Avory Meling

I was a senior in high school living with my Grandparents in Roseburg, Oregon when people started asking me what I wanted to do after high school. I hadn’t really thought about it much; I mean I was just trying to get through the year. After graduation, I moved back to Seattle to live with my Dad.

When I started at Highline Community College in the Fall of 1999, it was mostly because my Dad thought I should still be in school, and to keep everyone quiet who kept asking me what I wanted to do.   So right from the start my intentions and motivations were all wrong.  My friend convinced me to take a class that he was taking called Freshman Seminar.  The only other class I had at the time was Drama but I figured that would be a good start.  I learned a lot in Freshman Seminar, but more importantly I met Toni Castro, the instructor.

I was working at the United Parcel Service from 2:30a.m. to 8:30 a.m.  Then I’d go to sleep for a couple hours, and try to go to classes. I found this rather difficult. A few months later my Dad was arrested, which came as a tremendous shock. At the time I had no clue as to why he was arrested, but also because he was supporting me, paying rent, tuition, car payments, and insurance. He was my best friend and the only family I had contact with in the State. In that same week I blew the engine in my new car, which made it difficult to get to school and impossible to get to work. I felt like I had no other choice but to drop out of school and get a full time job to support myself. For a while I stayed at my best friend’s house.  Once I started working full time I moved into a 3-bedroom condo with one of my Dad’s old girlfriends and started paying $400 a month rent. Now I was trapped, working full time at a dead end job.

After a few months I realized that I was at a standstill, a crossroads. I knew that working full-time at Rite-Aid wasn’t going anywhere so I decided, if I wanted more out of life I needed to go back to school… for myself, and I needed to try… hard!

I quit work and moved back in with my Dad for free, as long as I was in school. When I came back to Highline I decided to go talk to Toni Castro. She had always been a big help in the past and I figured talking to her would be a good start. It was really hard coming back, mentally and financially, but between emergency student funds from Multicultural Services, and Highline’s tuition payment plan, it was possible. The people from different departments who helped me come back weren’t just doing their job, they made me feel like they really cared and they helped me through a lot of the personal things I was going through.

It’s been hard and there have been roadblocks, but with the continued help of many of Highline's faculty I can finally say I’m on the right track. I now work in Multicultural Services as a Peer Advisor working closely with the same people who helped me, to help other students.

Avory is currently a student at Highline Community College. Avory was a speaker at the Faculty and Staff of Color Conference, student panelist for Critical Moments/Untold Stories, spoke at the MLK Day celebration and is on the Unity Week Planning Committee.  He recently won the Irene Ryan Award for his work in ‘Blue Collar Blues,’ a Highline play.