Sometimes my job really sucks....

It's Sunday night and there's a knot in my stomach. Why? Because tomorrow we're dismissing one of our students from the program I work for. It's not that we haven't lost students before; ultimately, given the backgrounds of some of our students, we expect that we'll lose a few of them along the way. They are fighting huge odds to make it through college, and while the program is meant to help them face and overcome those odds, sometimes it just doesn't work. There's a quote, and I can't remember who said it, but it goes something like, "you can only give people opportunities and chances. What they do with this is up to them". Our program is the opportunity and chance, and the students we have lost along the way (and when I say lost I mean, are no longer at the University) were all academically dismissed. Until now.

Tomorrow, we're dismissing a student for his conduct. It's not that it's not justified; it is, and while I can't really get into the details of his dismissal from the program, it's based on his behavior and his attitude and some pretty big infractions. What makes this so difficult is that he was one of my "origianal" students back in Baltimore City. When he was nominated for this award, I went to bat for him with the nominating committe, who at first refused to even think about letting him compete for the award. He was well known around his high school to have a pretty bad attitude, but the teachers who had taken the time to get to know him, myself included, knew that a.) his attitude was a result of a horrific childhood, one that didn't really include parenting of any kind, unless you count the education he got on the streets. I kid you not--after being abandoned by both of his parents, and put out of his house by his severely abusive aunt at age eleven, he spent the next three years as a drug dealer (yes, you calculated correctly--he was 12, 13, & 14 years old when he dealt drugs) living in vacant houses until he was eventually placed in a group home, which in Baltimore, is one of the last placed kids want to be. This guy truly is a product of Baltimore City streets.

Anyway, so when most of the school wanted to write him off, a few of us rallied around this kid. Why? Because underneath his street-tough exterior, he was desperate for a chance to show what he could do. He was smart, he was focused in school, and he made me believe that more than anything, he wanted to turn his life around. And I still believe that's true, although I think he's found life outside of Baltimore City more confusing and difficult than he expected. Once he won the award, he came to the University with high hopes that things might be as easy here as it was in high school. By the time I got to this job, at the beginning of his sophomore year, he was struggling. By the end of the fall semester, he was sprialing down so fast, it was all any of us could do to try to cushion what we were certain would be a very hard crash landing. Turns out it took him a little longer to fall than we thought, and he's crashed much much harder.

So after frustrating heart-to-heart conversations with him, after incident after incident, after incident, after threats from several of the higher-ups at the University, after much discussion, and a heart-breaking decision, he's being dismissed. At this point, he's just being dismissed from the program, but there is a good chance he'll be dismissed form the University, and not for academic reasons, like every other student we've lost from our program. What is bothering me the most about what's about to happen to him, is that I fear for what's going to happen to him. I am afraid that he will not be able to survive this and will dive head-first down a path that will lead to either a very long jail sentence or his death. I know I'm probably sounding very dramatic, but this kid is hanging on by a very thin thread.

What makes our decision so necessary, is partly bureaucratic (we are a program that runs on donations), and partly for this student himself. He is in a place where he doesn't understand how to exist outside of Baltimore City. He doesn't understand the unspoken social "rules" of living in a society where most people obey all the laws--not just the big ones--and where most people understand there is a hierarchy of authority and that it exists for a reason and ultimately, that reason is good. In his mind, we are all against him. Every single time something happens, he not only refuses to take responsibility for his actions, I don't think he can even understand why his actions may have been wrong because in his world, in Baltimore City, they probably aren't wrong at all. And countless conversations have failed to budge his perceptions. So, he's managed to create his own obstacles and inevitably, he runs into them.

Our hope is that this dismissal might be the wake-up call that he needs. We--I--hope that he might take this disappointment and want to prove me wrong (because in his eyes, he will not deserve this dimissal. Everything that's happened to him is everyone else's fault). I hope that once the shock settles in (and he will be shocked), and if the University doesn't dismiss him after their own review, I hope he stays and graduates, and I hope he'll want to come back to my office to throw it in my face, to tell me how we might have tried, but didn't beat him down, that he got back up and finished school. Right now, as I wait for the meeting tomorrow, I'm crossing my fingers tightly and hoping for that exact scenario tow years form now.