A Kindred Spirit

My new CJ friend sent me a PDF of a book chapter that she thought I may like. She said my story reminded me of the author of on of the non-fiction stories. His name is Charles M Terry and he spent his young years addicted to drugs and in/out of state prisons. When he was a bit older, he caught a longer sentence in Oregon and finally got himself clean and found an outlet in education.

After release from prison, he started at community college and eventually went all the way to his doctoral degree in the social sciences. For a while he worked at University of Michigan - Flint campus, later, University of California - Irvine. I could find one book written by him and a journal article, but nothing recent. I can find no mention of him in the last six years.

Early on in this blog, I had found an article about a professor in Texas who also obtained his PHD after prison. I've actually reached out to him and told him that his story provided me hope. Perhaps one day I can ask him how he gets around certain restrictions on research we have due to being felons. The things no one else would ever have to consider who has perfectly clean background checks.

We need to fill the walls of prison education rooms with stories of men like these two guys. Not that every person needs to get their PhD, but that prison and naysayers didn't stop them. Perhaps some day I could do a study of academics with criminal pasts and find some basic ideals - mentoring, hope, determination, ... Who knows what the big characteristics may be. I'd love to hear more stories. Their stories give me even more hope!!!

As for my sentencing guidelines presentation, well, to be honest, we rocked the house! It went really well and I was so proud of the group I worked with, our hard work, our growth of knowledge, and our ability to actually impress our professor. So glad that's now behind me, but I do have lots of thoughts about sentencing guidelines if anyone is ever in the mood for a soap box speech --- what???? No takers???? Okay, goodnight then.