. I know many of my friends think this way. Through skills development at the Adult Learning Centre helps you to discover your ability to succeed in anything you want. Success requires only a little bit of humility and effort to get out of the vicious cycle that leads us astray.
I am now working full time and am making good money doing what I’ve always wanted. I am experiencing a freedom that I did not know before.
I completed this course one year ago and I still feel that I can accomplish anything A set my mind to. This course is available to men and women. More support is needed from the male perspective. If you are a male and reading this article, take a chance and walk the path of success. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
MEI, I am eternally grateful and will continue to speak very highly of you. It only takes one person to believe in you and I was fortunate to have a whole team of people believing in me.
A Special Thanks to:
Carlo, Joy, Judy, Melanie, Joan and everyone involved in the growth of the Adult Learning Centre of Multicultural Enterprises Inc.
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Poems
Lynn Strongarm - Cycle 22
June 2004
My Boy
Chubby! dirty! hands
with a loud voice saying
“No Mom! I’m a man!
me big! man!
tiny sweet ways of your
wide eyes.
thinking you’re big to do
more than you can handle
praising you for your
brave attitude
admiring your little untame ways.
Motor-mouth
The noise of your motor disrupts my
train of tranquility.
A tiny fragment of truth is fine
This heartless talk is turning me off
I look for the signals of true grace
in my own
insights.
Seizing the moment to guide the energy
of the deep inner voice.
To just let it be
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The Many-Gated City
(a story written for the ALC)
Once upon a time, there was a city, at the edge of a wilderness. It was not a perfect city, but on the whole it was reasonably safe, reasonably healthy, and reasonably hopeful.
It was ringed by a great wall. The wall had many gates, which could be opened only by large and intricate keys.
Some gates led to streets of affluence, some to comfort, some to just barely getting by--but all led, at the very least, to some safety, health, and hope.
It was the custom in the city, when young people came of age, to put them outside the wall. Each young man or woman carried whatever keys they'd been given or scrounged up for themselves, as they were growing up.
Most parents did whatever they could to fill their children's pockets with keys. But not all could. Some weren't able. Some weren't interested. Some just weren't there.
Even if they were, even if they had the money, stability, health, love and determination, it took to give their children many keys--there might be other reasons why keys were denied--the tone of their skin, the cut of their clothes, the way they pronounced certain words--the reasons changed from year to year, century to century, but everyone in the city knew that some got no keys, for no good reason at all. They just didn't talk about it much, because it was rather embarrassing.
So, for whatever reason, as others came of age, went outside the walls, chose a gate, fitted a key, and walked back into the city--others did not. They squatted, on the tract of barren land between the wall, and the wilderness.
And some of the ones without keys raged against the locked gates, became violent, tried to break in, tried to steal what they could not legitimately own. Or they raged against themselves, abused themselves, or invited others to do it. Or they raged against life, and laid down in the dirt, and died. So in that place, that barren land, their little safety, or health, or hope....was also in short supply.
But not entirely absent---not everyone raged, Not everyone gave up. And there were others who lived outside the gates--by choice--they worked out there, in that barren land --groups of people from inside the city, and people from outside the gates--they worked together to open a few gates for those who were willing to try again.
One such group built a small house outside the wall. They hung a sign over the door that read--MAKE YOUR OWN KEY. And anyone who wanted to enter the house was warned--it would not be easy--the people who ran the key shop were kind, but firm.
Those who worked very hard might hope to get through a gate. Those who did not would not be tolerated. But, when someone came out of the key shop, clutching one rough cut key, and fitted it to a lock, and opened a gate to the city--well, that was someone who had truly earned their place there.
The city's elders knew that places like the key shop were important, that having fewer people raging outside the gates made the city safer, healthier and more hopeful--and so they helped to maintain the shop.
But times changed...the pace of life quickened---the city's gates began to cave in, get boarded over, new gates were popping up in the most unlikely of places...it was all the people in the city could do to get keys for themselves, for their own kids---the key shop, though desperately busy, seemed less and less a priority to the people inside the walls--and the little house was in danger of collapsing.....
- written by Kelley Jo Burke
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