Serendipitous Journey

My name is Greg Sawyer and I'm an academic advisor here at the college of education and human development, specifically for the Trio programs. I've been doing academic advising work here at The U for about twelve almost thirteen years. I was born and raised here in Minnesota.

'Being Sensitive to the human condition'

The thing that stuck with me throughout my life right from when i was a child, was my parents emphasis in education, there strong belief of the benefit of it, from a perspective of upward mobility as well as help us to be more informed about things, more enlightened. Another great life lesson that was infused in my family and cultural experience, where there was always this sense of giving back, there was always this sense of you know, there is always someone that is more challenged than you in their life situation and you should always be sensitive to that and attempt to do whatever you can to help things along on a grander scale, really being sensitive to the human condition, I think. That was just one of those things practiced daily in our life. We’d help out at church or we’d you know help out with the homeless, we would do that thing and we would do it as a family. It was just practice. I feel extremely blessed with the way that my life went you know and from a spiritual perspective belief that it was guided in a particular way, cause many of the things that have happened to me, great opportunities and stuff like that I don’t necessarily feel like that’s what I set out to do, I just kind of happened to, and this is where serendipitous happens. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time and boom there it happened, and the same thing I could say about my life growing up here in Minnesota, very unusual, very very unique.

I was adopted okay and I was adopted into an African American family so my mom and dad... black, and a lot of experiences came with that. Like I said there was a lot of promotion about education there was also a very unusual kind of journey with regards to faith and religion, we were you know my parents raised us as catholic which was very unusual for African American families. My dad was Baptist, my mom was Episcopalian or something like that, and yet they decided to raise us as catholic and send us to a catholic school which I was the only black kid to graduate from my school at the time you know. We were the only black family in the parish, it seemed to me like this is what my experience was. That even though I was of a different race or ethnic background, I was under this umbrella of Catholicism, and the people that we shared this space with expected us for who we were, and I remember this one time in school, I probably was like in fourth grade where one kid umm called me the N word. I didn’t have to do a thing, the rest of the kids beat the crap out of him. we don’t do that here and you know it was a very warm feeling. These folks really appreciate and love me for who I am and they’re not necessarily looking at me as you know this is what my hair is and this is what my color is and whatever, anyone that made an attack on me was like an attack on them. It was like we don’t do that here. It was that kind of nature, that we are not looking at it through that lens, and that insulated the protected feeling that I had. 

'My Independence' 
I was in the military for almost four
years and I travelled a lot, I was stationed in Colorado, and that did kind of become home to me for while. The military wasn’t shit for me, excuse me (laughing), I had a father who ruled with an iron fist, and you know, I remember asking my recruiter, I was seventeen when I first went in. Part of it was, well there was a strategy, I was being strategic. Number one, I wanted to get out of my dad’s home, I wanted to establish my independence. Number two I wanted money for school. My my dad could have paid for school but I didn’t want that hanging over my head. I can do this on my own, I got the intelligence, I am pretty confident of that. Then it's just like you know, I got to figure out the financial side of things, but that disciplinary thing was very good because it helped me be extremely successful in the military, It even got me to the point for a minute where I even thought about staying in you know. They were throwing money at me saying “hey if you re-enlist we’ll give you a ten-thousand-dollar bonus.” But also knowing and staying true to goal, I’m here to get the twenty thousand dollars that you offered me through the GI bill to go to college. So you know, I did my time and served my purpose, I served my country. Now I get to take all this money, go back and do what I originally wanted to do. So there was always some sort of idea or goal, but never a clear path of how it was going to happen. That how that serendipitous stuff happens.

'I can do anything"

I kind of approached life in this why that I can do anything I set my mind to, you know, and being in the Military that was one of those things re enforced  by your teachers, you're trained in a particular way, that you do some things you never thought you were able to do and that kind of brings your confidence levels pretty high, and then coming back here and always knowing that college was going to be apart of my experience, both of my parents did go to college and as I told you education was very much promoted throughout my entire life. I came into the experience and I did it with a kind of maturity or a kind of confidence, but I really didn't connect to the college experience, I was here to get an education. I was one of these folks where I'd come here I'd go to school, to my classes. I guess one could argue I did the bare minimum, but I had a full time job, I had circles of friends and support outside the university, and so as I look back at it I know my period in time going through the educational process on campus, I felt very isolated as an African American male, especially back in the 80s and 90s, pursuing a discipline that was very umm white female dominated. Its Psychology… these were folks who were wanting to do the helping professions, the counseling and psychologists and that kind of stuff, and so I was outnumbered in the gender area as well as the ethnic or racial background. My mentality was I'm here to get an education and I'm not here to connect with the people around me, I didn't feel like I did anyway, but it was just kind of like that mind frame, that I'm here to do a job. It came from outside of the university, my family, my friends. A lot of them weren't even in college, truth be told, but they were folks that supported the fact that I was in college, I still felt that I got forms of support from them. So I pieced together my support system, without even really knowing it, but now that I am in education and I see that kind of thing.

'My passion to help'

I first got my teeth cut I guess you could say, in the advising kind of profession as an undergraduate student here at The U. They had what they called a pure advising program, and it was through the general college that allowed a student to be paired with a professional advisor to provide advising support to the students. Most of us that were pure advisors were upperclassmen, so we had a little bit of experience with being students already and we had that passion or commitment to help support students in their academic journey. I think the bed gave me a strong foundation of what advising was all about and the benefit and the value of it, then I think the skills that I brought to the profession was more my formal training as a counselor or a therapist. I did my undergraduate work in psychology so kind of the interest in the human condition, human behavior kind of thing, and then my master's work was in marriage and family therapy. So there was more of a counseling emphasis in skills that were developed and it's very much a transferable skill that you use as an academic advisor, you know meeting with your students and kind of counseling them through their academic journey.

It was a very serendipitous journey in the way I was connected to Trio. Through my Mcnairs scholars experience, I was part of the first cohort of  McNair's scholars here at the university back in 1992, so that kind of got me exposed to what Trio was about, as well as the people that ran the Trio programs her at The U. when I came back to The U as an academic advisor, I wasn't affiliated with Trio then, it was more working with the college. I ended up doing a lot of support with Trio students while I was in my general college advising role and certain situations happened when actual Trio advisors fell ill, and I was called upon by the directors of both the trio student support services as well as the Trio McNair program to kind of step in and help with advising students, and the rest is kind of history.

'Im on my own mission'

The truth of the matter is I had and still have a mission, and I'll play this for as long as I have to. But when I’m done, I’m done, thank you, sir. That's one thing that I wish I could pass on to everyone that I come into contact with. Being comfortable and secure with who you are, and knowing who you are. Thats hard to do in this world, because the world tells us what does it mean to be white? What does it mean to be black? Then there's a whole bunch of things that can follow with that. But if you can understand what it means to be you, who ever you are, The sooner that you understand that and are comfortable with it, The better you can do whatever the heck it is you want to do, and nobody can stop you from doing it. You are entitled to think what you want, but you don't know me. I know me. It can even get to the point where you quietly say I’ll show you. Like I don’t even care what you’re saying. I'm on my own mission. Be comfortable with who you are. I think I used the example of running a marathon, if you're wearing somebody else’s shoes, that don't fit you, your run isn't going to be as good. But if you find the right ones, like these were made for me, and I’m running my race, and I’m gonna win my race cause it’s MY RACE. 

FOOTNOTES-

McNair: The federally funded Trio McNair scholars program seeks to increase doctoral program application, matriculation, and degree attainment by underrepresented and first-generation college students.

Trio: TRIO is a set of federally funded college opportunity programs that support students from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds in their pursuit of a college degree.  TRIO programs provide academic tutoring, personal counseling, mentoring, financial guidance, and other supports necessary for educational access and retention.

Story Facilitators:

Justin Levin
Matt Baker
Mohamed Idle