Joyride III

From time to time, I will be featuring the best student work from my essay class at Atlantic Cape Community College. This week’s column is by Kenneth Kin of Galloway.
Some people call me crazy, and they may be right. After all, I have been known to jump out of airplanes for fun. But I just did something even riskier.
I quit my job.
At the tenderized age of 46, I am going to college to pursue my lifelong dream of a career in broadcasting.
The similarities between skydiving and major life change have revealed themselves to me during the past few months. I was 41 when I parachuted for the first time. It was a goal of mine since childhood.
“Just once,” I’d tell myself, “just so I can say I did it.” But the older I got, the harder the decision became.
That same doubt would plague me as I tiptoed around the precipice of my future. Should I reinvent myself during sour economic times?
Neither decision was made capriciously. My wife Heidi assured me at least fifty times over three days that she was OK with me going skydiving. I went the next day.
The subject of my going to college to earn a degree had come up often. It seemed a mirage, though I could see it, but could not reach it.
Mired in a rut 11 years deep, however, brought the dream into clearer focus. Not wanting to commit financial suicide, my wife and I meticulously scoured our budget.
It would be tight, but doable. My college adventure commenced.
Before my first skydive, there were the necessary preparations, mostly paperwork. I signed my name more times that day than on my mortgage documents. A short video was followed by 20 minutes of instruction.
College works identically. There were admission tests and a hand-cramping amount of paperwork.
During this prep work time, my mood shifted. Initially I was eager. Nervous energy drove me forward through the mundane necessities. But the longer it took, the more I wanted to yell “Let’s go already!”
It’s not just that I’m impatient. Fear and doubt were banging on the door of my mind. “Should I not get on that plane?” “Is it too late to get my job back?” I’m perched in the open door of the plane, 14,000 feet above the earth. The fear and adrenaline concoction causes me to shake. I shook tendering my resignation, too.
It’s then that I realize once I jump, there is no coming back. The plane will continue on, and so will I, albeit in different directions.
So too with my change from employee to middle-age college student. Life will go on, just on a much different path.
Landings can be tricky if taken for granted. I don’t know where I’ll alight after college. I’m not sure it matters.
Skydiving wasn’t just an item to be crossed off my bucket list. It prepared me for an even bigger leap.
Keith Forrest an assistant professor of communication at Atlantic Cape Community College. His late mother Libby Demp Forrest Moore wrote the Joyride column for this newspaper for 20 years.