My Journey to Whittier, CA
As you know my name is Kyle Hendrix and I am currently a sophomore at Whittier college. I grew up my whole life in a small town named Woodland, located in Washington state and is 30 miles from Portland, Oregon. Everyone has their different stories about what brings them to Whittier or what takes them anywhere they go in life. Growing up as a kid, I had aspirations to be something in life and to become successful and make my family proud. Going through high school, I was always looking for an opportunity to be above average and to excel myself into a position what would set myself up for success in the future. When I was younger, I was one of the better athletes in my grade and was very good in baseball, basketball, and football. A dream for most, including me was to make it professionally in one of those sports in which made me push myself that much harder on the field. As time went on, I saw that maybe the league wasn’t for me, but I was not ready to give up sports by any means graduating high school. I have always been an A and B student in the classroom, but only had a 3.4 GPA through the first half of my Sophomore year. Then something happened that winter, something that put me in a lot of trouble but changed my perspective on my own life. In this incident, I gave up many things I enjoyed prior and set myself solely on my studies and sports. After that and through my junior year of high school, I had a 3.95 GPA each semester and was gaining credit for my athleticism on the field because of my changed work ethic. As senior year approached, ill be the first to admit that senioritis hit me and that my grades were not as good as they could of been, I was not playing to my full potential, and I let the credit I received in the past get to my head. I really had to sit back and think about where I wanted to be in 10 years. Should I go to a community college and live at home? Should I go party at a big university? Should I continue to play sports? But my biggest decision in my own words was, “did I want to continue being a student athlete or did I just want to party all four years?” That satisfaction I got when I was killing it in school and going good on the field drove me to look for somewhere to play football while getting a great education. A guy I knew allowed me to stay with him while I visited many SCIAC schools for football after being in contact with all the coaches from those schools. So why Whittier? Thinking about my future, I had to be able to afford it financially and Whittier gave me the best chance in doing that. Also, on my trip I got along with the players more than any other school and could see myself playing with them on the field. Lastly, the school was exactly where I wanted to be which was in Los Angeles. I felt this gave me the best opportunity to make connections to the business world and to thrive in my career so I packed up my bags from my house and drove 16 hours to what I now call my home. #WSP15
