 The reason why I decided to go to college is that I was working with a doctor and she would always tell me go to school, go to school, go to school, you need to get a degree, this is what you need. I was the first one in my family to actually take that step to go. Usually if one just graduated today, get a job, I mean I had a job, I wanted a career. There's a lot that I have going on in my age and it just really motivates me to do good and just get graduated, move on, go out there and work, get a house, things settled in my life to where I'm just, I'm there. You kind of have this game plan and this focus and these goals of things that you want to attain and you get enrolled, you start going to school and then I think reality hits like wow it's a little more overwhelming and not exactly what you thought it would be. The pathway to completion may appear straightforward but we know from research about student experiences that it is anything but. Students face a whole range of roadblocks and bumps along the way. My name is Christine Blakeney, I am 20 years old, I'm going for my associates in arts, I'm aspiring to be a nurse practitioner in pediatrics because I love children and everyone's always told me I have like a motherly heart so that's what I see myself doing. It is hard sometimes to balance school and life, there are times where I'll be in school all day like on Mondays I have math and then I have chemistry and then I have chemistry lab for four hours and then I go into work so by the time I get home I'm just exhausted and I'm tired and I'm like oh my goodness, I'm at least working 30 hours a week. I definitely did get to the point where I felt like I was going to drop out because things were getting hectic, sometimes I feel it would just be easier to go to work and not go to school. In middle school I was the nerd type. My weekends were filled with bringing a computer to a friend's house and having a LAN party. After high school, as a brazen 18 year old boy that I could take on the world, I dabbled in satellite TV installation, I did pest control at one time, I did IT for a school district and then I realized that I'm on a pointless journey without direction and I could gain that direction from an education. In high school you're kind of guided through more or less, but going into college you're your own. You have to fend for yourself, you have to find your answers. I would have been back in college sooner and I would have been pursuing an education and career more if I had someone to turn to and if it wasn't throwing darts blindfolded at a dartboard. Completion by design is a national initiative to change the experience of students who are slowed down or sidetracked. Completion by design colleges work to design pathways that are smoother for students to travel. There are four critical phases along the pathway. Connection is the phase when prospective students have early interactions that set the stage for the application and enrollment process. Entry is the phase from enrollment in college until the completion of entry level courses, also known as gatekeeper courses. The progress phase begins when students enter programs of study and continues until they complete their degree requirements. Finally, students arrive at completion, the phase when they have finished their degree requirements in their program of study and attain a degree or credential that will help them to further their education or get a job. In each phase students face obstacles, but throughout the pathway there are also things that can help students build momentum toward completion. Completion by design is an opportunity for colleges to improve the roadmap and increase the odds for all students on the pathway to completion. When you get to college or whatever your plans are, I think you got to have at least a general idea of what you want to do and you also have to find people who are doing what you want to do. Maybe if somehow they would make the remedial classes linked into your career. It would be a good idea to understand the roadmap to get there rather than saying that there's all these elective classes or these other little classes that you need to take while you're waiting to get into your core curriculum. To know that ahead of time, that would be good to know. I was struggling with things that I felt like I couldn't tell anybody else and one of my teachers was like, you know we have counselors that you can talk to. And she was like everything's discreet, everything's private, no one has to know and so I went and I ended up talking and my grades, everything became steady and everything was a lot easier because I had someone else that I could talk to. I've been able to get my dream job since beginning school again. Balancing school and work, it's always a challenge, but it's rewarding. For the first time in my life I truly hold my head up high, walk with my shoulders back and be confident in the human being I am and that's something I have not bound in 21 years of life so far.