Tabitha Shearin

Memorable Moment
Rhoda Lukens
UWRT 1101
09/16/2014
Two Roads
Nothing sums up the last four years of my life quite like Robert Frost in his
poem, The Road Not Taken. I remember my first day of freshman year like it was
yesterday. The uncontrollable excitement pulsed through every nerve ending like a
stampede of wild stallions. Every step felt like a sprint and every breath filled me
like a hot air balloon. I was sailing, on cloud nine, no one could bring me down. I
had accomplished something no one in my family had even dreamt of. I dropped the
shackles of my home town like so many of my friends, to this day, have failed to do.
I had done it, I wasnt sure what it was yet but, I was going to soak in the glory of
my first day in college even if it killed me.
My time in high school can be summed up in two words, a breeze. My
graduating class stood three hundred and fifty students deep at freshman
orientation. By the time we turned our tassels two hundred of us stood bloodied and
battered from, the joys of four years in, high school. My school had the highest
dropout rate in our county for the entire four years I attended, and probably still
does. There was no real concern or attention paid to students unless they were
causing a problem. One fourth of the students, I walked across stage with, couldnt
read or write a simple sentence if it saved their life. To be considered a success, in
my one stop light home town, you just had to make it to graduation without a ring
or a baby. Not only had I graduated high school, which neither of my parents
managed, I was also not engaged or pregnant.
My dad was a disabled Vietnam veteran, who finished the eighth grade, and
my mother had been a hairdresser only finishing tenth grade. They struggled to
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Tabitha Shearin
Memorable Moment
Rhoda Lukens
UWRT 1101
09/16/2014
have children of their own so they decided to give back and take on the, honorable,
burden of becoming foster parents. I was one out of eighty nine kids they took in
and kept, I was adopted at sixteen. The culmination of my dad being a disabled
veteran and being adopted at sixteen my school was paid for. I was an eighteen
year old who was working sixty hours a week scraping to keep my mom on top of
bills and making sure that everything was taken care of at home. I, unfortunately,
had been playing head of the household for some time now and I wanted nothing
more than to get away, have a break, and try to become a kid again. College was
my ticket to freedom, and I wanted to ride it as far away from North Carolina as
possible. I found out three weeks before classes began that in order for my financial
aid benefits to cover my schooling, I was going to have to stay in North Carolina to
attend college. There was no way I could have afforded to go to school anywhere
else. We were very poor, and we were struggling. I yearned to become a doctor at
Brown University so bad I could taste it. I remember sitting in the VA office and
crying; I was devastated and nothing was going to change that. I never came to
terms with the shackles I felt engulfed my spirit. UNC Charlotte, the only school in
North Carolina that I applied to, was going to have to be my one way ticket out.
High school was such a breeze that I was convinced college would be my
oyster shell. My first day of class was like something off of the sci-fi channel. It was
abstract, out of place, and something I was not fully vested in. My class schedule
was the product of over confidence and horrendous advising. My schedule was
stacked with sixteen, ambitious, credit hours. Monday thru Thursday I had eight
ams, followed by a class that wouldnt start until two. After my two o'clock, I
wouldnt have another class until four, and my day would finish around six pm.

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Tabitha Shearin
Memorable Moment
Rhoda Lukens
UWRT 1101
09/16/2014
Blessed with hindsight it was in this moment, like Frost, I had stumbled upon my
paths in the forest. The concept of adding and dropping, or withdrawing from a class
was to admit I had failed. To admit that maybe I wasnt as big of a success as I
perceived myself to be. I needed to be successful.
Rugby saved and destroyed me all in the same moment. For a while, rugby
relieved my mind from the pressures of school and the rising disputes between my
mother and me. It gave me an outlet for my aggression and a support system
separate from family. On the other hand, I had come to college with a drinking
problem that rugby not only condoned, but almost encouraged. The atmosphere
was free and the people were open, I could be myself and remove my thoughts from
what really mattered: school. I continued drinking heavily throughout my freshman
year and after the first semester, I had managed to maintain a 0.33 GPA, needless
to say, I was put on academic probation. Despite feeling unhappy about being at
UNCC and the continuing battle with my family, I made it through my second
semester with a final GPA of 1.5. I was kicked out of school. Nothing was more
degrading than knowing I could not go to school and graduate with my friends, I
could not play rugby, and I would not have a way to support myself. With every
surmounting disappointment I felt my soul, my pride, crushed under the
overwhelming weight of my failures. It was when I thought I could get no lower that
my adopted mother cut all ties and communication, that remain broken to this day.
Despite my circumstances, I worked through the summers as janitor of a local gym
and eventually worked my way up to manager. I began paying for summer courses
out of pocket, and with the help of my biological mother; I owned up that every day
I was living, were the repercussions of my decision in school.

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Tabitha Shearin
Memorable Moment
Rhoda Lukens
UWRT 1101
09/16/2014
For the past two years, I have worked harder than I ever thought I was
capable of. With encouragement, and with my future goals and plans fairly set, I
was ready to re-enroll at UNCC and fix what I had destroyed two years prior. It took
taking the wrong path, the one I so often tend to stray toward, to teach me what the
meaning of success and passion is. My misfortune gave me the chance to seek out
my calling and create a plan for my future that is concrete and thorough, rather
than what I put together when I was 18 and still in high school. I am back at UNCC
full time, and have changed my major from Athletic Training to Undecided. This fall I
am applying for the 2015-2016 school year at Appalachian State University to study
Sustainable Development. I am more excited and determined to succeed in school
than ever before; but I will never forget the path that got me here. [So] I shall be
telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a
wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

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