Relentless Pursuit
Marion Harter
First Place
2023 Future Alumni Essay Contest
For as long as I can recall, I have always dreamed of getting my college education. However, growing up in Georgetown, South Carolina, things were not as easy as I had anticipated. I was born in 1997, to a broken household that struggled with financial instability throughout my childhood, and this proved to make getting a college degree a lot more daunting than I expected. By the time I was the age of seventeen, I was living on my own and having to fully support myself. This wasn’t always the easiest considering I was also dealing with undiagnosed mental health issues along with usage of drugs and alcohol to cope with these feelings. I refused to falter and completed my senior year of high school and in 2017 I enrolled at Horry Georgetown Technical College, despite always dreaming of attending a large university. Unfortunately, a large university just wasn’t in my cards.
At HGTC, I often found myself flunking out of courses because I was at a place in my life where I wasn’t as ready for college as I had hoped. This ultimately led to me dropping out and re-enrolling at this school a total of three times over the course of three years. I refused to give up despite my hurdles because I knew I wanted more for my future. Each time I reenrolled at HGTC, I found myself trying a new major to study because I wasn’t entirely certain as to what I wanted to be. I went from computer programming, to phlebotomy, and then finally human services. This third time at HGTC, I realized I was passionate about the human services field. I began my third time here studying human services in the spring of 2020. However, as fate would have it, this happened to be when Covid-19 struck our world and changed everything.
Due to quarantine and the changing of all schooling to an online format, I completed my semester and then quit taking courses at HGTC. Quarantine was a time in my life where my mental issues truly caught up to me as they did most. I was alone, unemployed, and I felt like there just wasn’t much hope left. It was during the summer of 2020 when I realized that something needed to change in my mental health if I was going to go back to school and get this degree. It has not always been the easiest topic to discuss, but in August of 2020, I checked myself in to a psychiatric hospital. It was there where for the first time in my life, I got the diagnosis and the help that I needed all along. Ironically, it was also there in the psychiatric hospital where my spark for human services was re-ignited as I worked closely with my case manager. I was discharged after a week and with my medication I was given, I felt closer to “normal” than I ever had.
Fast forward to the spring of 2022, I receive a text from my aunt who lives in Mount Pleasant, informing me that my cousin is enrolling at Trident Technical College and that the school was offering free tuition. I wanted to go back to college, but finances were the only thing stopping me. After looking into Trident Technical College, I decided to enroll here as I was intrigued by the split semesters that my former school did not offer. The split semesters turned out to be my biggest advantage while completing my courses because it kept me engaged and I was able to complete more credits than I had in a traditional semester. While it hasn’t always been a walk in the park because I still struggle as we all do, in the almost two years I have been here I have almost completed my degree. In fact, I am thrilled over the moon to be walking on the stage this spring of 2024 to receive my human services degree. I always said I had no desire to pursue anything further than an associate degree since it has taken me eight years to get this far, but my time at Trident has inspired me to keep going. My philosophy to never give up on my education has even led me to enrolling at Coker University next fall to continue my education and pursue a bachelor’s in psychology! While I may be attending Coker online, I am ecstatic to finally attend a large university as I had always dreamed of!
My degree from Trident will only help me more in my career and education because the human services field has given me the knowledge that I need to make me a better psychologist. My ultimate goal is to become a school psychologist so that I may help those who maybe won’t get help otherwise. I want to help students who are like myself when I was younger, so that they don’t go all the way into adulthood trying to overcome obstacles on their own like I did. Lord knows it took me a lot of hoops and hurdles to get to where I am today, but if I can make that challenge less of a challenge for our youth, then I have accomplished what I am setting out to do. I strongly believe that changing and improving our community starts with our youth. My biggest piece of advice to fellow students and youth is to never give up despite what this world throws at you. I never backed down and now I can’t wait to use my degree from Trident that I can’t wait to begin my journey to helping give back to our community!