“I’m not a fast learner or academically gifted or as talented as other people here at Lee College. But I try very hard.

“I failed a math course last semester. I tried. I even got help from a professor, but I still failed. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to fail college. People might expect me to drop out or not be in college at all. But I’m going to change that perspective, that expectation, for people like me with autism or any other kind of disability.

“I’m very thankful for the disabilities department here and my tutor, Ms. Claire. She’s an amazing person. She helps me with my class assignments. She’s always encouraging and supportive. She motivates me when I may be exhausted or discouraged from life as a college student. And she always reminds me how unique I am compared to other students.

“Being a college student isn’t easy. But it’s worth it if one day, I’ll be on that stage graduating. I’ll be able to say, ‘I made it.’ I want to do it for myself. But I also want to do it for my parents. They always made me feel special, and that I can do anything I put my mind to. I want to make them proud. My dad won’t be here to see it, but I know he’ll be looking down on me when I cross that stage with my diploma.

“I love sports, and I’d love to become a coach one day. Or maybe a motivational speaker. Inspiring and motivating people is something that I always try to do. To keep that fire burning.

“I try to share positive quotes with people. I try to encourage them in whatever they’re doing. I think it’s important. Because sometimes, we all need that. Especially nowadays. I think we’re in dark times. We need more people who like to help you up when you’re feeling down.

“Some people may think that if you’re autistic, you can’t go anywhere, you can’t do anything with your life. I want to prove those people wrong. Being autistic is challenging. But it’s also a gift. It isn’t going to stop me from being the person I want to be, or helping the people I want to help.”

— Roberto (Berto) Nunez Jr.

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• Sports families boost student with autism

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“I was diagnosed with autism when I was 6 years old. My dad didn’t really understand what autism was. I asked, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’ My mom said, ‘No. It just means that you’re special. It means that you’re unique, not like everyone else.’ Because I liked cartoons and stuff, it was explained to me that I was like the Wolverine in X-Men. Like, that’s my super power.

“Growing up was challenging, just trying to make friends and fitting in. Some people were mean. In junior high, kids would call me weirdo, ugly, all kinds of things. It was hard.

“But that’s where I met coach (Scott) Griffin. He was a football coach. He’s the man who found me and started helping me. He looked at me as a person, not an autistic person.

“When I got to high school, things were different. I got a chance to be manager for the Goose Creek Memorial football team. Coach (Bret) Boyd was really supportive, and the players were all good to me. I started making friends. People started liking me for me. And I cared about them. I felt like they were my brothers. They were my family.

“I was also team manager for basketball and baseball, all four years. It made me feel important. For the first time, it made me feel special. I felt like I had meaning in my life. I had a purpose. It was everything to me.

“Then when I began taking classes at Lee College, coach (Nick) Wade let me start helping out with the basketball team. It was after COVID, and I was trying to get back on my feet again socially.

“This was also the time when my dad had a heart attack. One day we got a call from the hospital, and they said we better come. He’s dying. That was awful. It still makes me sad to talk about.

“But all the coaches and the guys on the basketball team were so supportive. They were worried for me. If they weren’t there for me during that time, I don’t know where I would be.

“I’m so thankful to coach Wade. He gave me a team to be part of again. He gave me a family again.”

— Roberto (Berto) Nunez Jr.

Related:

• Autism ‘isn’t going to stop me’

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“My first experiences with sexism were within my own family.

“I’m the only girl. I have five brothers. I had a Christian upbringing. I’m still a Christian. But my father would use the Bible to kind of diminish my voice. He would say, ‘In the Bible it says that women need to be silent.’ Like the woman is the more fragile being. So always kind of ingraining in me that submission in women and the dominance of man.

“Growing up, I also saw domestic violence at home. At an early age, I had to stand up to my dad and really say, ‘What you’re doing isn’t right. I don’t agree with it.’ I think that’s where our relationship stunted.

“As a 9-year-old kind of living in fear of your own father, it hits you hard. But I think it’s when I realized that I didn’t want to see my mom get hurt. So I couldn’t be quiet about it. This isn’t to say that I don’t love my father. I just think that for many years, I did resent him.

“The steps I took in my life to really excel in school and find opportunities for myself came from thinking about the life that we had with my dad. I didn’t want that life for my mom. I didn’t want my little brothers to think that was a normal way to treat women.

“I was always a curious kid. But when I started seeing those things at home, I really started to dive into school. That was my one safe space. That was where I could really prove that I was capable. That I am worthy of having my ideas heard. That I have a lot to offer.

“When I got a full academic and merit-leadership scholarship to college, my dad never said congratulations or anything. I think deep down, there was still that part of me that wanted to prove myself to him. That those things you said about my mom, or about me, or about women in general, they’re not true. Because look at what I’m doing. Look at the things I’m accomplishing.

“I think I did hold it against him, the way he saw me as the weaker one, the one that needed to be quiet, and not to take up too much space. And I was showing him, well, I’m going to do the opposite of that. I’m going to take up as much space as I need.”

— Azalia Sprecher

Azalia was in the first graduating class at IMPACT Early College High School, earning her high school diploma and associate’s degree from Lee College. She received a full scholarship from the Posse Foundation to attend Bryn Mawr College in suburban Philadelphia, and graduated in 2018. She is now a paralegal, and hopes to attend law school.

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“We lived in a house in Spring with no neighbors around us. We were there since I was born, so a good 16 years. It was me, my mom, my dad, a younger brother and a sister.

“We were renting from this company, and they shut down. All of a sudden, in the middle of my sophomore year at Klein High School, they told us we had to move out. My dad asked if we could wait until the summer so that we could finish the school year. Luckily, they agreed.

“We ended up moving to Dayton near my grandma. She has a lot of land, and she gave us like half an acre where we built a new home. It was a culture shock, moving away from my hometown, starting over at a much smaller high school, and living out in the country. I really missed the city and all the people I knew. One of them was a childhood friend, all the way from kindergarten until I left.

“Back in January, I was on the phone with someone. We were just playing games or whatever. It was really late, like 4 a.m. And I got this call from an unknown number. I answered, and it was the mom of my old friend. She wanted to let me know that he had committed suicide.

“It was such a shock. It came out of the blue. I had never heard of any problems he was having. I thought he was doing fine.

“It was pretty hard to deal with. It’s like, you feel so sad, and you don’t really want to do anything. You don’t want to go to school. You don’t want to go to work. You just want to stay in your room 24-7.

“Then one day I woke up, and I was just kind of talking to myself. I don’t remember exactly what I said. But it was like, ‘Hey, if you can hear me, know that I will never forget you. And I’ll do my best to impress you.’ So when it comes to work or college or anything else I’m involved in, that’s what I do. I try my best. I try my best.”

— Christopher Hernandez

Christopher is a freshman at Lee College. He is studying business, and he hopes to become an accountant.

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(2 of 3) “I was an alcoholic for many years. I’m not blaming it on Pedro. He had to move around for his work as a pipefitter. We were away from each other a lot, until I started traveling with him. When I was in my mid-to-late 20s and we lived in Florida, I was alone a lot with our two young kids. And I just started drinking.

“We both partied a lot. We started using cocaine. After we moved to Texas, we were using even more. Pedro was basically a gangster back in the day. Like, his young, rough days before we met. And all of those people were still around. We’re not blaming them for what we did. It was just that the ease, the access, the environment was there.

“Pedro was making crazy good money, and we spent it almost as fast as he made it. Those are kind of dark times that are still hard to talk about. The kids knew that payday was when they got to pick out whatever they wanted at Walmart. They would get their Happy Meal. And they could do their thing at the house, while Mom and Dad would do their thing. It was not like we had big parties. It was just Pedro and me.

“Looking back on those days, it was ugly. It was terrible. We were very irresponsible.

“We were living here about a year and a half before he had the accident. We had quit drinking and everything about three weeks before that. But while he was in the hospital for three months, I went back to drinking. I don’t know, maybe I thought it helped me cope. It was a really strange and dark time for me personally.

“When he came home, I was going to be his caregiver. I knew I would have to be straight thinking and organized, and prepared to work hard because of all the responsibilities that came with that. So the day before he came home from the hospital was the last time I’ve had a drink.

“My number one gift to myself, to my children, to my family, is my sobriety. I no longer have those chains that held me down for so long.”

— Kimberly Infante

Kimberly got a good job after earning an accounting degree from Lee College with a 3.7 grade point average. “There’s no way I would have had it in me to do all this pre-accident.”

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• ‘I knew something was terribly wrong’

• ‘Up and leaving him was never on my radar’

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“We had three senior dogs, and we lost all of them because they were just at that age. One of them, Pablo, was a medical response dog. I trained him because I have two brain aneurysms. I was having neurological events where I would lose vision and drop to the floor, have no balance, just projectile vomiting until my electrolytes would be depleted. So the last event was real serious. I fell at Lee College, and Pablo went through the whole building to find the one person who could help me. I ended up going to the ER. While the ambulance was coming, and they kept trying to talk to me on the phone and keep me alert, Pablo kept pulling at my hair if I wasn’t responsive. He knew it was a grave situation.

“I haven’t had problems in years. But I knew how useful a medical response dog could be, especially with David dealing with Parkinson’s. His gait is so deteriorated and falls are such an issue. We got Percy about six months ago. Within a week, we could tell that he had the temperament and the intelligence to be a medical response dog. He knows that David is frail, and he is constantly checking in. Where is he? Is he upright? He notices that David’s going to fall before David falls. So we immediately started training him. The goal is for him to pass the public access test. So not only can he help us at home, but also when we’re out and about. I’ve been training him with a lot of help from the regional trainer for PetSmart. I’m building on everything that she teaches me.

“I have a master of fine arts in creative writing, so I’m working on my own narrative about this whole thing. I think it’s very ironic that we’ve been training a dog to protect us in public when we’ve not been able to be in public because of the coronavirus pandemic. But he’s the one who gives us hope that we’re going to get out of here. We keep training every day with that goal in mind. And it’s funny. We always sing with our son, Alex, ‘Who Let the Dogs Out.’ And now we joke that we’re waiting for the World Health Organization — the WHO — to let us out.”

— Kathleen Sydnor (with David Whitcomb and Percy)

Kathleen and David are retired. She was an English and humanities instructor at Lee College for 25 years, and continues part-time teaching Humanities on the Go, a program she developed. He practiced law 25 years for the Department of the Treasury (Internal Revenue Service) and Department of Justice.

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• Good days, bad days with Parkinson’s

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“One of my friends got into an argument on social media. She texted me and said, ‘These two people are harassing me on Facebook. Can you please help?’ So I kind of intervened. But I very quickly came to the realization that no matter what I said, they were going to dig in their heels and believe what they were going to believe.

“Sadly, I kind of feel that way about a lot of social media arguments. It’s so much easier to refuse to listen to other people or try to understand another perspective when you’re hiding behind a screen on your computer or phone. At the end of the day, you might not agree with each other. But people are much more willing to say nasty, awful things online because they don’t have to look someone in the eye while they’re doing it. And that’s pretty unfortunate.

“As a debater, you don’t get to do that. There is a standard of professionalism and a standard of decorum.

“When I started, I was easily persuaded in a lot of things. I would believe stuff that I saw on the internet without researching further. I would kind of fall victim to that mob mentality. If all these people had an opinion on a certain thing and all these news sites were saying this certain thing, I would take it at face value. Debate has really taught me that I can’t do that. I have to do my own research and be well informed in all areas. And I have to understand things better in order to discover myself as a person.

“I think I’m much more grounded now and well rounded as a result of having to listen to other people’s perspectives.”

— Pamela Johnson

Pamela began debating at Barbers Hill High School. She was a top performer on Lee College’s debate team the past two years. For the fifth time in seven years, LC earned the title of national community college champions in the International Public Debate Association.

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“Prior to the coronavirus interrupting all our lives, I would do my work with the recruitment and enrollment department at Lee College pretty much five days out of the week. And on Monday nights, I would race from work over to Deer Park to conduct the Deer Park Community Concert Band. That was life for me: work, band rehearsals and concerts. Besides that, I enjoyed spending time with family and friends, or just being a homebody.

“I’ve been a lifelong bachelor. I think it’s just the cards I’ve been dealt. I live in the lofts right across the street from the college. It’s a very cozy place. But during this period of having to work from home and not being able to go out and enjoy the things we’re used to doing, it can get depressing. At times, it’s been very difficult to be motivated. It’s definitely been an adjustment for me. It can make you feel like you’re in some kind of funk. Like you’re not moving forward.

“One of the things I turn to in a time like this is comedy. I love comedy because I love any opportunity to laugh. So I’ll watch comedy classics on TV or DVDs. I can’t get enough of it. And it’s really helped. I’m sad that I’m not able to get out and visit my family. I’m sad that we had to cancel the rest of our concert band season. But I’m looking forward to returning to a somewhat more normal life pretty soon. I’m ready. It may be challenging for many of us right now. But as they say, this, too, shall pass.”

— Tommy Juarez

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“Unless kids feel safe and loved, they’re not going to perform to the best of their abilities academically. That’s true for adults as well. We’re not going to perform professionally unless we all feel loved and secure. My personal way of delivering that in the world is by helping people quiet their minds through meditation and finding stress management through breathing techniques.

“A workshop at Lee College called the Happiness Program is where I learned these really powerful yoga breathing techniques. It’s a practice. In the same way that athletes have to condition their body through a regular practice, we condition our mind to be calm and quiet.

“A lot of people think meditation is concentration. But it’s absolutely the opposite. It’s actually relaxation. A byproduct of meditation is that you have more concentration. That’s because your mind is more at peace and you are more still.

“I do my practice every day. We have physical hygiene that we follow daily, like taking a bath, brushing our teeth, combing our hair, wearing clean clothes. In the same way, we should also have mental hygiene. But somewhere along the way, we’ve left that behind.

“Doing my own breathing meditation practice helps get me through the day. It doesn’t mean that my day isn’t difficult or that stresses don’t come to me. But when it does happen, I’m able to handle it from a different space. If I would have been upset for a longer amount of time, that feeling just comes and goes more quickly.

“It’s a practice, and it takes commitment. I spend about 20 minutes a day on it. We dedicate so much of our time to work, driving, relationships, watching Netflix, and this and that. But you can’t pour from an empty cup. Those 20 minutes a day allow me to be full and to be able to pour back to others.”

— Marisol Mendez

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“Originally, I was an electrical engineering major. But I realized I didn’t like it, so I decided to change to something I actually enjoy. And I like video games. Not just as entertainment, but as an actual art form. So I’m majoring in game design.

“It’s a two-year program that should, once I finish, allow me to work in the industry. Then, maybe if I get a four-year degree, I can rise up in the ranks. This program seems to mostly focus on the development part, like modeling characters and programming. What I hope to work my way up to is designing the overall way games are built, the more ethereal part of it.”

Any ideas for games you’d like to develop?
“Oh, yeah. Too many. One idea is for a series called Tales Gone Arhye, with Arhye being the name of the setting it takes place in. It would be a fantasy series, with each game being a self-contained story. It’s meant to be an homage to different forms of fantasy. The first game would be sword and sorcery, like Conan the Barbarian, Elric of Melniboné, stuff like that. The second game would be epic fantasy, like Lord of the Rings, the Wheel of Time, and so on and so forth. Just kind of chronicle different time periods in that setting.

“I’ve put a lot of thought into how each culture in the setting would work, and how the characters would interact with one another. Right now, it’s mostly all in my head. The hard part is putting pen to paper. One day.”

— Daniel Western

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