My Journey Back To School Hasn’t Been Easy, But I’m Here

Have you ever heard the phrase “a lot can happen in five years”?

Coming from personal experience, I can vouch for that statement being true. Graduating high school in 2020 had already shifted the plans I had spent my junior year preparing for. Due to closures nationwide, my goal of going to a large college dissolved but luckily my parents’ house was only two blocks from Hutchinson Community College.

With quick thinking and preparation in August of 2020, HutchCC’’s doors opened to students. The first few weeks went off without a hitch. Meeting new people while continuing education just as I had every August for the previous 12 years, just felt like the correct thing to do. Everything was coming up roses.

Eventually, I met my first college sweetheart. Traveling every chance that appeared to Hesston just to watch his baseball practices, even through bad weather.

In October, things began to change dramatically. My grandmother on my mom’s side passed due to heart complications. That was a nice reminder that you can feel more than just mundane sadness about losing basketball games, prom, and moving to Kansas City. Another blow came soon in December, as my sweetheart informed me that he’d be returning to his home state of Texas come January.

2020 was a tough ride near the end, but 2021 might have it beat.

As the year began, my rose-colored glasses fit snugly perched on my nose. Sweetheart and I decided to try life on our own. Texas was hard work to survive. After a week I quickly found my way into two jobs and even got up to three. You don’t really have a clue at 20 how expensive being an adult is. Two jobs and an unfinished college education ended up being some of the best years of my life. You meet a lot of new people after breaking out of your comfort zone. We had started to successfully transition from our childhood to adulthood as soon as we signed our first lease. Come the end of the year we could proudly afford Christmas presents for both each other and our families. We were both happy working at the local Buffalo Wild Wings when, on Dec. 20, 2021, I got a call from my grandpa.

My mom died.

After that, the world just didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I stopped living and started to survive. Now a college education was placed promptly in my backseat and put off until I could see clearly again. Every direction in my life was always mapped out in her guidance, and without that compass, I quickly spiraled.

I gathered myself up well enough in my first months of grieving and learned just how little I knew I could feel.

Sweetheart and I were engaged the following February. A moment of warmth in a blizzard. Each month was a day-by-day operation as a year flew by. Then, Sweetheart’s grandpa, his only grandpa, became ill. He passed on Dec. 21, 2022.

The universe has properly shown me how powerful it is. With each crack, it makes in my foundation. Luckily, normality came knocking as my emotions subsided and my goals became front-seat riders.

I was able to collect a few more credits at a community college in Texas. Life was hard but I was getting better at handling it. 2023 passed by without a hitch, well, besides Sweetheart and I getting hitched. As a new year approached, at a rapid pace, it brought along hopes and ambitions for our future, both together and separate.

With January came the news of my dad’s mom passing. Like an old friend visiting, grief came to ring my doorbell. By this time around though I felt like a professional as the waves started to overtake me. Keeping my head above water, I kept busy by being an island for others.

It’s a strange feeling to be a 22-year-old who understands the grief of losing a parent surrounded by 40 to 50-year-olds who have never felt that pain before. What’s even stranger is helping them to navigate it, not just through tears, but humor along with love. I began to understand those around me in a different sense which in turn made me do a hard review of who I had become since losing those I love. That review was not a very flattering one.

So in 2024, I began to lay the stepping stones to my much larger goals for my life post-grief. On that pathway, one stone was quite larger than others and that’s why when I found myself moving back home,

Continuing my education was my first move to the larger plan.

Jolene Bell is a Hutchinson freshman studying English. You can contact her at thehutchinsoncollegian@gmail.com.

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