The Never Ending War
He just lied there. His eyes were closed, but he was nowhere near asleep. In a dormitory with 50 other young men, this was the first time he second-guessed his decision to join the military.
For Brian Cummings, 26, his path to college was an unconventional one.
Brian was born and raised in the rough streets of Opa-Locka, a small community near Miami, Florida. From an early age, Brian was very familiar with conflict.
“My whole life living in Miami was a struggle,” Brian said. “I used to think living like that was normal. That’s how everyone around [me] was living.”
At the age of four, Brian’s mother passed away. After that, he lived with his aunts while his father was working in Naples. Things didn’t get better from there, unfortunately.
Brian’s aunts struggled to find consistent work due to them being undocumented immigrants from the Bahamas. This caused them to lose the house they were living in. However, his aunts ended up finding an apartment for them to stay in. There, Brian lived with his brother, sister, one aunt and her three kids and his other aunt and her four kids. It was a two-bedroom apartment.
They got evicted from there as well.
Brian remembers having to do odd jobs to be able to eat and have extra spending money. “I used to pump gas, and I worked at Papa John’s folding pizza boxes for free pizza, because I wasn’t sure if my aunt would have any food to make dinner,” Brian said. This went on from ages seven through ten.
When he was eight, one of his aunts died from cancer. Brian also had an uncle in the Bahamas who would send the family money whenever he could. He too got sick and passed.
Soon after, Brian’s father moved him to Naples in hopes of giving him a fresh start and change of scenery. After being in Opa-Locka for 11 years, the transition to Naples was anything but easy for Brian.
Being an African American, he went from being in a predominantly black environment, to being surrounded by a majority of white people. This was tough on him. Brian recalls, “I went from being in an area where everybody looked like me to an area where… not so much.”
The culture shock wasn’t the only reason the transition was hard for him. Making new friends was also tough for him, as well as being in a new schooling system.
“I thought I was a smart kid, but going from Opa-Locka Elementary, an F school, to Oak Ridge Middle, an A school, I was definitely behind the learning curve,” Brian explained.
Things didn’t stay that way though. By the time Brian got to high school, he was well acclimated to Naples. He attended Palmetto Ridge High School where he describes the demographic as being pretty equal between whites and minorities.
In his first two years there, Brian struggled to focus on school and get his grades where he felt they needed to be.
“I was kind of lazy,” Brian explained. “I feel like if I would’ve applied myself, I probably would have had better grades.”
As the son of a construction worker father and a stay-at-home stepmother, Brian knew that if he was going to go to post-secondary school, getting there would fall solely on his shoulders.
“I came from a household where my parents didn’t really know about school,” Brian explained. “They barely got out of high school so it was like, ‘If you’re going to go to college, then that’s on you.’”
That meant Brian was responsible for registering for and taking the SAT and ACT, completing college applications and, most of all, paying for school. He had to do it all on his own, even though he didn’t fully understand how any of that stuff worked.
However, Brian did understand that if he wanted to afford the high costs of university tuition, and make it through without accruing crippling student debt, scholarships were going to be key.
At the end of his sophomore year, Brian had an unimpressive 2.6 GPA. Going into his junior year, he knew he had to make a change if he wanted to continue his education beyond high school. “I got like straight A’s that year,” Brian said. “I was like ‘Okay, this is for college. If I wanna go, I need to have good grades.’”
By the time Brian walked across the stage and was given his diploma after senior year, he achieved a much-improved 3.3 grade point average. Though it was a big improvement, it still wasn’t enough to secure him a full paid scholarship.
Being that he still didn’t have enough money to continue his schooling, he decided to take a year off and use that to work and save up money. It seemed like a solid plan, but it didn’t work out the way he expected it to. He spent the year working at Winn-Dixie grocery store, mainly bagging and working the cash register.
“That just didn’t work out,” Brian recalls. “I was spending money before I made money.” All his checks would go to shopping and/or food. He chalks that negligence up to just plainly being young.
Brian realized that at the rate he was going, nothing was going to change and he wasn’t going to get back to school. In search of a sense of direction, he turned to his sister. She was in the Army at the time, and he looked to her for advice. He went to her considering joining the Marines. However, after talking to her, he knew joining the Air Force was the way he wanted to go. She reasoned with him saying that he didn’t want to be a “bullet catcher” and that, through the Air Force, he could get real life experience while still making money for school.
So that’s what he did.
That first day of basic training was a real eye-opener for Brian. “I’m thinking we’d have a couple of days to get acclimated, have a smooth transition process, but no,” he said. “All that yelling stuff happens as soon as you get there, and I really wasn’t ready for it.”
The Air Force’s idea of a warm welcome was sending the meanest, most intimidating drill sergeant they have to introduce recruits to their new life. Brian never even knew the sergeant’s name.
“This dude was like 6’5, 250 pounds. Built like LeBron James with a bald head,” Brian explained. “He was going crazy, knocking stuff up against the wall. I just remember being like ‘I didn’t sign up for this.’ That was the one and only time I ever saw him.”
Brian says that was the one time he ever second guessed his decision to join the military. He couldn’t get any sleep that night, but the next day and the rest of his time in the Air Force was much more bearable.
During his time in service, Brian was stationed in California and Georgia and Anchorage, Alaska and Kuwait. He did vehicle fleet management which consisted of scheduled maintenance, tracking vehicle mileage, getting rid of old vehicles, getting new vehicles and other tasks.
When he decided to join the Air Force, Brian thought he’d do 20 years of service and then move on to something else. However, when he was in Anchorage, that didn’t seem all too realistic to him anymore.
“When I got to Alaska,” Brian explained, “it kind of changed my perspective. It’s not that I couldn’t see myself doing it for twenty years. I was just like why would I want to do it for twenty years?”
Brian originally signed a 6-year contract, but around the three-and-a-half-year mark, the Air Force began doing force management, which is essentially downsizing. This meant that service members could get out early but still receive the same benefits they would get if they served out the full contract. Brian saw this as an unmissable opportunity. He applied and his request was granted.
When his time was up in the Air Force, Brian decided it was time to get back to his original goal of going to school. When choosing what school to attend, it was a no brainer to pick Florida Gulf Coast University, his hometown school.
“I got out early November 2014, and at that point, I had missed every Thanksgiving and Christmas since I had been in,” he said. “So that influenced my decision heavily to just want to be closer to home.”
In spring of 2015, Brian started his first semester as a college student. “It felt great,” Brian said about finally achieving his goal of getting back to school. “That’s what everything was building up to.”
Brian is majoring in political science with plans to become heavily involved with the United States government.
Currently, Brian is setting himself up to make major strides in his future. He serves as the legislative chair of student government. He’s responsible for reviewing documents and the constitution, training new senators and, amongst other things, writing bills. He is also involved with the model United Nations and is the president of his fraternal chapter at school.
Brian expects to graduate in the fall of 2018 or the spring of 2019. After that, he wants to jump right into law school. “I don’t want any more time off,” he said jokingly. “I’ve had about four and a half years of time off.”
Even though it was a long journey for him to get to where he always wanted to be, Brian wouldn’t do anything differently.
“I wish I would’ve gotten better grades in high school, then maybe I wouldn’t have had to go to the Air Force,” he said, “but at the same time, I feel like the experiences that I gained during my service made me into the person that I am today.”
When it’s all said and done, Brian wants to be remembered for evoking change. He wants to make a difference whenever he can, stating, “You can have lofty goals and expectations, but when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go, and no one knows when that’ll be.”
With all he’s done and accomplished thus far, he says he’s far from done. He sees it as: “Achievement isn’t something you obtain. It’s something you continue to strive for.”
His story didn’t have the prettiest of beginnings, but Brian has been improving his life and making a way for himself at every turn. The ending has yet to be written, but the journey is far from over.
