“Great Bay has definitely been a confidence boost that I needed and the best launching pad I could think of for the next phase of my life.”
A military brat who has lived nomadic lifestyle much of his life, Goodwin grew up in a home-schooled environment, attending formal schools only in the first, 三年级和九年级. His parents did the best they could, “but there were definitely a few things I lacked, especially in my high school education – and especially math and science. When you are 29 and going back to school — I graduated high school 11 years ago – there is a bit of anxiety.”
大湾的社区, where Goodwin enrolled this semester in liberal arts, 是否有助于缓解这种焦虑. He has thrived at Great Bay, which has been welcoming and warm, he said. “I knew Great Bay would be a gentler environment for me to dip my toe back in academia,他说. “我以为是社区大学vs. another place would be a little more conducive to a nontraditional student, being a little older and not having a strong STEM background. Great Bay has absolutely been that.”
Goodwin won’t be at Great Bay long. He is using his community college experience as a steppingstone to the University of Vermont, where he will enroll in January as a philosophy major. 在伯灵顿, 古德温将住在室内, 在加热的房间里, 不像在大湾, where he has chosen to live in his Toyota RAV4, which he converted into sleeping quarters by removing the backseat and building a multi-tiered platform bed.
通过选择, he has slept in parking lots and elsewhere, 使用区域健身房淋浴, while studying full time at Great Bay. He came to Portsmouth from Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Department of Defense until May 2021. That is when he quit his job and set out on a long cross-country journey that ended in New Hampshire in the fall.
“我从未去过新英格兰, 我想去看看,古德温说。, who considers Delaware home and served in Kuwait and Iraq as part of the Nebraska Army National Guard. “我立刻就爱上了他. 怀特山脉很棒. 青山是伟大的. 海岸很棒. It’s a beautiful area with a lot of outdoor activity. 我想留下来.”
He took advantage of the GI Bill and enrolled in Great Bay with a full course load. “I took a gamble going back to school, quitting a good-paying military job and giving up that career. But with Great Bay’s tuition being lower than a university, that helped alleviate the stress. 我可以赌一把，”他说.
Goodwin praised his professors and the staff at Great Bay for helping him, and singled out the security staff, which has been accommodating of his unconventional lifestyle. 入学后不久, he found a care package on his car with food, toothpaste “and the little necessities of life. That was a really sweet gesture, really kind. Everyone, when the found out I lived in my car, went out of their way to help. I was born and bred for nomadic desire to be outside. Once I get that out of the way, people are all willing to help.”
Despite his fear of math and science, Goodwin has done well at Great Bay. “The instructors are all helpful and are all very willing to work with me outside of class hours, to help me recover from some of the holes in my previous education,他说.
As for his decision to major in philosophy at the University of Vermont, he said it’s about exploring existential ideas he wrestled with all of his life, and to learn the soft skills necessary to succeed in all facets of a career. “Being able to learn how to handle complex ideas and how to be able to dissect them is something that is broadly applicable, and it’s a skillset I lack within myself,他说. 哲学会帮到你.”
In the military, Goodwin specialized in human intelligence. While deployed, his job involved intelligence analysis for military and political purposes. 在他被部署后, in Washington he worked as a contractor for the Department of Defense, reviewing raw material and writing assessments.
“I was lucky enough to work with really smart, talented people — people who had graduate degrees, 会说多种语言的人, people who went to Ivy League schools and studied psychology and economics. I was there as a contractor with some military experience under my belt and no degree. 在这种情况下, I realized that the hard skills a person leans on a job is the easy part of learning a job but having a theoretical framework to do those soft skills is something best learned in a formal environment.”
That’s where Great Bay came into his life. Maybe it was the care package on his car or simply the care of the community, but Goodwin has felt at home the moment he arrived.
“Great Bay has definitely been a confidence boost that I needed and the best launching pad I could think of for the next phase of my life.”
