I was going through our "important papers bag" a few days ago looking for something completely different when I ran across the worn, smudged, thirty three and a half year old diploma I hadn't paid attention to since I was about sixteen or so. It was February of 1992, and I was in my junior year of high school and a Police Explorer with the Westminster Police Department in Orange County, California.
That weekend, as part of the Police Explorer program, I attended the Orange County Law Enforcement Explorer Academy starting on the Friday evening and ending on the Monday afternoon. Put simply, if you were to take all two or three months of a regular Police Academy and role it into a four day boot camp for teenagers with very little sleep, that was what we signed up for. This wasn't a fun weekend camp. There were a couple hundred of us from many different Departments there. From the word go, our tactical officers were screaming in our faces, forcing pushups, and being as unpleasant as possible trying to get us to quit. I still remember there was one guy standing next to me who quit within five minutes. There were several others who followed suit. Their objective was to get at least one Explorer to quit every day.
At the time, I was a sixteen year old kid with ADHD and undiagnosed ASD and attachment disorder that had quit almost everything that he had started after it got hard. Everyone knew that too. I remember I only lasted a week on the Freshman Football team at Bolsa Grande High School. My track record wasn't great. So for me, for who I was at the time, that weekend was hell and I felt it keenly. Between the constant yelling and the constant physical exercise and running (I still had asthma and couldn't keep up running to save my life), it was the hardest thing I'd ever attempted in my life.
If I were to be honest, I wanted to quit within the first five minutes too. I didn't. I was determined to get through it and not just quit. They could kick me out, they could fail me, but I refused to quit, and it was the first time in my life that I made that choice. In order to do that, I kept telling myself, "I just want to see what happens next." And then that next thing would happen, and I would tell myself again, "I just want to see what happens next." I also told myself, to keep myself from smiling (because we would be punished for smiling at our tactical officers), "I'm in hell and that's all there is to it" as well as "Do everything you're told by the tac without question." Every five minutes I would tell myself these things for the next four days.
We went through police procedure classes, PT, meals, and late night watch duty (we even took the oath to protect and defend the constitution), and then suddenly it was Monday, and somehow I had gained enough points to graduate (my classroom scores making up for my abysmal PT scores). I walked the stage in full uniform with my badge, and received my diploma with the other Explorer graduates.
For me, it wasn't about being a Police Explorer. I would leave the Police Explorer program the following summer in order to become more involved in my church and pursue the career track I felt called to. For me, it was the first time I had finished something and not quit because it was too hard. I hadn't taken the easy way out. No one made accommodations for me. No one gave me a pass. I either kept up and worked as hard as everyone else or I was out. This four day academy taught me how to keep going even when things seemed too hard or nearly impossible for my AuDHD self.
The lessons I learned from that weekend stayed with me as I then went on to pursue a career in ministry and attended Bible School in Wisconsin. Within months if not weeks of the semester starting I was running afoul of the deans for behaviors that I didn't even know were wrong or out of place. This particular Bible School put a heavy emphasis on conformity of both theology and behavior, and they just didn't know what to do with me. I took the lessons I learned from Explorer Academy and applied them here too, making plenty of mistakes, socially and behaviorally as I sought to play catch up and at least try to fit in and "pretend" to be a mature, relatively normal young adult; doing whatever I had to in order to keep going and not give up as well as not be told to leave. It was a rough two years, but that December of 1995, once again, I walked the stage and received my diploma as a graduate.
The lessons I learned that one weekend in February of 1992 to not give up and keep going stayed with me for the rest of my life.
Thinking it through, I decided to frame and hang this diploma next to my others on the wall of our library at home; the first time I ever thought to. I realized that if it hadn't been for this diploma, I probably wouldn't have earned the others that it now hangs next to.
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