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“We have exams every Monday, and I work
every Saturday and Sunday,” says Wireku,
who works both at Parkview and at a
Wal-Mart 60 miles away in Marion. “I’ve
never missed an exam. A whole bunch of
people ask me ‘How do you do it?’ and I say,
‘Because I have a goal.’ If I have to work,
it’s because I have children to support. So I
cannot use that as an excuse not to do well
on the exams.”
And how do the other students react to
that?
“(They say) ‘If Maame can do it, we all can
do it. We should be able to do what she’s
doing.’”
This is not to say the interactions are
always about inspiration and example. Like
Jeremy Williams finding himself teaching
fellow students the finer points of the
spin cycle, there are moments that remind
nontraditional students that their path is,
indeed, nontraditional.
Shane Gurley ’18, a 34-year-old pharmacy
student and father of three who moved his
family to Indiana after working five years
as a state wildlife specialist in his native
Utah, thinks about that every night when
he puts his children to bed and “it’s time
for Dad to put on his pharmacy student hat
from about 8 p.m. until 1 in the morning.”
And Julio Luevano ’16, whose 15-year
odyssey from Aguascalientes, Mexico, to a
Manchester degree last May is the stuff of
fairy tales, recalls with a laugh the time in
communication class when his professor
asked how old he was.
“I said I was 32,” Luevano says. “And I hear
a few ‘Whoaaas’ from the other students.
And I thought, like ‘Oh, man.’”
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And Williams?
He still lives in the Schwalm Hall room
he moved into two years ago, and he has
thrown himself unreservedly into the college
life. Recruited into A Cappella Choir (“On
a whim,” he says), he’s made many friends
there, enjoying the exchange between his life
experience and the musical abilities of his
fellow choir members. It’s more evidence
that what he saw in Manchester – a chance
to grow and learn in an environment that
didn’t judge him – was a clear and accurate
vision.
“The experience I had at Manchester was
‘What can we do to make this everything
that you want it to be?’” says Williams, who
worked for 10 years as an EMT and worked
three summers at a Colorado guest ranch
before coming to MU. “We appreciate the
fact you have life experience, and that’s going
to add to the richness of our community.
And so it was very open, very accepting,
versus kind of this whole idea of why at the
age of 33 are you thinking about coming
back to our school?”
That question never comes up. Indeed,
nontraditional students are considered a
valuable asset to the University.
“They may not have a college degree, but
they have all these neat stories and life
experiences you just don’t realize are out
there, and why it’s important to focus and do
your best here and get the most out of your
college experience,” Chauncey says.
By Benjamin Smith
T
he tears would come again.
He knew this.
The tears would make his eyes
glisten, spill down his cheek in a shining
rivulet, as he crossed the stage in May and
did what he scarcely could have imagined:
Take a college diploma from a welcoming,
outstretched hand. Julio Luevano ’16,
college graduate. Julio Luevano … no
longer a target of the many uglier names
to which he’d been subjected, and which,
to this day, bring tears to his eyes as well.
But those are different tears.
Those are the pained tears of a man
who knows what it is to be devalued,
to be treated as something less than a
human being of worth. And they are also
the grateful tears of a man who knows
how extraordinarily lucky he is that fate
brought him to a nurturing place like
Manchester University, where honoring
the infinite worth of every human being is
a treasured ideal.
“This is something I always thought to
pursue, and I finally got it,” said Luevano,
36, last spring. “I never thought I was
gonna be in the U.S., to be honest with
you. I thought I was gonna be back in
Mexico. But … this is a great country.
There are opportunities for everybody,