Matthew Kelly

Hello my name's Matthew Kelly. I am an adult in my thirties, dislocated worker who is now taking classes at Corning Community College in the Computer Science Program. I chose Corning, because number one, it's a local school and when I had the ability to check other campuses around the area, all within driving distance, I found that Corning was the best fit for me. Especially eighteen, you always want more you want to get out of where you grew up you want to see the world because you think that where you live is is too small and that you need something bigger. I went there with the full scholarship but I found it very very easy to get distracted. You know, you kink of get lost in the crowd. Instead of being a student who has one on one time with the professor like you get here at Corning, sometimes a lot of the class lectures I went to, they had to use presentations and sound systems all the way through an entire auditorium, so to be able to think that you could raise your hand and ask a question in that crowd, it's impossible. That's ultimately what happened to me. I squandered my ability with my full scholarship. I wish I would have gone to a community college. You know I wish I would have listened to my parents and my guidance school counselors when they said go to a smaller school. Go to someplace like Corning Community College where you can have that one on one time that you need, where you can really learn what it means to be a college student, because going from high school to college, it's not as easy of a transition as a lot of people think. you know it's much more responsibility. If you don't do the work you don't do the work. It's a different environment and I think that having the ability to be in a community college setting, taking a couple years to figure things out and get an idea of who you want to be and where you want to go, it's going to help you so much more than being drawn to that big school that's hours away from all your friends and your family. Stay close where you've got a great support structure and I think you can find success.